Oyster Reef Ecology: A Social-Ecological Snapshot of Terrebonne Parish, Louisiana

Understanding what indicators most accurately describe the vulnerability of coastal communities is becoming increasingly important as anthropogenic and climate-induced stressors affect resources in surprising ways. Here, we show that oyster reef resource-users most vulnerable to environmental variation (i.e. inability to cope with change), will be those with high levels of stewardship, perception of individual impact, values, and perception of environment, as well as low to moderate levels of personal and financial buffers and trust (i.e. owner/operators). Consequently, management objectives should prioritize and target questions that describe these indicators of social sensitivity and resource dependency to predict how resource-users may adapt to changes in resource health, and thus, allocate funds for bolstering local adaptive capacity or minimizing resource dependency.