Abstracts

Moderated by   Andres Cibils , New Mexico State University

Sam Fernald , New Mexico State University (15 min)

Ken Boykin , New Mexico State University (15 min)

José Rivera , University of New Mexico (15 min)

Moderated by   Sylvia Rodríguez , University of New Mexico

Carlos Ochoa , New Mexico State University (15 min)

Brian Hurd , New Mexico State University (15 min)

Vince Tidwell , Sandia National Laboratories (15 min)

Moderated by   Devon G. Peña , University of Washington in Seattle

Luis Pablo Martínez , Directorate General of Cultural Heritage, Valencia, Spain (20 min)

Paul Trawick , Idaho State University (20 min)

José Luis Arumí Ribera , Universidad de Concepción, Chillán, Chile (20 min)

Michael Cox , Dartmouth College (20 min)

Moderated by   Steve Guldan , New Mexico State University

Steve Lansing , University of Arizona, Santa Fe Institute (20 min)

Jacinta Palerm , Colegio de Postgraduados, Mexico-Texcoco (20 min)

Hsain Ilahiane , University of Kentucky (20 min)

Thierry Ruf , Supagro-Institut des régions chaudes, Montpellier, France (20 min)

 

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Investigations into hydrologic impacts of traditional acequia irrigation systems created the foundation for the Acequia CNH project that goes beyond hydrology to also confront sociocultural, economic, and environmental aspects of acequia systems.  Our studies began in 2002 in response to local interest in hydrologic benefits of acequias.  For the 9 km Alcalde Acequia, we conducted detailed field investigations to determine water budgets and interactions between surface water and groundwater.  We found that of the water diverted into acequias, only a small proportion of water was consumptively used by plants.  The majority of the water returned to the Rio Grande through surface water and groundwater return flows.  The 33% of water that seeped from ditches and fields was temporarily stored for weeks to a few months in shallow groundwater before emerging as river flow.  Through this storage and release, the stream snowmelt runoff hydrograph is retransmitted by a period of a few weeks.  In the face of climate change with snowmelt projected to occur much earlier in the spring, hydrograph retransmission may ameliorate impacts of earlier snowmelt by delaying runoff hydrographs.  At the local level, acequia system seepage supports riparian vegetation, recharges shallow groundwater, and even improves shallow groundwater quality by diluting nutrients.  These local and regional hydrologic benefits of acequia systems may provide positive feedbacks that reinforce acequia community resilience. We are studying the coupled hydrologic, environmental, sociocultural and economic systems of three acequia communities that with low to high water availability to help identify these elements of resilience and clues to sustainability in the face of climate change and land use change.

Native vegetation dynamics and associated faunal biodiversity are affected by changes in land use and climate.  Recent efforts have focused on identifying the benefits that humans derive from functioning ecosystems. As such, ecosystem services, i.e., “services provided to humans from natural systems,” have become a key issue in resource management, conservation planning, and environmental decision analysis. Mapping and quantifying ecosystem services have become strategic national interests for integrating ecology with human benefits to help understand the effects of policies and actions and their subsequent impacts on both ecosystem function and human welfare. Some aspects of biodiversity are valued by humans, and thus are important to include in any assessment that seeks to identify and quantify the value of ecosystems to humans. Some biodiversity metrics clearly reflect ecosystem services (e.g., abundance and diversity of game species), whereas others reflect indirect and difficult to quantify relationships to services (e.g., relevance of species diversity to ecosystem resilience, cultural value of native species). Wildlife habitat has been modeled at broad spatial scales and can be used to map a number of biodiversity metrics. We have mapped metrics reflecting ecosystem services or biodiversity features using terrestrial vertebrate habitat model data from the U.S. Geological Survey Gap Analysis Program.  Example metrics include species-of-greatest-conservation-need, threatened and endangered species, harvestable species (i.e., upland game, waterfowl, furbearers, and big game), total species richness, and specific taxon richness. We have evaluated the regional effects of urban outgrowth and land use change on biodiversity metrics reflecting ecosystem services in the Rio Grande Basin in New Mexico. We measured the response of these biodiversity metrics to varying scenarios of land use, climate, and population growth using the Environmental Protection Agency’s Integrated Climate and Land use Scenario (ICLUS) data cover for the period 2000-2100.  Our analysis identifies areas of priority and sensitively to land-use and climate change within the Rio Grande Basin.  This effort provides a unique broad scale view, but further research is necessary to understand the relationships at the 3 fine scaled watersheds associated with acequias.  Tipping points for sustainability of biodiversity vary across scales and our work attempts to identify the scales at which acequias benefit biodiversity.

