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Cross-Basin Patterns of Systemic-Change Drivers and Adaptive Governance Features

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Practical Panarchy for Adaptive Water Governance

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Abstract

Features of adaptive governance and drivers of systemic change were derived using qualitative textual analysis of six North American basin resilience assessments. This meta-analysis sought new knowledge that transcends each study concerning two categories of variables: (1) drivers of change in complex social-ecological-institutional water systems that affect systemic resilience and (2) features of adaptive governance. Pervasive themes, concepts, and variables from these six interdisciplinary texts were identified through inductive textual analysis and then analyzed for cross-basin patterns. Synthesis frameworks, as well as comprehensive lists of the variables that these studies uniformly or nearly uniformly addressed, are presented. These results are cross-interdisciplinary in that they identify patterns and knowledge that transcend several diverse interdisciplinary studies. The relevant and potentially generalizable insights into complex system change and adaptive governance, as well as a set of methods for synthesizing diverse interdisciplinary studies, form a foundation for future research on the dynamics of complex social-ecological-institutional systems and how they could be governed adaptively for resilience.

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Acknowledgments

This work was developed in part under the Adaptive Water Governance project, funded by the US National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center (SESYNC) under funding from the US National Science Foundation, NSF DBI-1052875.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Brandeis School of Law and Department of Urban and Public Affairs, University of Louisville, Louisville, KY, USA

    Craig Anthony (Tony) Arnold

  2. College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR, USA

    Hannah Gosnell

  3. Haub School of Environment and Natural Resources, University of Wyoming, Laramie, WYO, USA

    Melinda Harm Benson

  4. S.J. Quinney College of Law, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, USA

    Robin Kundis Craig

Authors
  1. Craig Anthony (Tony) Arnold
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  2. Hannah Gosnell
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  3. Melinda Harm Benson
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  4. Robin Kundis Craig
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Craig Anthony (Tony) Arnold .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. College of Law and Waters of the West Program, University of Idaho, Moscow, Idaho, USA

    Barbara Cosens

  2. Department of Environmental Sciences, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia, USA

    Lance Gunderson

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Arnold, C.A.(., Gosnell, H., Benson, M.H., Craig, R.K. (2018). Cross-Basin Patterns of Systemic-Change Drivers and Adaptive Governance Features. In: Cosens, B., Gunderson, L. (eds) Practical Panarchy for Adaptive Water Governance. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-72472-0_13

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