The IWG brought together researchers from different institutional (University of New Mexico, University of Idaho, University of Nevada, Bureau of Reclamation) and disciplinary backgrounds to participate in the development of an interdisciplinary research agenda for investigating resilience-based water governance in the face of climate challenges. Specifically, the group focused on assessing the capacity of existing legal and institutional frameworks to foster resilience in the Columbia and Rio Grande watersheds, two social ecological systems (SESs) at the core of the NSF EPSCoR Western Consortium research efforts.
As climate change predictions are repeatedly revised to suggest impacts more imminent and more severe than previously estimated (see for e.g. IPCC, Smith et al, 2009), we are forced to acknowledge the possibility of non-linear change associated with SES ‘tipping points’. Indeed, it has been suggested that some critical thresholds may have already been crossed. In this context, questions have been raised as to whether the prevailing discourse of sustainability is sufficient to allow management in the face of considerable uncertainty, or whether it is, in fact, based on invalid assumptions of stationarity. Adaptive management for resilience has been posited as an alternative discourse around which to base future management decisions.
This project aims to assess cross-scale SES interactions within the Columbia and Rio Grande watersheds from an interdisciplinary perspective, as well as identify potential ‘tipping points’ within the system and determine how these might be better understood by policy-makers and integrated into more adaptive water governance frameworks.