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Modeling responses of coupled social–ecological systems of the Gulf of California to anthropogenic and natural perturbations

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  • Social hysteresis and ecological hysteresis
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Ecological Research

Abstract

Key elements of the rapidly expanding field of ecosystem-based management include: (a) understanding connections among social and ecological systems and (b) developing analytical approaches to inform the necessary trade-offs among ecosystem services and human activities in coastal and marine areas. To address these needs, we investigate the impacts of multiple economic sectors on the marine ecosystem and dependent human community in the Gulf of California with an ecological-economic model. We focus on the spotted rose snapper (Lutjanus guttatus), an economically important species targeted concurrently by the nearshore artisanal fleet, the sportfishing fleet, and by the industrial shrimp fleet as bycatch. Economic returns to the local community are driven by the artisanal fishery catch and the number of tourists who engage in the sportsfishery, and these variables are in turn impacted by fish abundance. We find that the coexistence of the two sectors (and production of both seafood and tourism services) creates stability in key elements of the coupled systems. When the coupled systems are perturbed by changes in exploitation and climate variability, the artisanal fishery responds more rapidly and to a greater degree than the sportsfishery to shifts in the fish population. Our results suggest that vital components of coupled systems may well respond differently to climate variability or other perturbations, and that management strategies should be developed with this in mind. Models like ours can facilitate the development and testing of hypotheses about the form and strength of interactions between ecosystems, services, and the human communities that rely on them.

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Acknowledgments

We thank M. Baskett, J. Dushoff, E. Ezcurra, D. Menge, A. Kinzig, J. Rich, and A. Satake for valuable discussions during the development of this work. Comments by the Editors and two anonymous reviewers significantly strengthened this manuscript. HL acknowledges the support of The David and Lucile Packard Foundation, The James S. McDonnell Foundation (through the Santa Fe Institute’s Robustness Program), the Princeton Environmental Institute, and Brown University’s Center for Environmental Studies. MS acknowledges the support of a Marie Curie International Fellowship within the 6th European Community Framework Programme and a Society in Science—Branco Weiss—Fellowship. RCB acknowledges the support of the David and Lucile Packard Foundation and the PANGAS Project.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Princeton Environmental Institute, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, 08544, USA

    Heather M. Leslie, Maja Schlüter & Simon A. Levin

  2. Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Center for Environmental Studies, Brown University, 135 Angell St., Box 1943, Providence, RI, 02912, USA

    Heather M. Leslie

  3. Conservation and Science Program, The David and Lucile Packard Foundation, Los Altos, CA, 94022, USA

    Richard Cudney-Bueno

  4. Institute of Marine Sciences, University of California, Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA, 95060, USA

    Richard Cudney-Bueno

  5. School of Natural Resources, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, 85721, USA

    Richard Cudney-Bueno

  6. Resources for the Future, 1616 P Street NW, Washington, DC, 20036, USA

    Simon A. Levin

Authors
  1. Heather M. Leslie
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  2. Maja Schlüter
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  3. Richard Cudney-Bueno
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  4. Simon A. Levin
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Heather M. Leslie.

Additional information

H. M. Leslie and M. Schlüter contributed equally to this paper.

Electronic supplementary material

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Appendix A1: Stability analysis of the fish population sub-model (PDF 414 kb) including five figures:

Figure A1: Stable (below curve) and instable (above curve) parameter space of the fish population model. Note the log of the y-axis

Figure A2: Changes in juvenile (left) and adult (right) fish abundances with different reproductive and immigration probabilities. The darker the color the higher the abundance

Figure A3: The abundance of both juvenile and adult fish sharply changes with changes in the sportsfishing scaling parameter β and the artisanal effort threshold (R C )

Figure A4: Effort, catch, and returns to the artisanal and sportfishing sectors change considerably with changes in the sportsfishing scaling parameter (β)

Figure A5: Returns and effort in the artisanal and sportsfishing sectors change markedly with changes in the sportsfishing scaling parameter β. Scenarios A, B, and C refer to our three ‘system states’: the artisanal-dominated state, the coexistence state, and the sportsfishery-dominated state

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Leslie, H.M., Schlüter, M., Cudney-Bueno, R. et al. Modeling responses of coupled social–ecological systems of the Gulf of California to anthropogenic and natural perturbations. Ecol Res 24, 505–519 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11284-009-0603-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11284-009-0603-8

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