Complex Systems Dynamics of Human-Wildlife-Habitat Interactions in the Lake Chad Basin: A Multi-Scale Analysis

The Lake Chad Basin, spanning Nigeria's North East geopolitical zone and three neighboring countries, represents one of the world's most complex and rapidly changing socio-ecological systems, where shrinking freshwater availability, biodiversity loss, conflict, and livelihood insecurity interact across multiple spatial and temporal scales. Existing wildlife conservation analyses in this landscape treat human-wildlife-habitat interactions as linear cause-effect relationships, failing to capture the non-linear dynamics, feedback loops, and emergent properties characteristic of complex adaptive systems. This dissertation applies a complex systems theoretical framework to analyze multi-scale human-wildlife-habitat interactions in the Nigerian Lake Chad basin, combining agent-based modeling, long-term remote sensing analysis, social network analysis, and ethnographic fieldwork across 18 months of fieldwork in Borno and Yobe States. Agent-based models are developed to simulate responses of migratory wildlife species to stochastic hydrological perturbations and human settlement dynamics. Social network analysis maps the structure of resource governance relationships among fishing, farming, and pastoralist communities. Results demonstrate regime shift dynamics in the wetland-wildlife system, with critical threshold indicators identified for three key ecological transitions. Original contributions include a novel socio-ecological vulnerability index for the Lake Chad basin and a multi-scale policy leverage framework. Findings advance complex systems theory in dryland socio-ecology and provide an evidence base for trans-national conservation governance reform. Keywords: complex systems, Lake Chad Basin, socio-ecological systems, North East Nigeria, multi-scale analysis