Adaptation and Resilience in

Rangeland Social-Ecological Systems

August 2004

Ryan McAllister , Yiheyis Maru, Nick Abel, Iain Gordon, *Art Langston

CSIRO SUSTAINABLE ECOSYSTEMS

CSIRO http://www.cse.csiro.au/research/cabm/cars.htm

Research foci• Social networks and social capital

– How do social networks effect the movement of livestock and landscape condition

• Pastoral decision making– How do personal rules for making stocking

decisions change in response to learning, financial and institutional drivers and landscape condition

• CSS versus SSS– Do CSS methods better explain livestock

movement, stocking decisions and landscape condition

CSIRO http://www.cse.csiro.au/research/cabm/cars.htm

Overlapping scales of a conceptual grazing SES

Land mgmt decisions

Landscapes

Research & monitoring

Costs& prices

Enterprise

Livelihoodfunction

Regional landscape condition

Landscape function

Socioeconomiccondition

Landholdernetworks Weather

Gov’t LOCAL

REGIONAL

FED / STATE

CSIRO http://www.cse.csiro.au/research/cabm/cars.htm

Data catching up to theory• Rapid early progress in ABM of market and

institutional influence on a conceptual grazing SES

• Extensive effort to capture historical data and societal understanding– Dispersion of grazing pressure– Land fragmentation and consolidation– Stock transportation records– Surveys to illuminate social networks– Changes in tenure

• See website for papers

CSIRO http://www.cse.csiro.au/research/cabm/cars.htm

Expansion of grazing pressure

CSIRO http://www.cse.csiro.au/research/cabm/cars.htm

Land fragmentation and consolidation

CJ Stokes, AJ Ash, RRJ. McAllister 2004 Fragmentation of Australian Rangelands Australian Rangeland Society Conference, Alice Springs 5-8 July.

Nomadism:Opportunistic movementaround entire region rangingout from key resources

Resource Excision:‘Ownership’ of a key resourceproviding partial accessto surrounding area

Regional Fragmentation:More uniform resource accessallows splitting of largerproperties

Consolidation:Spatial connectivity restoredby property consolidationand agistment arrangements

CSIRO http://www.cse.csiro.au/research/cabm/cars.htm

Social networks19 of 68 pastoralists linked by 4 families

CSIRO http://www.cse.csiro.au/research/cabm/cars.htm

Without subsidies

With subsidies

CSIRO http://www.cse.csiro.au/research/cabm/cars.htm

New directions

• Western NSW case study dropped• Intensive grazing case study added

– extensive versus intensive– tenure– enterprise cost structures– density of social networks

• Alignment with other projects• “Social adaptation to ecological

uncertainty in two Australian grazing systems”