Research

INTRODUCTION

Changes in global temperature and precipitation have increased the frequency and intensity of extreme environmental events, disrupting coastal food systems and affecting fishers and their communities (FAO 2015, Cottrell et al. 2019). In response, fishing communities have leveraged their experience adapting to novel and challenging conditions (Moore et al. 2020a, Frawley et al. 2021, Drakopulos and Poe 2023). In recognition that such autonomous adaptation must be supported and complemented across multiple levels of governance (Brondizio et al. 2009, FAO 2015), governing institutions have been conducting climate change scenario planning (PFMC 2020), developing climate action plans (FAO 2023), and directing funds toward climate resilience (Executive Order No. 14008 2021).

As climate adaptation planning progresses globally, there is increasing concern around ineffective adaptation. Ineffective climate adaptation often results from the failure to anticipate unintended consequences (Singh et al. 2022), which may hinder adaptation goals and even leave the intended beneficiaries worse off than they would have been without action (i.e., maladaptation; Schipper 2020). Maladaptation can intensify the negative environmental or societal effects from an extreme event. For example, a sudden local decline in fish abundance that reduces fishing opportunity can promote industry consolidation, further limiting fishing opportunities for existing and next-generation fishers (Szymkowiak and Rhodes-Reese 2020). Maladaptation can also increase community vulnerability to the future impacts of climate change. This “rebounding vulnerability” (Schipper 2020) may occur through increased exposure or sensitivity to climate change (e.g., because of amplifying feedbacks that accelerate negative trends in ecosystem services; Cinner et al. 2011), or through reduced adaptive capacity.

Given the potential for unintended negative consequences, it is crucial for climate adaptation planning to identify and avoid strategies that may intensify the impacts of extreme events, or lead to rebounding vulnerability (Magnan et al. 2016, Schipper 2022). General principles for doing so include, among others, addressing the main drivers of system vulnerability, instead of just climate-related stressors (Magnan et al. 2016, Schipper 2022); avoiding technological or engineering solutions that lock in undesirable pathways (Magnan et al. 2016, Bertana et al. 2022); and avoiding additional depletion of the local environment (Cinner et al. 2011). Yet there may also be system-specific, local contexts that drive unintended consequences or strong trade-offs from certain adaptive strategies. Early identification and exploration of such dynamics could provide a tangible starting point for planners to prioritize aspects of strategy development, implementation, and assessment that allow for early identification or detection of negative consequences.

Qualitative network models (QNMs; Levins 1974, Puccia and Levins 1985) are increasingly used to represent social-ecological systems (e.g., Harvey et al. 2016, Szymkowiak and Rhodes-Reese 2020, 2021, Reum et al. 2021, Ferriss et al. 2022). QNMs are attractive for these applications because they can represent feedbacks that result in counterintuitive or unexpected outcomes in complex systems (Melbourne-Thomas et al. 2012, Harvey et al. 2016). These models are also conducive to exploring social-ecological systems because they allow the inclusion of variables that are not readily measurable (such as aspects of human well-being and adaptive capacity), they allow variables to differ in their form and measurement, and they do not require knowledge of the magnitude of interactions linking variables (Levins 1998). Further, because QNMs can be depicted as signed, directed graphs, they can generate or clarify a shared understanding of the local social-ecological system among those involved in climate adaptation planning.

In this paper, we demonstrate how QNMs are useful for examining climate adaptation strategies in a fisheries social-ecological system. We first summarize existing literature and expert knowledge into a social-ecological QNM that captures key dynamics of U.S. West Coast Dungeness crab fisheries. Our resulting model community is organized around a single preferred fishery (Dungeness crab, Metacarcinus magister) that is closely tied to community traditions and identity, although community members also benefit from participating in other fisheries. We then simulate a climate-intensified extreme event (a harmful algal bloom, or HAB) and assess how it affects aspects of human well-being, with and without climate adaptation strategies. Specifically, we use three sets of simulations to explore the development of unintended consequences and trade-offs from the interaction of the HAB, climate adaptation, and underlying system dynamics. We end by providing examples of how simulation results might generate research and monitoring priorities, and discuss important opportunities and limitations for further applications of QNMs in climate adaptation planning.

METHODS

Reference system: U.S. West Coast fisheries

U.S. West Coast commercial fisheries operate within the highly productive California Current marine ecosystem, which is defined by a powerful eastern boundary current and dynamic coastal upwelling. In 2020, these fisheries generated over $582 million in revenue and supported > 100,000 jobs (National Marine Fisheries Service 2023). Many fisheries are also socially and culturally significant for coastal communities, and support subsistence harvest (Poe et al. 2015). The highest value single-species fishery, Dungeness crab (National Marine Fisheries Service 2023), has been affected in recent years by numerous fishery closures associated with HABs (Free et al. 2022, Drakopulos and Poe 2023) and shifting distributions of protected species (Santora et al. 2020), driven in part by marine heatwaves (McCabe et al. 2016, Santora et al. 2020, Trainer et al. 2020). A large body of multi-disciplinary work has investigated the economic and socio-cultural impacts of these closures on Dungeness crab fishers and coastal and Indigenous communities (Ritzman et al. 2018, Holland and Leonard 2020, Jardine et al. 2020, Moore et al. 2020b, 2024, Kourantidou et al. 2022, Drakopulos and Poe 2023, Glickman et al. 2025), as well as the actions taken by crabbers to autonomously adapt to fishery closures (Moore et al. 2020a, 2020b, Fisher et al. 2021, Drakopulos and Poe 2023). Much of the peer-reviewed research has focused on the California commercial Dungeness crab fishery, which was particularly impacted by closures from a unprecedented HAB associated with the 2014–2016 North Pacific marine heatwave (Moore et al. 2020b, Jardine et al. 2020). The economic impact of these closures qualified California’s 2015–2016 crabbing season as a commercial fishery failure (MSA 312(a), IFA 308(b)) for which Congress authorized over $22 million in federal disaster relief funding (Pritzker 2017a, Bonham et al. 2018). The Quileute Indian Tribe’s 2015 crabbing season was also determined to be a commercial fishery failure because of the HAB (Woodruff 2016, Pritzker 2017b).

