Multiplex social ecological network analysis reveals how social changes affect community robustness more than resource depletion

Significance

Social capital ties are ubiquitous in modern life. For societies with people and landscapes tightly connected, in variable or marginal ecosystems, and with unreliable market sectors, social relations are critical. Each relation is a potential source of food, information, cash, labor, or expertise. Here, we present an analysis of multiplex, directed, and weighted networks representing actual flows of subsistence-related goods and services among households in three remote indigenous Alaska communities exposed to both extreme climate change and industrial development. We find that the principal challenge to the robustness of such communities is the loss of key households and the erosion of cultural ties linked to sharing and cooperative social relations rather than resource depletion.

Abstract

Network analysis provides a powerful tool to analyze complex influences of social and ecological structures on community and household dynamics. Most network studies of social–ecological systems use simple, undirected, unweighted networks. We analyze multiplex, directed, and weighted networks of subsistence food flows collected in three small indigenous communities in Arctic Alaska potentially facing substantial economic and ecological changes. Our analysis of plausible future scenarios suggests that changes to social relations and key households have greater effects on community robustness than changes to specific wild food resources.