Sustainable Cultivation of Productive Environments (SCoPE)
Lead Research Organisation:
Newcastle University
Department Name: NIRES Newcastle Inst for Res on Env &Sus
Abstract
Abstracts are not currently available in GtR for all funded research. This is normally because the abstract was not required at the time of proposal submission, but may be because it included sensitive information such as personal details.
Publications
Slater M
(2013)
Effect of social and economic drivers on choosing aquaculture as a coastal livelihood
in Ocean & Coastal Management
| Description | The Northumberland National Park is, perhaps, one of the simplest constellations of farms and landscapes among its peers in the UK. If Bayesian Belief Networks are to provide a sensible and useful tool through which to represent the critical linkages in the complex environmental-social interaction system, then it ought to be possible to demonstrate the potential using this Park as a case study. However, our intensive analysis of what we think we know about the Park and its farmers, very well informed by a thorough survey of almost half the population of commercial farmers in the Park, has demonstrated the opposite. Not only is it extremely difficult to identify a sufficiently simple network of reliable relationships to be represented as a manageable Bayesian Belief Network, but more importantly it is also very difficult to demonstrate that such a representation can be useful to land managers and administrators. The people who need to know about these relationships - the farmers and land managers themselves, and their public (and private) servants - already know far more about their behaviours than can be revealed and represented in any simplified 'model'. The mechanisms though which they communicate do not correspond at all well to 'academic' simplifications or statistical associations, however well represented. It might be conceivable that a 'sim-countryside' virtual and visual representation of the Park could provide a platform through which participation in scenario-building could be encouraged. However, it is not at all clear either that such an experiment would warrant the effort necessary to construct such a virtual representation, or that BBNs represent a substantial advance in the methods needed for its construction. Nevertheless, we have been able to refine our picture of this particular Park, albeit not advancing the necessary understanding of its behaviour very much. Farming communities (at least this one) appear to be very considerably resilient, capable of adapting to and coping with substantial change, as we might expect of an evolutionary system. |
| Exploitation Route | BBNs do offer an additional structure for traditional surveys of opinion and attitudes, which (at the expense of imposing a specific structure on the supposed cause/effect linkages) does allow for the rapid and intelligent collection of organised and structured beliefs about consequences of change. Indeed, some of the Scope team have been able to develop and use the approach elsewhere, as documented in the publication which can be described as stemming from this project. |
| Sectors | Environment |
| Description | Farming Futures Workshop |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Third sector organisations |
| Results and Impact | 8 farmers and 10 NNP officials attended a one-day study workshop on the future prospects for upland farming and environmental consequences. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2011 |
| Description | Farming and Forestry in the Lake District National Park |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Professional Practitioners |
| Results and Impact | Presentation of Report on Farming and Forestry in the Lake District National Park to the National Park Advisory Board, Penrith, Cumbria, June 2013. Report based on the work done under Scope for the Northumberland National Park |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2013 |