Participants in the commercial Dungeness crab fishery work on vessels ranging from under 30 to over 80 feet in length (Liu et al. 2023), with a diversity of fishing strategies within the fleet (Davis et al. 2017, Holland and Leonard 2020, Liu et al. 2023). The fishery is generally characterized by highly seasonal, derby-style fishing activity; the majority of the catch is brought in within the first six weeks of the season (usually mid-fall / early winter; Dewees et al. 2004, Jardine et al. 2020), with predominantly smaller vessels fishing through the late spring and summer (Liu et al. 2023). Crabbing vessels are also frequently diversified into other fisheries targeting salmon, groundfish, pink shrimp (Pandalus jordani), and a range of other species (Holland and Leonard 2020, Fisher et al. 2021). In the words of one California-based crabber interviewed by Ritzman et al. (2018): “... a lot of these boats do more than just crab, but without crab, a lot of boat owners would probably lose their boats.”

HAB-associated fishery closures are intended to prevent the serious negative health impacts that can occur when people consume Dungeness crab contaminated with biotoxins, which are produced by a HAB and accumulate in the food chain. Domoic acid, the biotoxin associated with the 2015–2016 fishery closures, can cause permanent neurological damage and even death (Ekstrom et al. 2020). Although algal blooms are a natural phenomenon, climate change is contributing to increases in HAB frequency and intensity on the U.S. West Coast and in other regions around the world (Moore et al. 2024).

The Pacific Fishery Management Council (PFMC), which advises and guides federal fisheries management on the U.S. West Coast, conducted a climate change scenario planning process in 2020–2021, which included developing a set of stakeholder-identified adaptive actions for harvesters, communities, fishery managers, and scientists (PFMC 2022). These action items reflect a combination of prior or ongoing adaptations (e.g., fisheries portfolio diversification), as well as novel proposals that require institutional or collective action to implement (e.g., development of an insurance program). The PFMC is considering what activities may be prioritized and incorporated into ongoing activities and initiatives (PFMC 2022). This stage of the climate change scenario planning process provides an opportunity to explore the potential unintended consequences of proposed actions prior to further investment in their implementation.

Building a “Status Quo” qualitative network model

QNMs are signed, directed graphs (digraphs) in which variables (nodes) are connected by links (Puccia and Levins 1985, Dambacher et al. 2009). A QNM graph can be translated to a community matrix in which positive links are denoted as +1, and negative links as -1. QNMs are best used as generative models to explore alternative scenarios and to generate hypotheses about system structure (Harvey et al. 2016).

We developed a QNM of a model commercial fishing community based on key dynamics in U.S. West Coast commercial Dungeness crab fisheries, identified from previous research and expert knowledge (Fig. 1). We refer to this QNM throughout the paper as the Status Quo model. The variables in our QNM represented harvested species (#1 in Fig. 1a), socioeconomic drivers and outcomes (#2 in Fig. 1a) of livelihood activities (#3 in Fig. 1a), and diverse aspects of human well-being (#4 in Fig. 1a). In the Status Quo QNM, livelihood activities included seasonal participation in the commercial Dungeness crab fishery and other commercial fisheries. We assumed that model community members held decision-making power in their choice of fishery participation based on socioeconomic drivers, specifically the dock prices set for Dungeness crab, crab processing capacity, crew availability, and variable costs (represented by Fuel & labor costs; Fig 1a,c).

Participation in, and harvest from, commercial fisheries, particularly Dungeness crab, contributed to human well-being. Human well-being was organized according to the Breslow et al. (2016) 4Cs framework, with some contextual adjustments (Table S1). The 4Cs framework was designed to better represent multiple dimensions of human well-being in NOAA Fisheries’ integrated ecosystem assessments (IEAs) of the U.S. West Coast region. In building their framework, Breslow et al. (2016) define human well-being as “a state of being with others and the environment, which arises when human needs are met, when individuals and communities can act meaningfully to pursue their goals, and when individuals and communities enjoy a satisfactory quality of life.” In our QNM, 15 well-being attributes from the 4Cs framework influenced five broader well-being domains (e.g., Social relationships; Fig. 1a,b). We distinguished between well-being attributes according to whether they were directly influenced by fishing and other livelihood activities (e.g., Identity, Subsistence; pale blue nodes in Fig. 1a,b), or whether they were exclusively influenced by other well-being variables (e.g., Community, Family; bright blue nodes in Fig. 1a,b). Because of the assumptions used to build the model (further detailed in Tables S1-2), our QNM was most reflective of crab vessel owner/operators in West Coast communities that are highly engaged and reliant on commercial fishing. For this exercise, we simplify the variation in economic and sociocultural importance of Dungeness crab among U.S. West Coast crabbers and coastal communities (Moore et al. 2019, Liu et al. 2023). Further, although aspects of this QNM may hold true for Tribal crabbers participating in State or co-managed State and Tribal commercial Dungeness crab fisheries, we also do not consider the model to fully capture the unique connections between harvest and well-being held by Tribal crabbers.

