Using Adaptive Capacity to Shift Absorptive Capacity: A Framework of Water Reallocation in Highly Modified Rivers

Abstract

Damming and water regulation creates highly modified rivers with limited ecosystem integrity and resilience. This, coupled with an ongoing global biodiversity crisis, makes river restoration a priority, which requires water reallocation. Coupled human–natural systems research provides a suitable lens for integrated systems’ analysis but offers limited insight into the governance processes of water reallocation. Therefore, we propose an analytical framework, which combines insight from social–hydrological resilience and water reallocation research, and identifies the adaptive capacity in highly modified rivers as the capacity for water reallocation. We test the framework by conducting an analysis of Sweden, pre- and post-2019, a critical juncture in the governance of the country’s hydropower producing rivers. We identify a relative increase in adaptive capacity post- 2019 since water reallocation is set to occur in smaller rivers and tributaries, while leaving large-scaled rivers to enjoy limited water reallocation, or even increased allocation to hydropower. We contend that the proposed framework is broad enough to be of general interest, yet sufficiently specific to contribute to the construction of middle-range theories, which could further our understanding of why and how governance processes function, change, and lead to outcomes in terms of modified natural resource management and resilience shifts.

Landscape planning and design by identifying areas for ecological restoration based on carbon fluxes

“…, 2010; Hobbs et al. , 2018; Rudberg and Karpouzoglou, 2022). Such integration is the initial step towards the establishment of clear and assertive criteria for the selection of areas with the greatest potential for the development of ecological support processes in the territorial mosaic.…”

“…The assertiveness of this approach lies in the adoption of actions according to the intensity of the carbon flux and the topographic humidity of the site, differentiated for each of the studied areas. The stretches framed in Figure 7, as adaptation areas, could receive the initial interventions as they would require less work to achieve ecological integrity goals, while the areas framed in the transformability category would be worked on in sequence, considering the greater efforts required (McHarg, 1969;Folke et al, 2010;Hobbs et al, 2018;Rudberg and Karpouzoglou, 2022). Such integration is the initial step towards the establishment of clear and assertive criteria for the selection of areas with the greatest potential for the development of ecological support processes in the territorial mosaic.…”