Classifying fishing behavioral diversity using high-frequency movement data

Effective management of social-ecological systems (SESs) requires an understanding of human behavior. In many SESs, there are hundreds of agents or more interacting with governance and regulatory institutions, driving management outcomes through collective behavior. Agents in these systems often display consistent behavioral characteristics over time that can help reduce the dimensionality of SES data by enabling the assignment of types. Typologies of resource-user behavior both enrich our knowledge of user cultures and provide critical information for management. Here, we develop a data-driven framework to identify resource-user typologies in SESs with high-dimensional data. To demonstrate policy applications, we apply the framework to a tightly coupled SES, commercial fishing. We leverage large fisheries-dependent datasets that include mandatory vessel logbooks, observer datasets, and high-resolution geospatial vessel tracking technologies. We first quantify vessel and behavioral characteristics using data that encode fishers’ spatial decisions and behaviors. We then use clustering to classify these characteristics into discrete fishing behavioral types (FBTs), determining that 3 types emerge in our case study. Finally, we investigate how a series of disturbances applied selection pressure on these FBTs, causing the disproportionate loss of one group. Our framework not only provides an efficient and unbiased method for identifying FBTs in near real time, but it can also improve management outcomes by enabling ex ante investigation of the consequences of disturbances such as policy actions.

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Water ethics, justice, and equity in social-ecological systems conservation: lessons from the Queensland Wild Rivers Act

Water Policy ◽

10.2166/wp.2018.016 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 20 (5) ◽

pp. 933-952 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Sameer H. Shah ◽

Lucy Rodina

Keyword(s):

Natural Resource Management ◽

Water Governance ◽

Radical Change ◽

Ecological Systems ◽

Social Ecological Systems ◽

Resource Governance ◽

Social Ecological ◽

Water Ethics ◽

Natural Rivers

Abstract The protection of natural rivers and watersheds face important concerns related to environmental (in)justice and (in)equity. Using the Queensland Wild Rivers Act as a case study, we advocate that ethical water governance attends to multiple and diverse values, specifically in ways that: (i) locate them within stakeholders' claims of inequality that emerge from a given or practiced water ethic; and (ii) historicize and understand them as resonating or reflecting natural resource management frameworks that have led to structural injustices. This approach, combined with adaptive co-governance, can contribute to more inclusive water ethics and even support reflexive spaces where radical change in social-ecological resource governance can be imagined.

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Exuberant Life

10.1093/oso/9780197531518.001.0001 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

William H. Durham

Keyword(s):

Human Impact ◽

Charles Darwin ◽

Ecological Systems ◽

Social Ecological Systems ◽

Social Ecological ◽

History Of ◽

Potential Benefits ◽

Marine Iguanas ◽

Systems Framework

Why is Galápagos so endlessly fascinating, whether to read about, to visit, or both? Reasons include its menagerie of truly unusual organisms (like tree daisies, marine iguanas, and flightless cormorants), its relatively low human impact (most of its endemic biodiversity is still extant), and its unrivalled role in the history of science ever since Charles Darwin. Exuberant Life offers a contemporary synthesis of what is known about the evolution of the curiously wonderful organisms of Galápagos, of how they are faring in the tumultuous world of human-induced change, and how evolution can guide efforts today for their conservation. In eight case-study chapters, the book looks at each organism’s ancestry, at how and when it came to Galápagos, and how and why it changed since its arrival, all with an eye to its conservation today. Such analysis often provides surprises and suggestions not previously considered, like the potential benefits to joint conservation efforts with tree daisies and tree finches, for example, or ways that a new explanation for peculiar behaviors in Nazca and blue-footed boobies can benefit both species today. In each chapter, a social-ecological systems framework is used, because human influence is always present, and because it allows an explicit link to evolution. We see how the evolutionary fitnesses of Galápagos organisms are now a product of both ecological conditions and human impact, including climate change. Historically, Galápagos has played a central role in the understanding of evolution; what it now offers to teach us about conservation may well prove indispensable for the future of the planet.

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Exploring sustainable land use in forested tropical social-ecological systems: A case-study in the Wet Tropics

Journal of Environmental Management ◽

10.1016/j.jenvman.2018.10.079 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 231 ◽

pp. 940-952 ◽

Cited By ~ 6

Author(s):

Julen Gonzalez-Redin ◽

Iain J. Gordon ◽

Rosemary Hill ◽

J. Gary Polhill ◽

Terence P. Dawson

Keyword(s):

Land Use ◽

Ecological Systems ◽

Sustainable Land Use ◽

Social Ecological Systems ◽

Social Ecological ◽

Wet Tropics

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The role of conservation physiology in mitigating social-ecological traps in wildlife-provisioning tourism: a case study of feeding stingrays in the Cayman Islands

Conservation Physiology ◽

10.1093/oso/9780198843610.003.0008 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 125-140

Author(s):

Christina A.D. Semeniuk

Keyword(s):

Social System ◽

Careful Consideration ◽

Human Dimensions ◽

Cayman Islands ◽

Physiological Indicators ◽

Social Ecological Systems ◽

Social Ecological ◽

The Social ◽

Effective Selection

In feeding marine wildlife, tourists can impact animals in ways that are not immediately apparent (i.e. morbidity vs. mortality/reproductive failure). Inventorying the health status of wildlife with physiological indicators can provide crucial information on the immediate status of organisms and long-term consequences. However, because tourists are attempting to maximize their own satisfaction, encouraging the willingness to accept management regulations also requires careful consideration of the human dimensions of the system. Without such socio-ecological measures, the wildlife-tourism system may fall into a trap—a lose–lose situation where the pressure imposed by the social system (tourist expectations) has costs for the ecological system (maladaptive behaviours, health), which in turn feed back into the social system (shift in tourist typography, loss of revenue, decreased satisfaction), resulting in the demise of both systems (exhaustion). Effective selection and communication of physiological metrics of wildlife health is key to minimizing problem-causing and problem-enhancing feedbacks in social-ecological systems. This guiding principle is highlighted in the case study presented here on the socio-ecological research and management success of feeding southern stingrays (Hypanus americanus) as a marine tourism attraction at Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands.

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