This Status Quo QNM was developed through an iterative process. The first draft of the model was generated in a working group by the co-authors, drawing on co-authors’ expert knowledge and previously conducted interviews (Ritzman et al. 2018, Strawn 2019), surveys (Holland et al. 2020, Moore et al. 2020a,b, Nelson et al. 2023), and participatory scenario planning (Kirchner and Star 2021; PFMC 2022) with U.S. West Coast fishers, including (and sometimes exclusively) Dungeness crab fishery participants. Co-authors are academic and government researchers with expertise in marine ecology, applied economics, policy analysis, sociology, environmental social science, and social-ecological systems. Collectively, the 16 coauthors have over 17 decades of research experience with U.S. West Coast fisheries (including state commercial Dungeness crab fisheries), and over 19 decades of research experience with other large- and small-scale fisheries around the globe. Our model structure was refined according to exploratory simulations, published literature on fishers’ well-being beyond the U.S. West Coast, and review by a small number of external experts with diverse experiences in and with commercial Dungeness crab fisheries. All QNMs were constructed in Dia (Breit et al. 2009).

Describing and implementing adaptive strategies

We adjusted the Status Quo QNM to implement eight climate adaptation strategies that ranged from coping mechanisms to transformative adaptation (Table 1). We defined a coping strategy as a short-term response that is reactive rather than anticipatory (Bennett et al. 2014, Ojea et al. 2020, Green et al. 2021), and that draws on some form of capital (e.g., insurance; Moore et al. 2020b) with the intent of surviving a sudden shock or change. Strategies that represented adaptive maintenance, such as diversification into new fisheries, were those that adjusted to drivers of change, while continuing to maintain the current system state (i.e., a community organized around commercial fishing; Berkes et al. 2003, Barnes et al. 2017). Livelihood diversification with fishery exit is transformative because it involves a deeper change that creates a fundamentally new system, with a different structure, feedback processes, and functions (Walker et al. 2004, Salgueiro-Otero et al. 2022). The two transformative strategies we considered (Imposed New Livelihoods, Invested New Livelihoods) differed in the type of transformations that occurred within the adaptation space (Table 1; Pelling et al. 2015).

These eight adaptation strategies were developed from a larger set of action items identified during two participatory scenario planning initiatives: one directed by the PFMC for U.S. West Coast fisheries more broadly, and one hosted by The Nature Conservancy specific to the Oregon Dungeness crab fishery. We extracted action items from publicly available documentation of scenario planning, selected a subset of these action items, and then drew on scenario planning documents, co-author expertise, and the existing literature to develop narratives describing each strategy. From these narratives, we identified relevant structural changes and/or perturbations to our Status Quo QNM to produce a separate QNM for each adaptation strategy (hereafter “strategy QNMs”; Tables S3-S9; Fig S2-3).

Simulating a climate perturbation

We simulated a climate-intensified HAB using the QPress R package (v0.2.3; Melbourne-Thomas et al. 2012) to apply representative press perturbations to each QNM. Drawing on past events, we assumed that a HAB reduced (1) early season Dungeness crab fishing activity, (2) Dungeness crab crew availability, and (3) the opening dock price for Dungeness crab (Table 2). When modeling livelihood diversification with fishery exit, we instead assumed that a HAB reduced recreational Dungeness crab fishing activity (Table 2).

Under the QPress approach, a community matrix (A) representing a QNM is populated with interaction coefficients drawn from uniform probability distributions ranging from [-1, 0] for negative links and [0, 1] for positive links; where no link exists, the appropriate element in the matrix is set to zero (Melbourne-Thomas et al. 2012). If the matrix is determined to be stable (Melbourne-Thomas et al. 2012), the matrix is retained and the quantitative responses of system variables to the press perturbation(s) are calculated at equilibrium using the negative inverse of the matrix. Quantitative responses are then converted to qualitative outcomes based on response direction [-1, 0, 1]. This is repeated until a minimum number of stable matrices (10,000 for our analysis; Melbourne-Thomas et al. 2012, Harvey et al. 2016, Magel and Francis 2022) are obtained.

We specified some of the links in our QNMs as “uncertain” (regarding their presence in the QNM; if present, their direction was assumed to be known). Prior to populating the community matrix in the QPress process detailed above, uncertain links are first determined to be present or absent according to draws from a Bernoulli distribution (Melbourne-Thomas et al. 2012); if absent, the corresponding element in A is set to zero, and if present, the corresponding element is drawn from the appropriate uniform distribution given the link sign. We also constrained the relative values of certain link pairs in some QNMs (Fig S1; Table S3; Melbourne-Thomas et al. 2012). Our Status Quo QNM had two such link constraints to ensure that Dungeness crab fishery participation had a greater impact on (1) Material Wealth & Security, and (2) Identity than participation in other fisheries (Fig S1; Fuller et al. 2017, Ritzman et al. 2018, Holland et al. 2020). QPress implements link constraints after populating the community matrix, by retaining only matrices that are both stable and that validate the link constraint (Melbourne-Thomas et al. 2012).

We reported outcomes for system variables on a semi-qualitative scale. If a variable showed a positive/negative response to the HAB perturbation in 60% or more (> 6000) of the stable matrices, we reported the model output for that variable as positive/negative. The positive/negative response was then categorized as “weak” if it occurred in 60–80% of the stable matrices, or “strong” if it occurred in > 80% of the stable matrices (Magel and Francis 2022 and others), to reflect sign consistency and therefore outcome certainty.

Exploring unequal impacts with alternative QNM configurations

The first set of simulations evaluated patterns in the intensification of HAB impacts across different climate adaptation strategies. We simulated a HAB in the Status Quo model (no adaptation strategies) and in each of the eight strategy QNMs.

