The Altiplano Potosino is located in the Southern Chihuahua Desert in San Luis Potosi, Mexico (Figure 1), covering approximately 21,510 km² within the Mesa Central physiographic province (Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Geografía [INEGI], 2001). The region comprises intermountain plains, tectonic depressions and north-south-oriented mountain ranges at 1,500–2,000 m a.s.l., shaped by a geological history of Mesozoic sedimentary basins overlain by Cenozoic volcanic sequences. Soils range from calcareous xerosols in western and northern areas to shallow lithosols and more fertile pheozems in the south.

The predominant climate is temperate dry (BS1) with seasonal rainfall concentrated between June and October and occasional precipitation events in December and January (García, 2004). Mean annual precipitation is below 400 mm, and the average annual temperature is approximately 18 °C, with extremes ranging from 8.4 °C to 32 °C (CONAGUA, 2023). The Altiplano Potosino falls within the administrative hydrological region of El Salado, the driest in the country, with an estimated annual runoff of 10–20 mm (Negrete, 2020).

Vegetation varies along gradients of altitude, water availability and topography. Xerophytic vegetation dominates most of the region, particularly microphyllous and rosetophyllous desert scrublands (Rzedowski, 1961), including species such as Larrea tridentata, Flourensia cernua, Parthenium incanum, Agave lechuguilla, and Yucca filifera. Microphyllous scrublands and grasslands cover the intermountain plains and lowlands, whereas rosetophyllous scrublands are more common on rocky slopes and mountainous areas. In higher elevations, these vegetation types gradually transition into temperate woodlands and conifer forests. Halophytic grasslands and mesquite woodlands occur locally depending on soil salinity, soil depth, and topographic conditions (Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Geografía [INEGI], 2018).

Goat pastoralism is concentrated in microphyllous and rosetophyllous scrublands, where goats are morphologically and behaviorally adapted to consume thorny and fibrous vegetation (Echavarría-Cháirez and Gómez-Ruiz, 2013). Pastoral mobility follows seasonal vegetation and rainfall dynamics: herds use grasslands and lowlands during the dry season and shift toward mountainous areas during the dry season (Mora-Ledesma, 2020). These movements are constrained by the limits of communal grazing territories and land-tenure arrangements (Negrete-Sánchez et al., 2016; Rivera et al., 2020). Unlike cattle production, which is commonly associated with fenced properties, goat pastoralism is predominantly practiced by ejidal smallholders under communal open-grazing regimes (Trenti-Very et al., 2021; Tajonar et al., 2022).

The Altiplano Potosino has dispersed rural settlements and high levels of marginalization, poverty, and inequality (CONEVAL, 2020). Over recent decades, it has undergone rapid territorial transformation driven by irrigated agriculture, mining, renewable energy projects, horticultural agro-industries and the automotive sector (Montiel Torres, 2019). These processes have fragmented rangelands, reduced rainfed farming areas, altered labor dynamics, and contributed to changes in communal tenure systems and land-use patterns (Ortega and Morán, 2020; Morán et al., 2023).

Mexican agricultural policy organizes farming and livestock activities into “production units,” which are operational entities comprising one or more land parcels and farming infrastructure managed under a shared household or collective decision-making structure (SADER, 2021). In the Altiplano Potosino, goat herding is largely organized through these units, which constitute an important operational scale for herd management, grazing mobility, labor organization, and resource allocation. Goat production has a long history in the region, dating back to the sixteenth century, when herding was carried out by laborers working on haciendas within colonial production systems (Mellado, 1997; Oseguera Montiel et al., 2014). Following the Mexican Revolution, agrarian reforms established ejidal communal tenure, reshaping pastoral territorial organization. In 1992, PROCEDE (in Spanish: “Programa de Certificación de Derechos Ejidales y Titulación de Solares”) enabled the certification of ejidal rights and opened possibilities for changes in tenure and privatization, contributing to subsequent social-ecological transformations in pastoral systems (Huber-Sannwald et al., 2012; Mora-Ledesma, 2020).