The mountain acequias of the northern Rio Grande are water management institutions that take surface water out of upland tributaries to irrigate valley farmlands alongside one or both sides of the stream. These human made artifacts function both as physical infrastructure for water conveyance as well as the basis of social organization in terms of water allocation, rules for governance, and the pooling of labor to maintain a communal irrigation system. In most watersheds, the acequias are the first diversions, and due to their autonomy in decision making, the acequia mayordomos can adapt quickly to seasonal variability in streamflow and other physical and ecosystem changes. The CNH sociocultural team conducted focus group sessions at three study sites in the summer of 2012 to probe a set of interrelated questions about system resilience in the Acequia Model: acequia governance and water sharing customs; food crops and seed traditions; transmission of local knowledge; mutualism and social capital; land ownership and land use; and livestock grazing practices in a farm-ranch traditional economy. Our preliminary findings characterize the Acequia Model as a resilient institution that adapts to stressors in the environment largely due to factors of solidarity, attachment to land and place, and the ecological knowledge embedded in the collective memory of the parciantes. Of equal significance, we are also calibrating “tipping points” that threaten the functionality of the acequia as a complex biophysical, economic, ecological and sociocultural system that links valley irrigation with resources of the upland watershed. Inputs from the Acequia Model will be incorporated into the System Dynamics architecture adopted for the modeling of coupled natural and human systems within the multidisciplinary NSF CNH study.  The final report will include a research monograph that analyzes the socio-ecological history and current conditions of the Rio Chama watershed utilizing qualitative and visualization methodologies.

The hydrologic connectivity between upland water sources, floodplain valleys downstream, and groundwater may be an important determinant of hydrologic resilience in the face of climate variability. In order to better understand hydrologic interactions between uplands and associated valleys, we are using a combined field data collection and modeling approach to characterize the hydrologic connectivity of three watersheds and their associated irrigated valleys in northern New Mexico. At these study sites, we are monitoring several weather variables and different hydrologic parameters including precipitation, river and acequia discharge, soil moisture, runoff, and groundwater. Field data collected are being used to calculate water budgets at the field and valley scales and to characterize surface water and groundwater interactions in these acequia-irrigated systems. Also, these data are being used to parameterize a system dynamics model that allows expanding calculations at the field and valley scales into the watershed scale. Also, this system dynamics model allows scenario testing for different climate and population levels of disturbance. Preliminary results suggest that there is a strong hydrologic connectivity between snow-melt driven runoff in the headwaters and the recharge of the shallow aquifer in the valleys, mainly driven by the use of traditionally-irrigated agriculture systems.

This study investigates local-scale adaptation and long-run capacity building in acequia communities in Northern New Mexico, where there is a long record of resilience and adaptive capacity spanning more than four centuries. These communities may be particularly vulnerable to current stresses from population growth, changing community composition, and projections of water scarcity that are expected to accompany long-run climatic changes. This paper uses a survey approach to explore factors and community characteristics that contribute to community adaptation, the level and extent of community preparedness, and the preferred community actions to cope with stresses and disturbances. Key findings suggest that land ownership and acequias’ attachment to water and community have helped these communities cope with environmental and community-based stresses. Results showed divided opinions regarding the degree of “perceived preparedness” and “perceived vulnerability” to disturbances such as population change and growth, aggressive regional development, economic hardships, and droughts.

Acequias, small scale community irrigation systems, have played a critical role in the settling and development of the Southwestern United States. The acequia is more than a physical infrastructure for irrigation, it is also a system of governance for managing resource allocation, and provides a point of focus for community cooperation and communication (e.g., maintenance of the ditches).  These traditional systems of water management have evolved to increase community productivity as well as resilience to climate variability. Changing economies, lifestyles, and governance structures (e.g., state managed water rights) have challenged the adaptive capabilities of these communities over the last century. Projected climate change and continued urban develop could overwhelm this traditional lifestyle and with it lose the valuable ecosystem services and the cultural/social resources they provide. Our interest here is to develop a framework for understanding the physical/social/cultural dynamics governing the vitality of these acequia-based agricultural systems and the communities they support. A system dynamics architecture is adopted for modeling this multidisciplinary problem.  Key system modules include upland forest management, livestock grazing, surface-groundwater hydrology, forest-aquatic ecology, agricultural practice, population dynamics, rural community economics and social networking. Key system stressors are represented by climate change and downstream urban development. Models will be developed for three separate and different acequia systems in Northern New Mexico. These individual models will then be aggregated into an Upper Rio Grande basin wide model to assess the role of acequias on broad system health.