The second and third sets of simulations highlighted potential pathways for unequal climate impacts, by exploring how assumptions made when building the Status Quo QNM affected well-being outcomes from a HAB. QNMs require analysts to filter and abstract a dynamic social-ecological system composed of diverse actors into a simplified structure. For our research, this process could limit the identification and prioritization of unintended consequences from climate adaptation. We used our own simplifying assumptions to build out alternative configurations of the QNMs from our first set of simulations. This deepened our understanding of how unintended consequences from climate adaptation might arise from complexity and diversity within the represented system.

For the second set of simulations, we compared outcomes for human well-being across alternative QNM configurations in which we altered a single, highly influential link. We first identified influential links using model sensitivity analysis (following Melbourne-Thomas et al. 2012, Magel and Francis 2022; see next paragraph), cross-referenced with important uncertainties identified by co-authors during the model-building process. We then constructed alternative configurations of the Status Quo and non-transformative strategy QNMs, in which only the chosen influential link had been altered (by removing it, and by changing the link direction / certainty). Finally, we simulated a HAB in each novel QNM configuration.

We conducted model sensitivity analysis using boosted regression trees (BRTs), which quantified the relative influence of each link in the Status Quo QNM on the HAB simulation outcome for each well-being variable. We fit the boosted regression trees with the R package dismo (Hijmans et al. 2024) following the procedures outlined in Melbourne-Thomas et al. (2012). We used an individual tree complexity of five, a learning rate of 0.5, and by using 50% of observations in selecting variables (bag.fraction = 0.5; Melbourne-Thomas et al. 2012, Harvey et al. 2016). We then ranked links according to their relative influence on a well-being variable, and summed ranks for each link across variables. We also identified links with strong mean interaction strengths (> |0.5|; Magel and Francis 2022) in the Status Quo and strategy QNMs, although we ultimately did not use these results (Fig. S4) for downstream analyses.

For the third set of simulations, we completed a self-reinforcing socioeconomic feedback by adding a new link from a well-being variable to an economic driver of fishery participation. Feedbacks are a crucial aspect of complexity in social-ecological systems, and changes in certain dimensions of human well-being can affect long-term adaptive capacity, becoming a pathway for rebounding vulnerability (Schipper 2020). However, relationships from well-being to socioeconomic drivers were not otherwise represented in our QNMs. To identify an appropriate feedback for our reference system, we drew on results from the first set of simulations and relevant literature. We added a link into our QNMs to complete the feedback, simulated a HAB, and compared the output between QNMs with and without the additional link.

RESULTS

Under the Status Quo, nearly all human well-being variables responded negatively to a HAB (Fig. 2a), except for those few not influenced by Dungeness crab fishery participation or harvest (e.g., Trust in institutions & management; Fig S1). The variables representing Cultural values & practices and Community had strong negative outcomes (Fig 2a).

What HAB impacts are intensified / limited across adaptation strategies?

Strategies for coping, adaptive maintenance

Most coping and adaptive maintenance strategies provided at least some net benefits relative to the Status Quo. Overall, the two fisheries diversification strategies (Existing and New Fisheries Diversification) had the most favorable well-being outcomes from the HAB, while the Supplementary Diversification strategy had the least favorable outcomes (Fig. 2a). The two fisheries diversification strategies facilitated a shift in fishing activity from the HAB-impacted fishery (Dungeness crab) into unaffected fisheries, and so maintained levels of fishing activity and harvest necessary to support non-material well-being. Overall outcome favorability for the Insurance and two Disaster Relief strategies fell between Supplementary Diversification and the two fisheries diversification strategies.

We observed several common outcomes across the six non-transformative strategies (Fig. 2a). All strategies resulted in equivocal outcomes for Material wealth & security and Job satisfaction, despite the HAB. Both variables were defined according to earnings from harvest (Holland et al. 2020; Table S1) and had negative outcomes under the Status Quo. None of the six non-transformative strategies affected the strong negative impact of the HAB on Cultural values & practices. Community was also negatively impacted across all strategies, although the fisheries diversification strategies (Existing and New Fisheries Diversification) lowered the sign consistency for that variable, from strongly to weakly negative.

The only strategy that intensified HAB impacts was Supplementary Diversification (Subsistence and Shoreside infrastructure & support services; Fig. 2a). The Supplementary Diversification strategy spread the spillover from lost fishing opportunity between unaffected fisheries and non-fishing employment, and non-fishing employment activities did not contribute to non-material aspects of well-being like Subsistence. In further drawing economic activity away from fishing-associated businesses, Supplementary Diversification also intensified negative HAB impacts to Shoreside infrastructure & support services.

In contrast, the negative HAB impact to Shoreside infrastructure & support services under the Status Quo became equivocal under both fisheries diversification strategies and Multi-Objective Disaster Relief (Fig. 2a). HAB impacts to Subsistence were also equivocal for the two fisheries diversification strategies, compared to weakly negative under the Status Quo. The fisheries diversification strategies acted through Status Quo model structures to compensate for HAB impacts, whereas our implementation of Multi-Objective Disaster Relief included direct, positive perturbations of several well-being variables to represent external, targeted initiatives (Table S6c). The fisheries diversification strategies compensated for HAB-driven reductions to Subsistence and Shoreside infrastructure & support services by facilitating spillover of fishing activity, which increased early season harvest from unaffected fisheries and late season harvest from the crab fishery; any harvest positively affects both variables. Multi-Objective Disaster Relief included a direct infusion of assistance to Shoreside infrastructure & support services, but did not compensate for losses to harvest, and so negative HAB impacts to Subsistence remained. We also assumed that Multi-Objective Disaster Relief included funding for biological monitoring and forecasting of HABs, which led to a more favorable outcome for Emotional & mental health through direct (reduction of stress related to the uncertainty of HAB duration) and indirect (increased trust in management) pathways (Fig S1; Ekstrom et al. 2020, Free et al. 2022).

