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Regime Shifts in African Floodplains

CHANS model.Together with colleagues at OSU we designed a research project that aims to understand regime shifts in African floodplains. African floodplains are excellent examples of coupled human-natural systems (CHANS), but they have not been modeled as coupled systems. Instead studies have focused either on the hydrological, ecological, or social system and have taken the couplings as a constant rather than as a dynamic system. Our project will examine the dynamic couplings that are endogenous to social, ecological and hydrological systems in the Logone Floodplain in an integrated model. In particular, we will focus on the impact of human activities and climate change on the hydrology of the floodplain to understand the nature of regime shifts in African floodplains. The project brings together a team of researchers from a broad range of disciplines and will use a transdisciplinary approach to investigate coupled human and natural systems using a combination of field research, remote sensing analysis, and modeling. The project is supported by a grant from the Dynamics of Coupled Natural and Human Systems (CNH) program at NSF.