Adaptive Rangeland Decision-Making and Coping with Drought

Abstract

Abstract:Grazinglands support the livelihoods of millions of people around the world, as well as supply critical ecosystem services. Communities reliant on rain-fed rangelands are potentially the most vulnerable to increasing climate variability given their dependence on highly climate-sensitive resources. Droughts, which are gradual natural hazards, pose substantial and recurrent economic and ecological stresses to these systems. This study examined management decision-making based on survey responses of 479 California ranchers to: (1) identify the types of drought strategies in-place across California's rangelands and the operation variables driving strategy selection; and (2) examine how individual drought adaptation is enhanced by decision-making factors. Four types of in-place drought strategies were identified and ordered along a gradient of increasing intensity (number) of practices used. Significant background variables driving strategy selection were operation experience with drought, type of livestock operation, grazing system, and land ownership types. Information resource networks, goal setting for sustainable natural resources, and management capacity all acted to enhance individual drought adaptation-defined here by active drought planning and the number of both reactive and proactive drought practices used. Overall, analyses revealed that flexibility in management is a key component of adapting to and coping with drought. Climate policy planning should take into account the diversity of strategies that have been developed by ranchers for multiple generations and within the context of their unique operations, as well as support these working landscapes via a range of adaptation and mitigation options to reduce vulnerability across all types of operations.

Responding to the Drought: A Spatial Statistical Approach to Investigating Residential Water Consumption in Fresno, California

“…The problem of water scarcity in California is expected to exacerbate as its population continues to grow [4,5]. Coping with water scarcity has become a new research focus in urban and regional development not only in the United States but also throughout the world [6][7][8][9][10].…”

Payments for ecosystem services within the hybrid governance model: evaluating policy alignment and complementarity on California rangelands

“…Cultural, economic, and political barriers are also present in carbon sequestration on rangelands (Follett and Reed 2010). A range of factors prevent ranchers from participating in conservation programs or adopting new management practices, including characteristics like social networks, education, values and culture (Chan et al 2012, Lubell et al 2013, Brain et al 2014, Roche 2016, ranch system dynamics (Sayre 2004, Wilmer andFernández-Giménez 2015), the type of public or private organization managing a program (Cheatum et al 2011), program design (Didier andBrunson 2004, Farley et al 2017), landowners' production goals (Peterson andCoppock 2001, Lubell et al 2013), as well as agency staff turnover and paperwork burden (Aoyama and Huntsinger 2019). Research is needed to understand these barriers to implementing PES markets on rangelands, matching the current level of investment in soil carbon measuring and monitoring technologies.…”

Farmers’ Perceived Vulnerability and Proactive versus Reactive Climate Change Adaptation in Chile’s Maule Region

“…Zilberman et al [26] approached adaptation by identifying incremental versus transformative adaptation, and reactive versus proactive adaptation. Although distinguishing characteristics of adaptation strategies and practices can derive different classifications, the most used in the literature on climate change is reactive versus proactive, where reactive adaptation occurs after the negative effects of climate change are already experienced, while proactive adaptation is aimed at staying ahead of possible climate change damage to the farm (e.g., [2,[15][16][17][28][29][30]). Despite the agreement regarding the definition of reactive and proactive adaptation, the practices and strategies included in each one vary depending on the case study.…”