Strategies for transformation

We evaluated two transformative forms of livelihood diversification with fishery exit: Imposed and Invested New Livelihoods (#7-8, Table 1). In both strategies, the HAB simulation had no effect on Material wealth & security or Job satisfaction/quality (Fig. 2b), because livelihood activities were not tied to Dungeness crab fishing under these scenarios. However, the Imposed New Livelihoods QNM showed new or intensified negative outcomes for certain aspects of non-material well-being compared to the Invested New Livelihoods QNM (Fig. 2b). Although we expected to see few HAB impacts to well-being variables after commercial fishery exit, the switch out of commercial fisheries eliminated built-in compensating mechanisms that had maintained non-material well-being in the non-transformative strategies (i.e., alternative commercial fishing opportunities). Instead, in the Imposed New Livelihoods QNM, most non-material aspects of well-being were assumed to be singly supported by recreational crab fishing alone (Table 1). The Invested New Livelihoods strategy modeled a sociocultural transition away from fishing, which limited HAB impacts to aspects of well-being like Identity, Community, Community cooperation & learning, and, to a lesser degree, Social relationships; however, negative outcomes were still likely for variables such as Cultural values & practices and Emotional & mental health because of the simulated HAB’s negative effect on recreational fishing harvest.

Outcomes for well-being variables are not directly comparable between these transformative strategy QNMs and the Status Quo / non-transformative QNMs. This is because the HAB had a different maximum negative effect on overall well-being for the New Livelihoods QNMs, in which most modeled well-being was derived from recreation, compared to the QNMs for the Status Quo / non-transformative strategies, in which modeled well-being was derived exclusively from commercial activities (Fig. S6). Therefore, negative outcomes that were coded as qualitatively equivalent between the two (Fig. 2) represent changes in unique facets of each well-being attribute or domain, which would have affected community members differently.

How do model assumptions alter the intensifying / reductive role of adaptation strategies?

Altering an influential link

According to model sensitivity tests, the most influential link in the Status Quo QNM was the uncertain, negative relationship from early season Dungeness crab fishery participation to early season participation in alternative fisheries (Table S10; Fig 1c). This link represented a trade-off in fishing activity during the early season, when we assumed that Dungeness crab was favored over alternative fisheries (albeit with some uncertainty; Table S2). Therefore, when we simulated a HAB that negatively impacted participation in the early season Dungeness crab fishery, alternative fishery participation increased some of the time. We explored the implications of our assumption by considering three alternative versions of this relationship (Fig. S7): (a) as crab fishery participation declined in the early season so did alternative fishery participation, such that all fishing activity declined with a HAB (effectively, fishers are “waiting for crab” to reopen; Fig. 3a); (b) crab fishery participation did not influence participation in an alternative fishery (“crab has no effect;” Fig. 3b); or (c) as crab fishery participation declined, alternative fishery participation increased, so a HAB led to a strong increase in alternative fishery participation (effectively, fishers are “switching targets” when crab is not available; Fig. 3c). These three alternatives are grounded in the range of actual responses of U.S. West Coast crabbers to closures and delays in crab fishing following a major HAB in 2015 (Moore et al. 2020a, 2020b), and represent variation in in-season fishing flexibility between individuals and communities.

We observed more intensification of negative HAB impacts to well-being under the “crab has no effect” configuration (Fig. 3b) than we observed with the original configuration in the first set of simulations (Fig. 2a). Insurance, Multi-Objective Disaster Relief, and Supplementary Diversification intensified HAB impacts on Intangible connections to nature, such that the variable response went from weakly negative in the Status Quo to strongly negative for all three strategies. Insurance and Supplementary Diversification also intensified the negative HAB impact on Identity, which went from weakly to strongly negative (Fig. 3b).

We also found that strategies were less effective at limiting HAB impacts under the “waiting for crab” and “crab has no effect” configurations (Fig. 3a,b) than under our original configuration (Fig. 2a). For example, Insurance did not affect the strong negative HAB impact to Material wealth & security with the “waiting for crab” configuration (Fig. 3a), and with the “crab has no effect” configuration, implementing Insurance resulted in the same weak negative impact (Fig. 3b) to this variable as under Status Quo with our original configurations (Fig. 2a).

The “switching targets” configuration was the only instance in which we observed multiple positive responses to a HAB for multiple strategies (Fig. 3c). For example, Material wealth & security actually improved from a simulated HAB, as the modeled community received insurance pay-outs or disaster assistance even as it autonomously made up for lost crab revenue by increasing effort in other fisheries. This was in stark contrast to the material and non-material outcomes we observed with all other configurations, particularly “waiting for crab.”

Completing a feedback

We added a negative link between Shoreside infrastructure & support services and variable operating costs (represented by Fuel & labor costs; Table S1). This relationship was identified from the rationale for prior fishery disaster relief spending (Bonham et al. 2018) and interviews of individuals on U.S. West Coast fishery management advisory bodies (Nelson et al. 2022). Both sources describe how the loss of physical infrastructure and small supporting businesses makes it “challenging for the fleet to secure resources and services necessary to sustain businesses operations” (Bonham et al. 2018), which can contribute to fishery exit, in turn reducing customers and revenue for supporting businesses. Because our HAB perturbation negatively impacted Shoreside infrastructure & support services in the first set of simulations, adding the negative link described above completed a self-reinforcing feedback in our QNMs.

