Using forty years of research to view Bahía Almirante on the Caribbean Coast of Panama as an integrated social-ecological system

Tropical coastal systems play a vital role in sustaining biodiversity, performing ecological functions, and providing ecosystem services. They are also home to 75% of people in the tropics. Given that coasts face intense anthropogenic pressures including climate change, human population growth, and land-use change, it is critical to develop an understanding of the linkages between physical processes, biological interactions, and social dynamics in the complex environment where land and sea meet. Here, we review and synthesize 40 years of research from the Bahía Almirante region on the Caribbean coast of Panama, summarizing the large knowledge base of marine ecology, paleontology, ecosystem science and social science and adding newer information on physical processes. We describe how the system experiences both global and local drivers that are common to many tropical coastal systems and examine the crosscutting linkages that shape the system's response to change. To accomplish this, we utilized the Press-Pulse Dynamics framework as a lens to organize the many strands of research and to allow the interdisciplinary research team to generate explicit illustrative hypotheses about important socioecological linkages related to stressors such as the variability in precipitation and increased migration and tourism. The goal for this review and synthesis is to encourage researchers in Bahía Almirante and other estuarine systems to consider the landscape and seascape more broadly, to reach beyond their immediate field of expertise, and to consider both social and environmental aspects as they seek to increase system understanding in ways that can enable more productive public discourse surrounding policy, infrastructural change, and conservation. Resumen: Los sistemas costeros tropical juegan un rol vital en el mantenimiento de la biodiversidad, cumpliendo funciones ecológicas y previendo servicios ecosistémicos. Estos también representan el hogar para el 75% de las personas en los Trópicos. Dado que las costas enfrentan intensas presiones antropogénicas, incluido el cambio climático, el crecimiento de la población humana y el cambio en el uso de la tierra, es fundamental desarrollar una comprensión de los vínculos entre los procesos físicos, las interacciones biológicas y la dinámica social en el complejo entorno donde se encuentran la tierra y el mar. Aquí, revisamos y sintetizamos 40 años de investigación en la región de la Bahía de Almirante en la costa Caribeñ