The Valencian country, in Eastern Spain, constitutes a worldwide referent for acequia studies. The Valencian irrigation systems and the agrarian landscapes created by them (the huertas) have called the attention of local intellectuals and foreign water experts for centuries, being praised for the genius of their physical and institutional design. Besides that, acequia culture has provided the Valencian people with some of their most prominent identity symbols, such as the traditional huerta dwellings (barracas, alquerías), as well as the farmer’s clothing and folklore. Acequia institutions have acted both as a cohesive factor for the irrigators and their local communities which frequently provide identity references, the paradigm being the Tribunal of Waters of Valencia, that itself has become a worldwide symbol of swift, equitable and fair water justice.

Paradoxically, though, this valuable water culture has not been the object of public policies from the point of view of their preservation and transmission to future generations, with very negative effects. Since the 1960s on, acequias and huertas have suffered impacts from urban and infrastructure development fueled by speculation, with their sequel of pollution, huerta landscape fragmentation, distortion and extinction. In more recent times the acequias have been also exposed to other threats, such as the ones derived from the so-called “modernization” or “improvement” of irrigation systems: an hegemonic discourse that has promoted the substitution of the traditional open air, irrigator-operated acequias by concrete and rubber irrigation pipes depending on engineering and computerized systems, with the double effect of landscape impoverishment and disempowerment of irrigators.

It has not been until very recent times, in historical terms, that a Valencian movement towards acequia safeguarding has started to develop, in the context of its identification as cultural heritage, fostered by civic platforms, committed researchers and fully aware irrigators. The paper will address the history and organizational principles of the Valencian acequias and their analysis as heritage elements, to end with a description of their current situation and future prospects.

The author presents the results of a long period of comparative research on successful community-managed irrigation systems in different parts of the world, work that was generously encouraged and supported throughout the years by Elinor Ostrom.  Briefly comparing two systems of widely different scales and levels of complexity in the Peruvian Andes and on the Mediterranean coast of Spain, he argues that both are examples of a particular cultural model for sharing water successfully under conditions of scarcity, one that has emerged independently in a great many local settings and places throughout the world.  It consists of a set of principles for allocating and using the resource which interact with and reinforce each other in a remarkable way, making it possible to manage it in an equitable, transparent, and sustainable way.  This “moral economy of water” appears to have emerged to form the heart of distinct but highly similar hydraulic traditions in the Andes and in Islamic Spain, but to have spread through diffusion to other regions, being carried long ago by colonists from the Valencia region of Spain to northern Mexico and the upper Rio Grande and Colorado River basins in the New World.  The “canal culture” that exists today in the Taos Valley and other parts of New Mexico appears to fit this general model, as do a great many systems in still other parts of the world: e.g., India, Pakistan, Nepal, the Philippines, and even Bali. These smallholder or ‘peasant’ irrigation systems are largely self-organized and self-governed, but in all cases they are under threat today from a variety of causes.  The author suggests that the most effective way of defending them, in New Mexico and elsewhere, is first of all to recognize, as Elinor Ostrom initially did, that they are all of a single type.

Poor understanding of complex groundwater-surface water interactions in the Andean watershed of Chile can produce social problems and conflict. This paper presents a case study of the Diguillín River watershed, located in Central Chile. The Renegado creek is one of the main tributaries of the Diguillín watershed. The development of an important tourism center featuring thermal waters has seriously affected the valley.  Land use has changed in that there are now more than 1000 vacation homes and several resorts. In the winter season the valley can receive more than 20,000 tourists, and about 5,000 in summer. However, because the Renegado creek watershed has a lower availability of water than neighboring watersheds, its potential for further development is seriously limited. Preliminary results of an ongoing research project show that the Renegado watershed is located over porous volcanic rock deposits with high infiltration rates, where water percolates to a fractured rock system and travels 30 Km until it discharges into the Diguillín river. Because this hydrological system is poorly understood, many conflicts over water availability have arisen and the future development of the Renegado valley will be highly compromised. Yet new projects are underway, including two ten-floor buildings that are going to be constructed without water. A final concern is how development of the Renegado watershed will impact the water quality of the Diguillín river, because pollutants move very quickly through the fractured system.