Whether this feedback interacted with an adaptation strategy to intensify or limit HAB impacts varied by strategy (Fig. 4; Fig. S9). For Multi-Objective Disaster Relief, there were fewer negative outcomes for well-being with the feedback than without (Fig. 4a). This included more favorable outcomes for Intangible connections to nature, Identity, and Job quality (which all had equivocal, rather than weak/strong negative, outcomes with the feedback) and reduced sign consistency of the negative HAB impact to Community from strongly to weakly negative. The feedback facilitated these more favorable outcomes because investment in port infrastructure and supporting businesses under the Multi-Objective Disaster Relief strategy reduced operating costs through the new link, which facilitated alternative fishing activity outside of the HAB-impacted crab fishery. Alternative fishing activity, in turn, helped limit HAB impacts to well-being.

In contrast, Direct Assistance Disaster Relief was less effective at limiting HAB impacts to Family and Emotional & mental health with the feedback in place (Fig. 4a). Unlike Multi-Objective Disaster Relief, the Direct Assistance strategy did not include investments in Shoreside infrastructure & support services, and so the negative HAB impacts to Shoreside infrastructure & support services increased variable costs, reduced participation in alternative fisheries, and negatively impacted non-material well-being. Through a similar process, the feedback caused Supplementary Diversification to intensify HAB impacts to Community learning & cooperation compared to the Status Quo (Fig. 4b). Well-being outcomes associated with the remaining non-transformative strategy QNMs were unchanged by the completion of the feedback loop (Fig. S9).

DISCUSSION

We used QNMs to simulate an extreme environmental event in a fisheries social-ecological system. Without climate adaptation, the simulated harmful algal bloom resulted in negative outcomes for all modeled aspects of human well-being. Only one climate adaptation strategy, Supplementary Diversification, unintentionally intensified HAB impacts, although the remaining seven generally failed to limit HAB impacts to non-material well-being. When we explored the influence of model structure on well-being outcomes, we found that the effectiveness of adaptation strategies was highly sensitive to in-season fishing flexibility, which created contrasting patterns of intensification (low flexibility) or limitation (high flexibility) of HAB impacts. Completing a negative feedback loop also affected well-being outcomes for a subset of adaptation strategies, and highlighted how tailoring strategy implementation to feedback effects can create opportunities to produce more favorable outcomes. These results describe changes in well-being estimated at or near equilibrium conditions for each well-being variable (Puccia and Levins 1985, Melbourne-Thomas et al. 2012), such that timeframes to the observed well-being impacts vary. Certain well-being variables may reach equilibrium within a relatively short period of time, while other observed changes to well-being may accumulate over longer time scales.

Although QNMs are not designed to act prescriptively or provide exact predictions, we can use our results to identify key structural uncertainties and aspects of strategy implementation that are likely to contribute to unintended negative consequences from climate adaptation. We also draw on the existing literature to discuss if and how our model community dynamics parallel those observed in U.S. West Coast communities, and what this may mean for the practical applications of our results.

Common negative outcomes for community, culture

The Community and Cultural values & practices variables showed consistent negative responses to a simulated HAB even with our six non-transformative strategies (#1-6, Table 1). Although this does not represent an intensification of HAB impacts, it does demonstrate how an adaptation strategy that focuses only on material well-being can fail to address the full range of climate impacts, especially when a fishery is deeply embedded in a community’s social fabric (as is Dungeness crab in many U.S. West Coast communities; Poe et al. 2015, Ritzman et al. 2018, Strawn 2019, Moore et al. 2020b). Even combining the seemingly disparate strategies modeled here could fail to holistically address the sociocultural impacts of climate change. On longer time-scales, reduced community connections can become a pathway for rebounding vulnerability by limiting capacity for social organization (Cinner and Barnes 2019, Richmond and Casali 2022). On the U.S. West Coast, local fundraisers and other community events played an important role in helping fishing communities navigate HAB impacts (Ritzman et al. 2018), and “women-in-fisheries” groups like the Newport Fishermen’s Wives facilitate knowledge exchange, act as advocacy groups, and raise financial support for community members (Calhoun et al. 2016). This result emphasizes the importance of monitoring aspects of adaptive capacity that are associated with cultural practices (i.e., social organization and learning; Cinner and Barnes 2019) when implementing climate adaptation for fisheries with cultural significance. Suites of indicators and mixed methods approaches can be designed to capture long-term repercussions (e.g., perceived change in community identity, knowledge of local environmental cycles; Breslow et al. 2016, Moore et al. 2024, Glickman et al. 2025) as well as short-term impacts (e.g., number of cultural events, participation in cultural activities / organizations; Breslow et al. 2016, Moore et al. 2020b). Although aspects of individual and community identity are captured in periodic surveys of U.S. West Coast commercial fishing vessel owners (Holland et al. 2020, Norman et al. 2022), indicators of these and other dimensions of Community are not regularly monitored in the context of HABs (Moore et al. 2024), nor are they captured by the NOAA Community Social Vulnerability Indicator (Jepson and Colburn 2013, Leising et al. 2025).

These conclusions are based on our conservative assumption that all of the non-transformative strategies maintain the strong Status Quo relationship between early season Dungeness crab harvest and Cultural values & practices. However, nature-society relationships are dynamic, and adaptation could shift community-building activities to focus on other fisheries that are less vulnerable to HABs and/or climate change more broadly. The occurrence and speed of cultural transitions like these will vary between communities and subgroups (Macken-Walsh 2009, Adger et al. 2009, Zárate et al. 2019). This variation can result in uneven sensitivity to adaptation that does not address climate impacts to non-material well-being.

