Socio-hydrological spaces in the Jamuna River floodplain in Bangladesh

Ferdous, Md Ruknul; Wesselink, Anna; Brandimarte, Luigia; Slager, Kymo; Zwarteveen, Margreet; Di Baldassarre, Giuliano

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-22-5159-2018

Articles | Volume 22, issue 10

Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 22, 5159–5173, 2018

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-22-5159-2018

© Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 22, 5159–5173, 2018

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-22-5159-2018

© Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 22, issue 10

Research article 04 Oct 2018

Research article | 04 Oct 2018

Socio-hydrological spaces in the Jamuna River floodplain in Bangladesh

Md Ruknul Ferdous et al.

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Final revised paper (published on 04 Oct 2018)
Supplement to the final revised paper
Preprint (discussion started on 03 Jan 2018)
Supplement to the preprint

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

AC: Author comment | RC: Referee comment | SC: Short comment | EC: Editor comment

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RC1: 'socio-hydrological space?', Anonymous Referee #1, 25 Jan 2018
- SC1: 'reply to reviewer#1', Anna Wesselink, 28 Feb 2018
- AC1: 'response to reviewer #1', Md Ruknul Ferdous, 19 Mar 2018
RC2: 'Review of Ferdous et al', Anonymous Referee #2, 29 Jan 2018
- SC2: 'reply to reviewer#2', Anna Wesselink, 28 Feb 2018
- AC2: 'response to reviewer #2', Md Ruknul Ferdous, 19 Mar 2018
RC3: 'SHS in Bangladesh', Anonymous Referee #3, 30 Jan 2018
- SC3: 'replies to reviewer#3', Anna Wesselink, 28 Feb 2018
- AC3: 'response to reviewer #3', Md Ruknul Ferdous, 19 Mar 2018
RC4: 'Review of "Socio-hydrological spaces in the Jamuna River floodplain in Bangladesh"', Anonymous Referee #4, 31 Jan 2018
- SC4: 'replies to reviewer#4', Anna Wesselink, 28 Feb 2018
- AC4: 'response to reviewer #4', Md Ruknul Ferdous, 19 Mar 2018
EC1: 'Editor Comment', Murugesu Sivapalan, 03 Feb 2018
- SC5: 'reply to editor', Anna Wesselink, 28 Feb 2018
  - EC2: 'Editor response', Murugesu Sivapalan, 28 Feb 2018
EC3: 'Editor comment', Murugesu Sivapalan, 11 Mar 2018

Peer-review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision

ED: Reconsider after major revisions (further review by editor and referees) (20 Mar 2018) by Murugesu Sivapalan

AR by Md Ruknul Ferdous on behalf of the Authors (25 May 2018) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Reconsider after major revisions (further review by editor and referees) (29 May 2018) by Murugesu Sivapalan

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (04 Jun 2018) by Murugesu Sivapalan

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (18 Jun 2018)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

Ferdous and colleagues revised paper addresses some of the concerns that I and other reviewers had in the original paper. However, some important issues remain and the addition of the fight vs adapt dichotomy introduces new concerns.

1. The concept of SHS’s is interesting but I agree with the other readers that as presented it’s not clear what it adds to the field and the pairing of narratives and statistical analysis is not new. How does SHS increase researchers ability to draw generalizable insights? Or, how dose SHS aid researchers in developing actionable knowledge that could aid decision makers on a specific case? I think that the SHS method is much stronger if employed in conjunction with other approaches than on its own. I would again encourage the authors to frame SHS as part of a broad research plan and articulate how it's addition would strengthen research outcomes.
2. The authors introduce two patterns, adapt and fight, as a more generic typology that includes the adaptation effect and the levee effect respectively. They state that systems may vary along the fight to adapt spectrum and imply that this spectrum covers the full range of possible states. I am concerned that this typology hides important differences between spaces or systems. For example, it does not distinguish between systems where residents experience frequent flooding but are able to maintain or grow standards of living over time and systems where frequent flooding leads to a continued loss of wealth and declining living standards. The typology presented by Srinivasan et al. (2012) for water supply basins illustrates how the multiple dimensions of human-water interactions can result in several distinct types of outcome patterns.
3. The use of ANOVA to test for distinctions between SHS’s is useful but more information on this test should be provided to the readers. If a results table does not fit within the article please add this to the supplemental information.

Reference:
Srinivasan, Veena, E. F. Lambin, S. M. Gorelick, B. H. Thompson, and S. Rozelle. 2012. “The Nature and Causes of the Global Water Crisis: Syndromes from a Meta-Analysis of Coupled Human-Water Studies.” Water Resources Research 48 (10): 1-16. doi:10.1029/2011WR011087.

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RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (01 Jul 2018)

RR by Anonymous Referee #4 (02 Jul 2018)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

The authors propose a new mid-level method for socio-hydrological research, which is a possible connection between the narratives of case studies and socio-hydrological models and allows for the detection of different socio-hydrological processes in real world cases studies and connect them with generic patterns described in socio-hydrological models.

