Case Studies of Social-Ecological Systems

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Type

The Kaset Samakee Water User Association, Isan region, northeastern Thailand

Case
The Kaset Samkee water user association is a part of the The Lam Pra Plerng Irrigation Project, constructed by Thailand's Royal Irrigation Department (RID). RID organized four Water User Associations (WUAs) in the project area that are then divided into "chaeks" (a chaek is an area served by a common farm-turn-out). The common irrigator is paid by the RID and is responsible for arranging water distribution and maintenance schedules in the chaek. Farmers in the area of the Kaset Samkee...
09 Aug 2016

The irrigation system of the northwest Murcia Region (Spain): robustness of SES to the intrusion of new resource users

Case
Farmers in the northwest Murcia Region (Spain) have used for centuries the water from springs to irrigate their lands. They are organized in irrigation communities adapted to cope with rainfall variability. This system was robust in terms of its use of the water emerging from the springs to irrigate small patches of land. In recent decades, large agrarian companies have settled in this region and use groundwater to irrigate new lands. This intrusion had led the levels of this resource to drop...
09 Aug 2016

The Irrigation System of Sol y Poniente, Campo de Dalías, Almeria, Spain

Case
The Sol y Poniente Irrigation system is one of the six irrigation systems of the agricultural area of Campo de Dalías, which is located in Almería, Spain. The case study involves an analysis of the evolution of the system in different stages: from 1988 in which the system was created to the date of the research in 2000. The authors catalogue an action situation involving users that appropriates water from the Benínar reservoir which is a public production resource, with public...
09 Aug 2016

The Irrigation System of Sol y Arena, Campo de Dalías, Almeria, Spain

Case
The Sol y Arena Irrigation system is one of the six irrigation systems (the most irrigated one) of the agricultural area of Campo de Dalías, which is located in Almería, Spain. It encompasses a geographical area of 6,000 ha. The case study involves an analysis of the evolution of the system in different stages: from 1953 in which the system was created to the date of the research in 2000. The authors catalogue an action situation involving 4095 users, of which only 2,952 are from the...
09 Aug 2016

The Irrigation System of La Mancha Oriental, La Mancha Region, Albacete and Cuenca provinces, Spain

Case
The Mancha Oriental Irrigation system is one aquifer of La Mancha Region, located in Albacete and Cuenca provinces in Spain. The case study involves an analysis of the evolution of the system from 1975 to 2000. The extension of the land is 8,500km2  but only 1,000Km2   is irrigated. The authors catalogue an action situation involving users that appropriates groundwater as resource units from the Júcar Hydrographic Confederation.The original case study authors focused on...
09 Aug 2016

The Irrigation System of Campo Montiel, La Mancha region, Spain

Case
Campo de Montiel Irrigation system is based on an aquifer of 2500 km2, but only that only 3% of it was used for agriculture. Campo de Montiel is located in La Mancha Region, in Spain. The case study involves an analysis of the evolution of the system from 1980 to 2000. The authors catalogue an action situation involving 29,000 total users that appropriate groundwater as the resource unit from the High Basin of Guadiana River, but only 101 farmers appropriate groundwater for irrigation...
09 Aug 2016

The Innovation Commons: The Nanotechnology Innovation Network, Phoenix, AZ

Case
 The nanotechnology innovation network of Metropolitan Phoenix ranks among the top thirty across US cities focused on nanotechnology development. The present case examines the structure of the innovation network, consisting of approximately 400 diverse organizations, between 2011 and 2012. The commons dilemma revolves around managing future risks and benefits from nanotechnology development; the resource is a heterogenous mix of natural and human-made infrastructures.
09 Aug 2016

The inevitability of surprise in agroecosystems

Case
Many critical transformations of ecosystems contain advanced signals of their imminence, but it is also true that many critical transformations can be shown to contain no such signal, at least with the sorts of data normally available to field workers. This paper explores some generalized theoretical structures and distinguishes between those that may provide a signal that could be used to predict a critical transformation and those that, by their very nature, do not provide such a clue. I...
09 Aug 2016

The Hohokam Cultural Sequence (Irrigation and Foraging), Sonoran Desert, greater Phoenix basin, Arizona, USA

Case
The Hohokam is a Native American cilivilization that emerged and occupied the present day Phoenix Basin area and its outer bounds for a thousand years. The archeological records indicate that the Hohokam society evolved into a complex irrigation society and reached its peak in levels of population, social institutions, and irrigation infrastructure by the 11th century.Perplexingly though, the Hohokam society subsequently declined and collapsed by the mid 14th century. As they declined, the...
09 Aug 2016

The Goulburn Broken Catchment irrigation system, northern Victoria, Australia

Case
The GB catchment covers 2.1 million hectares in the Murray-Darling Basin in Australia. Aboriginal people lived in the catchment for millennia before colonization around 1830.  The upper, mountainous area of the catchment (900 000 ha) is more than 50% forested. The mid catchment (1 million ha) of riverine plains, low slopes and foothills has less than 20% of native vegetation cover remaining, which is highly fragmented, and the rest is used for dryland cropping and grazing. The Shepparton...
09 Aug 2016

The Evolution of Social Norms in Common Property Resource Use

Case
The problem of extracting commonly owned renewable resources is examined within an evolutionary-game-theoretic framework. It is shown that cooperative behavior guided by norms of restraint and punishment may be stable in a well-defined sense against invasion by narrowly self-interested behavior. The resource-stock dynamics are integrated with the evolutionary-game dynamics. Effects of changes in prices, technology, and social cohesion on extraction behavior and the long-run stock are analyzed....
09 Aug 2016

The Emergence and Resilience of Self-organized Governance

Case
This case focuses on the theory of self-organized governance. It is based on developing a formal mathematical model of generalized interactions in the CIS framework.
12 Mar 2020

The coupled dynamics of human socio-economic choice and lake water system: the interaction of two sources of nonlinearity

Case
Suzuki & Iwasa (2009) study a mathematical model for the coupled dynamics of human socio-economic choice and lake water system. In the model, many players choose one of the two options: a cooperative and costly option with low phosphorus discharge, and an economical option with high phosphorus discharge. The choice is affected by an economic cost, a social concern about water pollution, and a conformist tendency. The pollution level in the lake is determined by total phosphorus discharge by...
09 Aug 2016

The Cantareira Water Supply System and Local Efforts for Sustainable Agriculture in Nazaré Paulista, State of São Paulo, Brazil

Case
This case is based on field work done as part of ASU's Global Development Research Program in alignment with local organizations actively capacitating local small to medium-scale agriculturalists, and mitigating biodiversity and water shortages. Research focused on the municapity of Nazaré Paulista, but extended to the adjacent municipalities that fall under the Bragança area of São Paulo State and the respective watershed. Between 2014-2016, the region experienced a major drought that brought...
04 Dec 2018

The application of commons theory on marine resource management

Case
This case was part of a study to determine whether the institutional design principles of Ostrom were, in fact, related to "governance success" by Cox et al.  In that analysis, this case was not included in the end.  
09 Aug 2016