Although not directly comparable, we also observed the persistence of negative HAB impacts to Cultural values & practices for both New Livelihoods strategies, and to Community for the Imposed New Livelihoods strategy. Imposed New Livelihoods modeled transformation for livelihood activities but not for associated sociocultural behavior, which was still centered on fishing (albeit recreational, instead of commercial, harvest). That the Imposed New Livelihoods strategy had more negative outcomes from the HAB simulation than the Invested New Livelihoods strategy demonstrates how transforming livelihood activities may not address sensitivity to climate change impacts as intended. Previous HABs on the U.S. West Coast have proven that closures to significant recreational fisheries can deeply affect coastal communities’ identity, culture, and social relationships (Ritzman et al. 2018). Our results underscore the importance of developing a holistic and localized understanding of non-material well-being, because multiple and alternative sources of well-being may be similarly vulnerable to climate change.

In practice, the realized or perceived effectiveness of climate adaptation in supporting overall well-being will depend on how individuals define and rank the importance of different well-being attributes. Our model assumes that income and material wealth have some influence on non-material well-being (Emotional & mental health, Family relationships), but its contribution to most other well-being variables is limited. We chose this model structure to emphasize non-material dimensions affecting, and affected by, fishery participation and harvest (Poe et al. 2015, Ritzman et al. 2018, Holland et al. 2020). In practical and participatory applications of QNMs, a critical early step is to establish what aspects of well-being are a priority for local beneficiaries of climate adaptation (e.g., Donkersloot et al. 2020).

Intensification of HAB impacts: the importance of seasonal fishing opportunity and in-season flexibility

The fishing portfolio diversification that we built into the Status Quo and strategy QNMs was a powerful mitigating force, limiting HAB impacts and unintentional negative consequences from climate adaptation. In our first set of simulations, only the Supplementary Diversification strategy (i.e., diversifying livelihoods without fishery exit) intensified HAB impacts compared to the Status Quo. Whereas Supplementary Diversification directed livelihood activity away from fishing, all other non-transformative strategies assumed that community members could still participate in unaffected fisheries while also benefiting from climate adaptation.

For our model community, it was still important to maintain or improve diverse fishing opportunities even when pursuing other adaptation strategies. Diversification into multiple fisheries has long been recognized as important to hedging risk and building adaptive capacity in fisheries (McCay 1978, Sethi 2010, Kasperski and Holland 2013, Cline et al. 2017), but our analysis shows how the well-being outcomes of other adaptive strategies can be mediated by in-season flexibility and effort allocation among those who have diversified. Facilitating in-season flexibility might therefore be considered an important companion action to implementing other forms of adaptation, particularly those that primarily address material needs (e.g., insurance and disaster relief).

The issue of flexibility in control rules and spatial management is well-represented in U.S. West Coast case studies (Chavez et al. 2017, Hazen et al. 2018) and the broader fisheries management literature (Grafton et al. 2007, Hobday et al. 2014, Hilborn et al. 2022). Developing a framework that allows fishery managers to respond to changing in-season conditions (e.g., with short-term adjustments to allowable catch) was proposed multiple times during the PFMC’s scenario planning (PFMC 2020, PFMC 2021a). In practice, responsive in-season management is rare, with barriers for both fishery managers and fishers (Hobday et al. 2014, Ritzman et al. 2018, Drakopulos and Poe 2023). Yet our results suggest that overcoming these legal, communication, and operational challenges could be essential for fisheries with highly seasonal dynamics and particular local importance, like Dungeness crab.

Our exploration of influential relationships also demonstrated how climate adaptation designed under certain assumptions can have drastically different, and potentially inequitable, outcomes for different fishing communities or individual fishers. Inequitable outcomes in our model community were driven by in-season fishing flexibility. When our QNM structure allowed for little in-season flexibility (“no effect” configuration), non-material well-being suffered more from the implementation of Insurance and Multi-Objective Disaster Relief than with no action at all; whereas when those same adaptation strategies were implemented under high in-season flexibility (“switching targets” configuration), the community saw an increase in material well-being from the HAB. These disparate outcomes also carry implications for monitoring the effectiveness of adaptive strategies. Monitoring and assessment efforts that aim to capture unequal outcomes need to be conducted at appropriate scales. For example, in our model community, there would need to be sufficient representation from subgroups with different in-season flexibility to capture heterogeneous outcomes for well-being. In-season flexibility and other dimensions of fishing opportunity and behavior have been described at the vessel level on the U.S. West Coast using fisheries-dependent data sets (fishery landings and vessel geolocation data; Holland and Leonard 2020, Fisher et al. 2021, Liu et al. 2023), with interviews and surveys providing important context around operational and financial constraints (Dewees et al. 2004, Drakopulos and Poe 2023). If influential dynamics that drive inequitable outcomes trend with socioeconomic status, planned adaptation to extreme events can go beyond monitoring and mitigation to help address underlying drivers of social vulnerability (Adger 2006, Ribot 2014, Colburn et al. 2016).