The method is an interesting addition to socio-hydrological research and the manuscript very well describes the method and its application. The introduction makes the case for SHS and defines where in socio-hydrological research SHS is placed and the analysis of the SHS Jamuna river floodplain is a good example of the application of this new method. However, I think the connection with the general processes described with socio-hydrological models is still a bit weak. I miss an extra step at the end of the paper where the authors describe the different socio-hydrological feedbacks that explain the behavior of each SHS (perhaps the authors could construct some causal loop diagrams based on the analysis they did). The conclusion now is that SHS 1 is fighting, SHS 2 is adapting and SHS 3 is a mix of the two. This is very general and I think the authors could and perhaps should try to come up with some sub-patterns (i.e. there are different types of adaptation going on in these SHS) that they find in their analysis.

In section 6.2 the authors discuss the differences in flood frequency between the SHS and refer to figure 4b. It seems that figure 4b does not report anything about frequency, since it only shows the percentage of households that reported flooding? Does the information about frequency come from other data that is not reported here? In that case I would change the figure. Otherwise the analysis in the text should be revised.

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ED: Reconsider after major revisions (further review by editor and referees) (09 Jul 2018) by Murugesu Sivapalan

AR by Md Ruknul Ferdous on behalf of the Authors (20 Aug 2018) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (26 Aug 2018) by Murugesu Sivapalan

RR by Anonymous Referee #5 (06 Sep 2018)

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (07 Sep 2018)

RR by Anonymous Referee #4 (10 Sep 2018)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

The authors present a new method for the study of socio-hydrological systems. They claim their method provides a way to detect patterns in cases studies that can be connected to general patterns that have been described in the literature. While a research method that covers this kind of connections may be useful, I am still not convinced by the way it is presented in this paper. To me it seems that the description and analysis of the case study in this paper is not very different from other case study descriptions. The analysis connecting the different hydrological and social patterns could be more detailed and the patterns of adapt and fight that the authors detect seem to still be very general. If the method is a way to fill the gap between patterns found in case studies and patterns described with generic models I would expect the analysis of the patterns in this case study to be a bit more detailed.
In the introduction the authors state that: “As in any attempt to produce insights that transcend specific cases, methods of abstraction from reality to find causal relationships and stylised equations 15 (generalisation) are sometimes difficult to reconcile with more detailed representations of what is happening in a specific location (Blair & Buytaert, 2016). While enabling global comparison by using data sets from different locations, generic models unavoidably foreground some elements or dimensions of flood-society dynamics to the neglect of others (Magliocca et al., 2018).” Is your representation of these three spaces as either fight or adapt or a combination not just as simple as the ones described with generic models?
In the abstract the authors present their study as: “Our example of the use of SHS shows that the concept draws attention to how historical patterns in the co-evolution of social behaviour, natural processes and technological interventions give rise to different landscapes, different styles of living, and different ways of organizing livelihoods.” I do not really find these patterns of co-evolution in the descriptions of the case study. Instead to me it is a description of the separate social, economic, hydrologic, etc findings, and I miss an attempt to combine these to determine what different co-evolution patterns can be found in this particular case study. For example, the people in SHS2 have a higher income than in SHS1 and they seem to experience floods the least frequent, but still they have the highest amount of houses made of earthen floor, wood and bamboo mats. Why is that? Is it because there is a different pattern of fight and adaptation in this SHS than in the others? Also the damages in SHS2 seem to be lower than in the other SHS (with the exception of the flood in 1988), is this because the people there are already poorer and thus there is less to damage? Or because they are better adapted and are able to reduce the damages because of flooding? People in SHS3 have more experience with migration than in SHS1, but they flood less frequently, is there some explanation for that? These are the kind of connections I would expect from an analysis of “how historical patterns in the co-evolution of social behaviour, natural processes and technological interventions give rise to different landscapes, different styles of living, and different ways of organizing livelihoods.”

I would suggest to the authors to either rephrase their approach or application of SHS in a way that it indeed adds something new to the analysis of a case study (which I am still not convinced it does now) or to drop the concept of SHS and focus on the case study itself.

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ED: Publish subject to minor revisions (review by editor) (15 Sep 2018) by Murugesu Sivapalan

AR by Md Ruknul Ferdous on behalf of the Authors (21 Sep 2018) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (21 Sep 2018) by Murugesu Sivapalan

AR by Md Ruknul Ferdous on behalf of the Authors (22 Sep 2018) Author's response Manuscript

Short summary

Socio-hydrological space (SHS) is a concept that enriches the study of socio-hydrology because it helps understand the detailed human–water interactions in a specific location. The concept suggests that the interactions between society and water are place-bound because of differences in social processes and river dynamics. This would be useful for developing interventions under disaster management, but also other development goals. SHS provides a new way of looking at socio-hydrological systems.