This study adopts a social-ecological systems (SES) approach (Reid et al., 2014), to characterize goat pastoral systems in the Altiplano Potosino and spatially assess their multidimensional vulnerability. A literature review was conducted on pastoral SES in drylands worldwide, focusing on pastoral mobility, rangeland governance, livelihood diversification and vulnerability dynamics (Guilherme et al., 2017; Vilá et al., 2020; Tajonar et al., 2022; Vargas et al., 2022; Sharifian et al., 2023), as well as the socio-economic, socio-political and socio-cultural dimensions of goat pastoralism in the Altiplano Potosino (Mora-Ledesma, 2011; 2020; Urquijo Torres, 2017; Potosí, 2013; Barrera-Perales et al., 2018; Ortega and Morán, 2020). This review informed the participatory research design and provided contextual information on pastoral characteristics, challenges, and adaptive responses. Consultations with goat pastoralism specialists from Argentina, Chile and Mexico provided additional comparative insights.

For clarity, we distinguish among vulnerability, vulnerability-associated conditions, vulnerability drivers, vulnerability criteria, and vulnerability indicators. Vulnerability is understood as an emergent, relational, and context-specific property of a social-ecological system. Vulnerability-associated conditions refer to environmental, social, territorial, and institutional conditions through which vulnerability becomes observable in a particular context. Vulnerability drivers refer to stressors, changes, or constraints identified by stakeholders as influencing these vulnerability-associated conditions, without implying causal relationships. Vulnerability criteria are broader analytical categories synthesized from recurring participatory evidence, while vulnerability indicators are measurable variables used to represent these criteria spatially when suitable data are available. For example, stakeholders identified drought, land-use change, migration, and limited access to resources as factors influencing vulnerability-associated conditions. These participatory findings were synthesized into vulnerability criteria such as ecosystem degradation, high migration intensity, and limited access to watering points, which were then represented using measurable spatial indicators where data allowed.

The Participatory Vulnerability Assessment Framework (PVAF) comprises two phases (Figure 2). Phase 1 characterizes CaprinoCultura as an SES across three interconnected spatial/institutional scales: (1) household/production unit, (2) ejido/shared territory, and (3) regional/shared landscape governance (Altiplano Potosino) (Figure 3). Phase 2 organizes stakeholder-identified vulnerability-associated conditions into conceptual criteria, operationalizes them using spatially explicit indicators, and integrates them through Multi-Criteria Analysis (MCA) within a Geographic Information System (GIS) framework (Figure 4). The MCA does not directly measure vulnerability or model causal interactions; rather, it provides an integrative spatial representation of the relative convergence of vulnerability-associated conditions based on stakeholder-derived priorities. Details of each phase are described below.

Goat populations in San Luis Potosí (Figure 5) increased steadily starting in 1980 and reached over 1.2 million heads by 1994 (SIAP, 2022). This expansion coincided with economic restructuring associated with the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) in 1986 and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994; it integrated Mexican agriculture into global markets and altered incentives for small-scale farmers. Despite these changes, goat numbers sharply declined after 1996, because of market exposure and broader structural pressures (Montiel Torres, 2019) and out-migration and aging of the rural population thereby reducing labor availability and weakening generational continuity within pastoral systems (Gómez-Ruiz et al., 2012).

During the early 2000s, the nationwide livestock support program Programa Pecuario Sustentable y Ordenamiento Ganadero y Apícola (PROGAN) helped stabilize goat production; however, numbers declined after 2006 (Figure 5). Beyond policy and market factors, pronounced climate variability, particularly droughts in 1998, 2000–2001, 2005, and 2011, likely placed additional pressure on pastoral systems. Since 2016, goat numbers have shown moderate recovery, coinciding with the implementation of the Regional Goat Project (Proyecto Regional Caprino) promoted by the Secretaría de Desarrollo Agropecuario y Recursos Hidráulicos (SEDARH) in San Luis Potosí. This project aimed to strengthen goat production through genetic improvement, market development, and animal health management (Anzaldo Montoya, 2024). More favorable conditions may also have contributed to this recovery. The latest available estimate reported approximately 772,075 goats in San Luis Potosí in 2022, with most production units concentrated in the Altiplano Potosino (SIAP, 2022).