Implications for adaptive capacity and rebounding vulnerability

When aspects of human well-being are closely tied to a community’s or an individual’s adaptive capacity, climate adaptation may cause rebounding vulnerability over longer time-scales. For example, in our first set of simulations, the Supplementary Diversification strategy intensified negative HAB impacts to two well-being variables: Subsistence and Shoreside infrastructure & support services. We defined Shoreside infrastructure & support services as physical port infrastructure as well as the local industry and commerce that supports commercial fishing activity (e.g., gear producers, mechanics, seafood distributors, etc.). There are several ways that intensified negative impacts to Shoreside infrastructure & support services could reduce adaptive capacity. Loss of suppliers can increase costs, reducing the material assets that fishers may need to adapt to climate change. Shuttering of local support services may end long-time working relationships and bridging social ties that enable social learning (Barnes et al. 2017, Salgueiro-Otero et al. 2022). Consolidation of fish buyers and processors, which creates unequal power relationships, is already a challenge for U.S. West Coast fishers (Drakopulos and Poe 2023). NOAA Fisheries has profiled shoreside support services and physical infrastructure for select U.S. West Coast communities (Norman et al. 2007). Although these profiles are not completed regularly, they offer a baseline and a starting place for indicator development where strategies are expected to replicate this pathway of rebounding vulnerability. Alternatively, fishery landings could be used as an indirect indicator of shoreside infrastructure if research could relate landing declines to the diversity and viability of fishery-associated businesses.

In exploring model configurations with reduced in-season flexibility, we found that three adaptation strategies (Insurance, Multi-Objective Disaster Relief, Supplementary Diversification) intensified negative impacts to Intangible connections to nature. Direct observation of nature, including first-hand experience with extreme environmental events, builds local knowledge and memory. This increases the capacity of individuals and communities to recognize and learn from change (Berkes et al. 2003, Cinner et al. 2018) and can drive action from perceived risk or vulnerability (Spence et al. 2011, Akerlof et al. 2013, Myers et al. 2013). Loss of local knowledge as an outcome of climate adaptation may therefore reduce a community’s capacity to adapt to future environmental change, causing rebounding vulnerability.

Considerations for applying QNMs to climate adaptation planning

Although our exploratory study leaned on existing knowledge and literature, integrating QNMs into climate adaptation planning will require participatory modeling. Participatory modeling involves eliciting mental models from diverse actors to create a collective representation of the system as a QNM (Gray et al. 2015, Gourguet et al. 2021). Building QNMs in a participatory process ensures model structure and assumptions accurately reflect local social-ecological conditions. It can also help to disentangle structural artifacts when translating simulation outcomes; we leaned heavily on existing interviews and surveys with U.S. West Coast fishers to ground-truth our models. Participatory modeling can also build a shared understanding of social-ecological systems and support social learning processes, which can be particularly important in building consensus to address difficult problems in complex systems (Sandker et al. 2010, Jones et al. 2011). Participatory modeling for adaptation planning can include stakeholder identification of preferred system states, and prioritization of well-being outcomes (Gray et al. 2015). Our QNMs could be adapted in a participatory modeling process to represent local social-ecological conditions for a specific U.S. West Coast community, and/or to reflect varying realities for different fishery participants (e.g., vessel owner / operators versus crew members).

We also encourage careful reflection on limitations to the QNM approach, which are important to compensate for in other areas of climate adaptation planning. The exclusively linear relationships of QNMs limited our ability to explore important nonlinear dynamics in our system, which led us to exclude some of those relationships from the model. For example, a certain level of adventure, challenge, and “pitting skill against nature” contributes to job quality satisfaction for some U.S. West Coast fishers (Strawn 2019, Holland et al. 2020), but dangerous sea conditions have deadly consequences (Kaplan and Kite-Powell 2000, Oregon Institute of Occupational Health Sciences 2020a, 2020b).

Additionally, the qualitative nature of QNMs made it difficult for us to detect compounding negative effects; if a variable was already strongly negatively perturbed, other negative impacts did not change model outcomes. This was a major reason we observed similar outcomes from the Existing and New Fisheries Diversification strategies, despite the additional operational costs in the New Fisheries Diversification QNM (Tables S7-8). This particular limitation has implications for simulating multiple extreme events, or exploring the interaction between climate change and compounding socioeconomic pressures. For the U.S. West Coast Dungeness crab fishery, such pressures include socioeconomic trends like rising operational costs (Drakopulos and Poe 2023, Nelson et al. 2023, Glickman et al. 2025) and aging of the fisheries workforce (Ritzman et al. 2018, Drakopulos and Poe 2023), which we have given limited consideration with the variable Entry of the Next Generation for our New Fisheries Diversification strategy. Climate-driven closures of other fisheries targeted by crabbers also have compounding impacts (e.g., salmon fisheries; Drakopulos and Poe 2023), and can affect the success of fisheries diversification strategies.

Finally, it is challenging to investigate more process-focused climate adaptation strategies (e.g., collaborative and inclusive ocean use planning processes; PFMC 2021a) and certain aspects of well-being (e.g., agency) using QNMs, because QNMs conceptualize human-natural relationships as discrete interacting entities (in contrast to process-relational ontologies; Mancilla García et al. 2020). However, the goal of applying QNMs to climate adaptation planning is not to replace all other planning tools, but rather to increase the robustness of early planning processes that draw on multiple complementary methods (including non-modeling frameworks, such as Magnan et al. 2016).

CONCLUSIONS

We used qualitative network models (QNMs) to explore social-ecological dynamics that can cause unintended negative consequences from climate adaptation. We specifically evaluated whether and how stakeholder-identified climate adaptation strategies might intensify harmful algal bloom impacts to human well-being in U.S. West Coast fisheries. Identifying common outcomes across adaptive strategies highlighted mutual shortcomings that could reproduce pathways for rebounding vulnerability. Exploring alternative QNM configurations highlighted potential pathways for inequitable outcomes from climate adaptation, as well as opportunities to amplify favorable outcomes. Our results demonstrate the value of QNMs for developing and monitoring climate adaptation strategies. Applications of QNMs for this purpose will be most valuable when their construction is iterative and participatory, and when their interpretation is thoughtful, generative, and grounded in local context.

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