How do ranchers’ social networks enable or constrain their capacity to adapt to change in a grassland social-ecological system?

Keywords: social-ecological systems, adaptive capacity, resilience, ranchers, social networks
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Saturday
Session Start / End Time: 2/26/2022 03:40 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/26/2022 05:00 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 78

Abstract

Ranchers’ capacity to adapt to stressors has always been essential to their survival but may be more important than ever as grassland social-ecological systems begin to irrevocably change. In the US, the eastern front of the Great Plains is experiencing a vegetation transition such that eastern redcedar is encroaching upon the grassland ecosystem, consuming large amounts of water in an area already limited by water scarcity. This vegetation transition may constitute a regime shift, whereby the social-ecological system crosses a threshold and the nature of the system changes. Reversing the shift once it has occurred may be difficult, however some areas along the frontier of this encroachment appear resilient to this transition. Although this resilience has been studied from an ecological perspective, we sought to understand what social elements may be conferring resilience by studying ranchers’ social networks. We administered an ego-network survey to ranchers in Nebraska to understand how individuals’ social networks influence their adaptive capacity to vegetation transitions. Preliminary results suggest that ranchers with larger, more diverse networks characterized by an open structure score higher across different dimensions of adaptive capacity, including access to assets, learning and innovation, and agency. This research represents a novel attempt to understand how patterns in social relations enable or constrain the adaptive capacity of ranchers facing widespread ecological change. These findings help us understand how ranchers navigate change through their social networks, which may be important for encouraging adaptive behavior, such as rotational grazing and prescribed fire, and preventing vegetation transitions.