Defining resilience in rural areas (KB-29-006-001)

Within the context of One-Wageningen, the WUR investment theme Resilience aims to develop a broadly shared vision for applying resilience thinking to the domain of WUR across disciplines, and across operational scales, and to contribute to a Community of Practise (CoP) that shares state-of-the-art knowledge and understanding on resilience, and that develops innovative solutions to the societal challenges. In collaboration with the LEI project: Define resilience for dairy and nature in rural areas, we aim to make resilience thinking operational for rural areas. The research will focus on the economic and the ecological aspects of the enlargement of dairy farms and the dynamics of the associated socio-ecological system.

The enlargement of farms results in a homogeneous, highly productive production landscapes. If abiotic conditions are favourable, mediated by climate change, this provides ample opportunities for outbreaks of plagues and pests. The 2015 outbreak of voles could be an example of that combination of circumstances, affecting 12,000 ha. Similarly, the ongoing increase of geese is likely related to the change in scale and productivity of the rural andscape. The project focusses on regional socio-ecological systems where large scale specialised dairy farms are confronted with both economic and ecological shocks. The question is to what extend regional rural systems can be resilient to both types of shocks.

We will tackle that issue by using and combining existing economic and ecological models the regional scale and writing a peer-reviewed paper on homogenisation of highly productive landscapes and outbreaks of voles, focussing on definition, measurement and influencing resilience of both ecological and economic systems. Furthermore, we will contribute to the development of a Community of Practice as envisaged for the WUR investment theme Resilience