Title
Interactions of social, natural, and technological subsystems and synergy between development and adaptation to floods around Poyang Lake.
Abstract
Rural populations in the developing world face great challenges in climate adaptation and human development. Broader development and climate adaptation can potentially enhance each other, and their positive synergies are essential to improve human well-being in less developed rural areas. Such synergies are, however, commonly lacking across developing countries. This paper examines the relationship between climate adaptation and broader development and finds a positive synergy in the Poyang Lake Region (PLR) - an important rice producing area in China that is vulnerable to flood hazards. We further examine household decision-making and link household decisions to rice cropping patterns interpreted from satellite images to explain the micro- to macro- mechanisms that lead to this synergy. The analysis shows that both the broader development context (national economic development and agricultural policy) and specific risk management (levees) are important for creating the positive synergy. Moreover, it is the right interactions of the social, natural, and technological subsystems that enable rural households to make different land-use and livelihood choices in a way that improves rural livelihoods and reduces flood impacts on rural livelihoods. The diverse household choices then collectively lead to preservation of rice production, despite the negative influence from increasing nonfarm work, and decreased flood impacts on agriculture.
Year
DOI
Venue
2018
10.1080/19475683.2018.1471520
ANNALS OF GIS
Keywords
Field
DocType
Flood hazards,agriculture,land use,sustainability,coupled human-environment system,Poyang Lake
Data mining,Environmental planning,Cropping,Developing country,Human development (biology),Agricultural policy,Coupled human–environment system,Geography,Flood myth,Sustainability,Land use
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
24
3
1947-5683
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
0
0.34
0
Authors
4
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Qing Tian113.81
Luguang Jiang2273.30
Maria Carmen Lemos332.53
Shuhua Qi432.26