• Research
  • People
  • Publications
  • Developed tools
  • Opportunities
  • Links
  • Research
  • People
  • Publications
  • Developed tools
  • Opportunities
  • Links

Publications

For an updated list of publications, please visit Dr Muller's Google Scholar page
Papers in review are marked with an asterisk (*).
Student and postdoc mentees are underlined and marked with #
Click on the title to access abstract, then click on the authors to access preprints

19. Developing a sustainability science approach for water systems.

6/19/2021

 
Brelsford, C., M. Dumas, E. Schlager, B. J. Dermody, M. Aiuvalasit, M. R. Allen-Dumas, J. Beecher, U. Bhatia, P. D'Odorico, M. Garcia, P. Gober, D. Groenfeldt, S. Lansing, K. Madani, L. Méndez-Barrientos, E. Mondino, M. F. Müller, F. C. O'Donnell, P. M. Owuor, J. Rising, M. R. Sanderson, F. A. A. Souza, and S. C. Zipper. (2020). Ecology and Society 25(2):23. doi: 10.5751/ES-11515-250223
We convened a workshop to enable scientists who study water systems from both social science and physical science perspectives to develop a shared language. This shared language is necessary to bridge a divide between these disciplines’ different conceptual frameworks. As a result of this workshop, we argue that we should view socio-hydrological systems as structurally co-constituted of social, engineered, and natural elements and study the “characteristic management challenges” that emerge from this structure and reoccur across time, space, and socioeconomic contexts. This approach is in contrast to theories that view these systems as separately conceptualized natural and social domains connected by bi-directional feedbacks, as is prevalent in much of the water systems research arising from the physical sciences. A focus on emergent characteristic management challenges encourages us to go beyond searching for evidence of feedbacks and instead ask questions such as: What types of innovations have successfully been used to address these challenges? What structural components of the system affect its resilience to hydrological events and through what mechanisms? Are there differences between successful and unsuccessful strategies to solve one of the characteristic management challenges? If so, how are these differences affected by institutional structure and ecological and economic contexts? To answer these questions, social processes must now take center stage in the study and practice of water management. We also argue that water systems are an important class of coupled systems with relevance for sustainability science because they are particularly amenable to the kinds of systematic comparisons that allow knowledge to accumulate. Indeed, the characteristic management challenges we identify are few in number and recur over most of human history and in most geographical locations. This recurrence should allow us to accumulate knowledge to answer the above questions by studying the long historical record of institutional innovations to manage water systems.

Comments are closed.

    Categories

    All
    Armed Conflict
    Bangladesh
    Cambodia
    Catchment Science
    Causal Inference
    Change Attribution
    Climate Change
    Flow Duration Curve
    Food
    Game Theory
    Geostatistics
    Global Health
    Groundwater
    Himalaya
    Large Scale Land Aquisition
    Micro Hydropower
    Middle East
    Nepal
    Remote Sensing
    Reviews And Opinion Papers
    Rural Electrification
    Salinization
    Sociohydrology
    South Asia
    Stochastic Hydrology
    Streamflow Variability
    Switzerland
    Transboundary Water
    Water System Analysis
    Web Platform

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.