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. 2016 Nov 29;113(48):13708-13713.
doi: 10.1073/pnas.1604401113. Epub 2016 Nov 16.

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

Jacopo A Baggio  1 , Shauna B BurnSilver  2 , Alex Arenas  3 , James S Magdanz  4 , Gary P Kofinas  4   5 , Manlio De Domenico  6
Affiliations

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

Jacopo A Baggio et al. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. .

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.

Keywords: climate change; food sharing; mixed subsistence–cash economies; multiplex networks; social–ecological systems.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Fig. 1.
Fig. 1.
Households’ engagement in Arctic multiplex social networks. Shown is the percentage of households engaged in N different, unique, resource–social relation layers.
Fig. 2.
Fig. 2.
Interlayer Spearman correlation matrices for Arctic multiplex social networks. Shown are interlayer correlations between any pair of layers in the three communities based on “giving” and “receiving” relationships (i.e., out- and inflows, respectively). Higher correlation indicates that it is more likely that a household that gives/receives most in one layer also gives/receives most in another layer. Axis color codes indicate species and social relationships. Color code on the left of each graph indicates whether layers relating to the same species (i.e., beluga sharing, beluga–helper shares, etc.) are clustered together, whereas the color code on the top of each graph indicates whether layers relating to the same social relationship are clustered together (i.e., caribou contributions, moose contributions, etc.).
Fig. 3.
Fig. 3.
Robustness of multiplex networks to perturbations. Shown are changes represented by targeted vs. random removal nodes (households) and layers (social relations, species, and species groups). Robustness patterns strongly depend on the perturbation type. Interconnectedness in the case of random removal scenarios is averaged over 100 realizations of random removal of nodes [household (HH) loss] or layers (social relation loss and resource loss).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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