Emergent human–water interactions through the lens of the pluralistic water research approach—the case of the Garajonay National Park (La Gomera, Spain)

Engineering notes

Human activities have significantly altered Earth’s systems, necessitating a better understanding of human-water interactions within models that simulate Earth system processes.

Chinese explanation / 中文解读

中文解读待补充：本站会优先为端到端自动驾驶、BEV感知、3D目标检测、轨迹预测、路径规划、LiDAR感知等高价值论文补充中文说明。

Original abstract

Human activities have significantly altered Earth’s systems, necessitating a better understanding of human-water interactions within models that simulate Earth system processes. One of the major challenges in water resource management is identifying system elements and analyzing the interconnectedness in social-ecological systems and their adaptive feedbacks across multiple spatial and temporal scales. This study applies the Pluralistic Water Research (PWR) approach to analyse emergent human–water interactions in Garajonay National Park, La Gomera, Canary Islands, Spain, in relation to the period before and after the major wildfire in 2012. The PWR approach was chosen to translate plural stakeholder knowledge into a system-level diagnosis in a structured way that can support context-sensitive land and water management in coupled human–water systems. Focusing on the interactions among agriculture, tourism, and the protected cloud-forest system, the study combines document analysis, stakeholder interviews, and an eDPSIR-based causal mapping approach to identify key pressures, feedbacks, and response options. The analysis reveals five main feedback structures linking land abandonment, wildfire risk, water scarcity, pollution, ecosystem degradation, and stewardship, as well as five clusters of stakeholder responses related to education and awareness, ecotourism development, mobility and access regulation, landscape and fire-prevention management, and water governance and agricultural adaptation. The results show that dense environmental connectivity supports fog-dependent recharge, forest functioning, and water regulation under normal conditions. Under disturbance conditions, the same connectivity can amplify disturbance propagation when drought, fire, land abandonment, and localized human pressures interact. At the same time, social and institutional connections appear comparatively weak and fragmented, limiting coordinated responses across sectors. Resilience in Garajonay depends on the interplay between beneficial ecohydrological linkages, disturbance-sensitive feedbacks and adaptive governance capacity.

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