The acequias of New Mexico and Colorado have survived for centuries using traditional water sharing practices. These traditions are currently being threatened by a suite of social, economic, and political disturbances. This talk will explore the effects of such disturbances on the acequias of the Taos Valley of Northern New Mexico. To do so, it will illustrate the results of a household survey of acequia members as well as an analysis of historical data, including remotely sensed satellite imagery data of the valley.

Session 4

It has been shown that ecosystems may undergo nonlinear responses to stresses or perturbations. Hence there can be more than one stable state or regime. Whether alternative stable states also exist in coupled social-ecological systems is an open question.   We investigated responses to environmental and social challenges by eight traditional community irrigation systems (subak) along a river in Bali, to test the intuition that as a result of their different histories of local adaptation, the older and more demographically stable upstream subaks respond differently to both environmental and social challenges, and thus inhabit a different regime than downstream subaks with less stable populations. Results confirm the existence of two distinct regimes. The more resilient upstream subaks lie in a deep harmonic well, while the downstream subaks exhibit greater variation in their adaptive capacity. The minimum energy pathway between the two regimes gives probabilistic insight into transitions between two basins of attraction.

How important is a long term legal framework for irrigation system institutions? Based on a comparison between countries having a consistent long term legal framework for self-managed irrigation systems seems to correlate with strong and visible institution, such as Spain, Japan, Chile, the US. Lack of this framework, seems to correlate with lack-of or weak irrigation institutions. At least this is the explanation arrived at by Sengupta to explain the lack of irrigation institutions in India. However, in Mexico in spite of a changing and chaotic legal framework we find that informal or non-official irrigation institutions and horizontal agreements are in place. Some of these institutions were officially suppressed, others lost their legal framework, others never had a legal framework, and still others never received official recognition. We have found continuity for some cases dating back to XVIth century institutions as well as new organizational efforts. It would seem that rather than a lack of institutions, what we find is that the irrigation institutions and horizontal agreements are invisible.

Finding the informal organizations has been possible by asking about local arrangements on the ground, instead of paying attention to the official information and the official institutions.

What do these case studies mean? In the first place that a consistent legal framework for self-managed irrigation institution allows them to be visible and probably makes them stronger and more capable of negotiating, but the legal framework is not necessary. In the second place it showcases that these institutions are very resilient and that there is an organizational capacity ready to be deployed.

The paper centers on a few examples of informal organizations.

This paper describes a community-based irrigation management system and examines how communal labor extortion shapes irrigation management in the Ziz Oasis of south-central Morocco. First, I argue that ethnicity, religion, and social power are defining elements in access to and management of land and water resources. Second, while community-based land and water management is based on social exploitation of low status groups, the system of water management has proved to be “sustainable” in managing water resources. Third, in contrast to the ecological, economic, and social goals of sustainability and policies to reverse inequality differentials in ethnically heterogeneous environments, the often mechanical association of sustainability with equity outcomes is overemphasized, and perhaps in the long run, policy makers as well as anthropologists ought to find ways to cope with the challenge of a “tolerable” level of inequity in community-based water management schemes.

In the 1980s Wittfogel’s theory of Oriental Despotism continued to provide a popular explanation for hydraulic development. In these same years, under the influence of neoliberalism, there emerged the idea to put a halt to heavy planning of hydraulic systems and make water into a market commodity. The 1992 Dublin Conference on Water and the Environment is the symbolic moment of this turnabout. In the same year, however, Elinor Ostrom took an alternative stance to the prevailing theories on the development of irrigation.

To highlight Ostrom’s contribution and its limits, we studied and compared the principles which underlie the three theories of the social, economic and political organization of irrigation. In this triangular confrontation, Ostrom contributes several useful keys to analyze on-going conflicts in the 21st century. Out of this theoretical profusion there can emerge a practice of action-research to solve current conflicts over water resources.

This contribution is inspirited by an article published in the French scientific review Nature Sciences Sociétés in 2010, when Elinor Ostrom came to Montpellier and to Unesco in Paris. It will be illustrated by stories on irrigation system development in the Andes and in the Mediterranean Basin.