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Applying a Social-Ecological System Framework to the Study of the Taos Valley Irrigation System

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Abstract

This paper applies a social-ecological system (SES) framework to the analysis of a SES in the Taos valley of northern New Mexico. The SES analyzed is a set of interconnected irrigation communities known as acequias. These have persisted in the area for several hundred years. In this paper I combine concepts from multi-level governance, social network analysis, and interconnected action situations to diagnose the factors that have enabled the acequias to maintain the levels of cooperation needed to persist as farming communities in a high desert environment. To conduct this research, interview data were collected on-site to complement existing court testimonies and other relevant primary and secondary data. These data were analyzed via a step-wise diagnostic process that is inspired by the SES framework and used to illustrate how the acequias form a multilevel governance system via key network attributes, and how this governance structure maps onto the resource system while not overburdening the participants and providing sufficient benefits to motivate continued cooperation over time.

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Notes

  1. An acequia is a community of irrigating farmers.

  2. Since 1969 the OSE has been conducting a water right adjudication case in Taos in order to implement its management and property regime.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Dartmouth College, Hanover, USA

    Michael Cox

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  1. Michael Cox
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Correspondence to Michael Cox.

Appendix

Appendix

Diagnosis: Data Measurement and Organization

The process of diagnosing the most important variables in the system and how they interacted to produce outcomes was conducted by the following steps, which were used to guide data collection, variable measurement, and the eventual analysis:

  1. 1.

    Identify the main components of the acequia SES (governance systems, resource units and systems, and actors).

  2. 2.

    Describe the biophysical context that creates governance challenges for the acequias, and explore how these challenges are exacerbated or ameliorated by the physical structure of the acequia irrigation system.

  3. 3.

    Identify the discrete action situations that acequia members must negotiate in order to sustain themselves and the irrigation systems that support them.

  4. 4.

    Identify how these action situations interrelate with each other and with the network structure of the acequias to explain their governance structure.

  5. 5.

    Explore the relationship between this governance structure and the biophysical system.

  6. 6.

    Unpack each type of action situation within this governance structure, and explore how acequia members negotiate the collective-action problems involved, based on the relevant variables from the SES framework.

Most of these steps involve the determination of which variables from the SES framework are important, and how they affect the tendency of acequia members to cooperate within specified action situations over time. In using the data collected to diagnose whether or not, and how, a particular variable was important, three main criteria were used:

  1. 1.

    The strength of evidence in the data that favors a causal inference for a variable’s importance (e.g., if all interviewees are unanimous in describing a variable as important, and the role that it plays).

  2. 2.

    Consistence with the model of human behavior adopted for the project, as discussed earlier. If a variable would be expected to affect the costs or benefits as evaluated by human actors, this counts in favor of its causal importance.

  3. 3.

    Consistence with findings from other CPR settings, particularly cases of community-based irrigation management and previous hydrological work on the acequias in New Mexico.

Along with a determination of importance, each relevant variable from the framework was operationalized along an ordinal or categorical scale. The ordinal variables could take on the values of “strong,” “moderate,” and “weak” or “high,” “moderate,” and “low,” depending on what language made the most sense for each variable. Several of the categorical variables are binary, usually indicating whether or not a particular feature is present or not. The variables themselves are presented using the structure and notation from the original framework. The first tier is represented in uppercase letters and the second with a number. When used to create a more specific variable, the third tier is labeled with a lower-case letter. For the resource system, of which I created subcomponents, I added a letter to the first tier (e.g., RSG for the groundwater system) to indicate which subsystem variable is being discussed.

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Cox, M. Applying a Social-Ecological System Framework to the Study of the Taos Valley Irrigation System. Hum Ecol 42, 311–324 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10745-014-9651-y

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