Steve Lansing - Abstract
Steve Lansing
The Balinese would like a word: implications of alternate steady states in lakes and rice paddies
On the Indonesian island of Bali, a thousand hectares of ancient rice paddies are lost each year, and the Balinese fear that a tipping point may be close. Rice paddies are shallow artificial lakes, a coupled social-ecological system sustained by networks of water temples that span whole watersheds.
The danger of a critical transition prompted UNESCO to declare this system a World Heritage in June. Are the ecological dynamics of the paddies qualitatively different from those of natural lakes?
And is there an attractor basin for the Goddess of the Lakes?
