SPECIAL FEATURE: ORIGINAL ARTICLE Sustainable Deltas: Livelihoods, Ecosystem Services, and Policy Implications A conceptual framework for analyzing deltas as coupled social–ecological systems: an example from the Amazon River Delta Eduardo S. Brondizio 1,2,3 • Nathan D. Vogt 2,4,5 • Andressa V. Mansur 2,6 • Edward J. Anthony 7 • Sandra Costa 5 • Scott Hetrick 2 Received: 14 August 2015 / Accepted: 25 April 2016 / Published online: 23 May 2016 Ó Springer Japan 2016 Abstract At the nexus of watersheds, land, coastal areas, oceans, and human settlements, river delta regions pose specific challenges to environmental governance and sus- tainability. Using the Amazon Estuary-Delta region (AD) as our focus, we reflect on the challenges created by the high degree of functional interdependencies shaping social–ecological dynamics of delta regions. The article introduces the initial design of a conceptual framework to analyze delta regions as coupled social–ecological systems (SES). The first part of the framework is used to define a delta SES according to a problem and/or collective action dilemma. Five components can be used to define a delta SES: social–economic systems, governance systems, ecosystems-resource systems, topographic-hydrological systems, and oceanic-climate systems. These components are used in association with six types of telecoupling conditions: socio-demographic, economic, governance, ecological, material, and climatic-hydrological. The second part of the framework presents a strategy for the analysis of collective action problems in delta regions, from sub-delta/ local to delta to basin levels. This framework is intended to support both case studies and comparative analysis. The article provides illustrative applications of the framework to the AD. First, we apply the framework to define and characterize the AD as coupled SES. We then utilize the framework to diagnose an example of collective action problem related to the impacts of urban growth, and urban and industrial pollution on small-scale fishing resources. We argue that the functional interdependencies character- istic of delta regions require new approaches to understand, diagnose, and evaluate the current and future impacts of social–ecological changes and potential solutions to the sustainability dilemmas of delta regions. Keywords Deltas Á Social–ecological systems Á Amazon Á Telecoupling Á Governance Á Sustainability Introduction At the nexus of watersheds, land, coastal areas, oceans, and human settlements, delta regions pose specific challenges to environmental governance and sustainability. The flow within deltas of water, nutrients and sediments, pollutants as well as people and resources creates complex social and physical interactions operating at different scales and marked by pulses and time lags. These include rainfall patterns, river discharge (liquid and solid), ecological processes, flood cycles and tides, waves, and changes in settlements and human activities responding to these Handled by Zoe Matthews, University of Southampton, Southampton, United Kingdom. & Eduardo S. Brondizio ebrondiz@indiana.edu 1 Department of Anthropology, Indiana University Bloomington, Bloomington, IN, USA 2 Center for the Analysis of Social-Ecological Landscapes (CASEL), Indiana University Bloomington, Bloomington, IN, USA 3 Ostrom Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis, Indiana University Bloomington, Bloomington, IN, USA 4 Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais (INPE), Sa ˜o Jose ´ dos Campos, Brazil 5 Universidade do Vale do Paraı ´ba (UNIVAP), Sa ˜o Jose ´ dos Campos, Brazil 6 Oficina Erasmus Mundus, Universidad de Ca ´diz, Ca ´diz, Spain 7 Universite ´ Aix-Marseille, Marseille, France 123 Sustain Sci (2016) 11:591–609 DOI 10.1007/s11625-016-0368-2