I participated in a four-day conference on ‘Global Fair and Workshop on Long-Term Observing Systems of Mountain Social-Ecological Systems’ from 16-19 July 2014 at University of Nevada, Reno. My presentation, entitled ‘Social-ecological observatories of Mountain Water Towers: Comparative assessment framework‘, was jointly prepared with Netra Chhetri (Arizona State University), Bram Willems (Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos), Milan Shrestha (Arizona State University) and Christopher Scott (University of Arizona).
The presentation provides a comparative assessment framework to study mountain water towers as social-ecological systems in three different regions. Using social-ecological systems (SES), the comparative framework builds upon the ongoing projects in Gandaki Basin (Nepal), Chaclococha-Ica Basin (Peru), and Rio San Pedro Sky Islands (US-Mexico) to identify drivers that influence the dynamics and thresholds in river-basin observatories with a focus on energy, livestock, livelihood and climate adaptation; explore resilience and adaptive pathways of coupled social and ecological systems; and highlight comparative findings and lessons learned for policy across multiple observatories.
Detailed information about the program is available at: http://mri.scnatweb.ch/en/homepage