摘要：Historically, the semiarid social–ecological systems of the dry Central American corridorhave proven resilient to pressures. However, in the last century, these systems have experienced hugeenvironmental and socioeconomic changes that have increased the vulnerability of local livelihoods toshocks. New approaches are needed to capture complex, uncertain, cross-scale and nonlinear relationshipsamong drivers of change and vulnerability. Therefore, to tackle this challenge, we have applied aparticipatory and interdisciplinary methodological framework of vulnerability assessment to a case studyin northern Nicaragua. We triangulated a range of information and data from participatory and scientificresearch to explore historical and current drivers of changes that affect the system's components andindicators of vulnerability, represented in a 3-dimensional space in terms of ecological resilience, thesocioeconomic ability of individuals to adapt to change, and an institutional capacity to buffer and respondto crisis. A projection of climatic changes combined with a participatory scenario analysis helped, then, toheuristically analyze tendencies of vulnerability in the future and to explore what policy options mightenhance the system's adaptive capacity to face new pressures. Our work primarily contributes to an empiricalunderstanding of key factors that influence vulnerability and learning about local strategies to adapt tochange in semiarid agropastoral systems in Central America. We also make a methodological contributionby testing the use of a multidimensional vulnerability framework as a way of stimulating discussion amongresearchers, local stakeholders, and policy makers
