Understanding the human and natural responses to rapid environmental change is crucial to managing and conserving marine ecosystems and associated services. The long-term well-being of coastal populations is dependent on coastal ecosystems and the critical economic and ecological services that they provide, including buffering of storms and production of fisheries. Destructive natural events can compromise this well-being, raising the critical question of which social and ecological parameters lead communities to be resilient or not when faced with rapid change. A recent natural disaster in the Western Solomon Islands presents a case in which there is an urgent need to assess impacts of a destructive natural event on marine ecological and socioeconomic systems. An earthquake measuring 8.1 struck 345 km northwest of the Solomon Islands' capital Honiara in April 2007, creating a tsunami that caused significant damage in the Western Solomon Islands. A multidisciplinary team composed of a marine anthropologist, two marine scientists, a remote sensing geospatial expert, and a health scientist will (1) use an array of ecological, socioeconomic, heath/nutrition, and geospatial research methods to measure the social and ecological effects of rapid and large-scale environmental disruption across a gradient of tsunami impact, (2) assess the responses of coupled human and natural systems by comparing the research results with existing sets of retrospective (baseline) data, and (3) evaluate potential drivers of system resilience. Because extensive pre-tsunami data are available, the body of data collected during this research affords a unique opportunity to fully test ideas of what gives resilience to social and ecological systems.
It has been difficult to demonstrate or test ecosystem resilience at the large scales that are most relevant to resource management, because large-scale disturbances are difficult to predict (when naturally caused) and it is not generally permissible to engineer them experimentally. Thus, "before-disturbance" data are rare, but are critical for assessing resilience, which is recognized as an important component of effective resource management. This research program presents a unique 'before-and-after' experimental situation in which to measure the social and ecological vulnerability and resilience of coastal communities to large environmental disturbances. Additionally, the project involves participating students in a significant research experience that includes field work and integration of methods and theoretical approaches of the natural and social sciences are integrated. Students will be trained in quantitative and qualitative methods from the natural and social sciences and will be encouraged to develop their own research projects within the framework of the overall research design. International and interuniversity collaborations are fostered.
