Date
Abstract
Diverse natural resources along coasts produce interactions among a range of users. The resulting set of interactions presents a fundamental and enduring challenge to effectively governing coastal-marine systems. However, untangling the numerous social-ecological interdependencies—critical for understanding how different connections affect natural resource management outcomes—has proved difficult and is poorly understood. One promising approach to address this fundamental gap is to model coastal-marine systems as social-ecological networks, where social actors and ecological entities are conceptualized as nodes, and their interdependencies as links. This social-ecological network approach is demonstrated through in-depth research in three marine reserves in Jamaica. Specifically, social relational network data of resource users is coupled with known ecological food web connections for Caribbean coral reefs and data related to the target species of individual fisherman. Applying an interdisciplinary and integrated approach that leverages a suite of emerging network analysis and modeling methods provides key insights into network structures, interactions, and interdependencies that may enhance and inhibit effective natural resource management in Jamaica.
Presenters
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Steven Alexander
Postdoctoral Fellow
Dr. Steven Alexander is a Science Advisor at Fisheries and Oceans Canada and an Adjunct Assistant Professor with the Faculty of Environment at the University of Waterloo. Prior to his current position, he was a Mitacs Canadian Science Policy Fellow. At SESYNC, Steven was a postdoctoral research fellow dually affiliated with the Stockholm Resilience Centre. As an environmental social scientist, Steven focuses his research on community-based conservation and natural resource management, environmental governance, and the human dimensions of environmental change. At SESYNC, Steven was involved in...
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Steven Alexander
Postdoctoral Fellow
Dr. Steven Alexander is a Science Advisor at Fisheries and Oceans Canada and an Adjunct Assistant Professor with the Faculty of Environment at the University of Waterloo. Prior to his current position, he was a Mitacs Canadian Science Policy Fellow. At SESYNC, Steven was a postdoctoral research fellow dually affiliated with the Stockholm Resilience Centre. As an environmental social scientist, Steven focuses his research on community-based conservation and natural resource management, environmental governance, and the human dimensions of environmental change. At SESYNC, Steven was involved in a number of research projects. His postdoctoral project, Social-Ecological Networks, employed a suite of network analysis and modeling methods to understand the relationship between diverse governance arrangements, managed ecosystems, and natural resource management outcomes. Steven also co-led a graduate project, Governance and Surprise, which examined how governance can better account for and accommodate surprise in social-ecological systems. In addition, he co-led an initiative at SESYNC focused on qualitative data sharing. Steven received his PhD in Social and Ecological Sustainability from the University of Waterloo in 2015 where he was affiliated with the Environmental Change and Governance Group. He also holds a MS in Science Education from Montana State University - Bozeman. However, it was a BS in Geology from St. Lawrence University, a small liberal arts college in northern New York, and a semester abroad in East Africa studying conservation and development that provided Steven with the foundation needed for considering the complexities of human-environment interactions and bridging the natural and social sciences together.
External Links:
http://stevenmalexander.com/
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Steven_Alexander2
https://scholar.google.ca/citations?user=naPWaUwAAAAJ&hl=en
https://twitter.com/salexander_11
Presenters
Time
11:00 a.m. ET
Location
SESYNC – 1 Park Place, Suite 300 Annapolis, MD 21401
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