Choosing Indicators for a "Climate-Friendly" Landscape
Criterion L5: Households and communities are resilient to external shocks derived from climate changing conditions (drought, flooding, disease and epidemics).
Social resilience is the ability of human communities to withstand and recover from stresses, such as disturbances caused by global changes in climate. In agricultural landscapes, human and ecological systems interact. Resilience in such combined systems concerns how much shock the system can absorb and still remain within a desirable state, the capacity of self-organization, and the capacity for learning and adaptation.
In this example, there have been selected some critical functions and attributes of the agricultural landscapes that contribute to build resilience and increase their adaptation capacity in changing conditions, and indicators to measure them.
Click on the Indicators to see the means of measure.
Indicators of Food Availability and Production
- Crop yield/demand
- Livestock production/demand
- Production of timber and non timber products/demand
- Diversity of products
Indicators of Fresh Water Supply
- Watershed health (availability and distribution of natural sources of water)
- Water quality
- Availability and distribution of multipurpose water supply systems
Indicators of Natural Hazard Protection
- Abundance and distributions of undisturbed buffers.
- Flood storage capacity of wetlands and recharge areas.
- Abundance and distribution of vulnerable landscape features.
Indicators of Waste Decomposition and Detoxification
- Nitrogen mineralization
- Microbial biomass
- Soil respiration (CO2 generated by biological activity of the soil)
- Litter decomposition rate (integrated indicator)
- Dilution potential of acuatic systems
Indicators of Emergency Response Capacity
- Availability of finantial and human resources.
- Proportion of the population living in high risk areas.
- Access to health resources.
Go back to Unit 4 for more information about how to select indicators.
Continue to Unit 5 Establishing a Baseline