CaprinoCultura in the Altiplano Potosino constitutes a complex social-ecological system shaped by ecological, social, cultural and political interaction dynamics across multiple spatial and temporal scales (Figure 6). Participatory characterization identified vulnerability-associated conditions operating across household, ejido and regional levels, including environmental variability, territorial transformations, governance constraints and changes in household organization and resource access. These conditions informed the vulnerability criteria developed in Phase 2.

Throughout the participatory characterization, stakeholders identified and discussed the principal socioenvironmental factors affecting the development and long-term sustainability of CaprinoCultura. Analysis and triangulation across interviews, participatory mapping, Rivers of Life, and multi-stakeholder workshops revealed a range of perceived vulnerability-associated conditions that informed the development of the 12 criteria used in the spatial assessment.

Herders highlighted declining precipitation, overgrazing and soil degradation as their main challenges. Recent droughts (2020, 2022 and 2023) forced reductions in herd size and changes in grazing routes. Rangeland degradation is concentrated near communities, reflecting both historical grazing pressures from larger herds (Gómez-Ruiz et al., 2012) and declining use of remote grazing areas associated with livelihood diversification, the disuse of majadas, and mobility constraints among older herders. Herders identified weak regulation of communal grazing as a further contributor to overgrazing and soil degradation. They also acknowledged limited knowledge of rangelands’ carrying capacity despite recognizing its importance for sustainable production. In some ejidos, stocking rates are nearly three times the recommended level of one Animal Unit (AU) per 17 ha, where one AU equals six productive goats (Barrera-Perales et al., 2018). Participants described changes in the ejido land use as slow and complex because they require collective decisions by the ejidatarios, many of whom live elsewhere or participate infrequently.

Government representatives identified prolonged rainfall deficits as a major constraint, even in areas served by earthen dams with a larger reservoir. They also emphasized limited access to milk collection and preservation technologies, linking these deficiencies to lower product quality and restricted market access (consistent with Potosí, 2013). They noted that effective technology adoption depends on the capacity and willingness to collaborate within each ejido. Soil degradation associated with livestock and other agricultural activities was another common concern.

Academic participants emphasized changes in land-tenure and management practices. They argued that, under certain conditions, a transition from communal to private tenure could encourage more sustainable rangeland management by strengthening ownership incentives (similarly to Negrete-Sánchez et al., 2016). Nevertheless, they cautioned that land sales could enable acquisition by agribusinesses and mining companies, potentially reducing grazing areas and compromising water availability and quality, concerns also documented in previous studies (Oseguera Montiel et al., 2014; Mora-Ledesma, 2020; Ortega and Morán, 2020).

Civil society organizations also identified declining precipitation as a critical concern, but emphasized youth out-migration. Limited economic opportunities and adverse environmental conditions were perceived to threaten generational continuity, consistent with previous studies documenting the growing dependance of CaprinoCultura on older producers (Gómez-Ruiz et al., 2012; Oseguera Montiel et al., 2014; Trenti-Very et al., 2021).

These perceptions were reflected in the relative weights assigned to the 12 spatial indicators across stakeholder groups (Figure 7). Vegetation condition and soil degradation received the highest average weights (0.12 each), followed by grazing pressure and migration intensity (0.11 each). These averages highlight the overall prominence of rangeland conditions, grazing pressure, and demographic change in stakeholders’ priorities.

Stakeholder priorities reflected their distinct role within the SES, Pastoralists emphasized day-to-day herd and rangeland management, government representatives focused on technological support and production constraints, academics highlighted governance and territorial processes, and civil society organizations stressed demographic continuity and resource access. Shared concerns about rangeland degradation and grazing pressure suggest opportunities for collaborative action. Stakeholder-specific weights were then incorporated into the Multi-Criteria Analysis (MCA) to assess how differences in priorities shaped the resulting spatial patterns.

According to SIAP database, the largest numbers of registered livestock production units (LPUs) occur in Villa de Guadalupe (n = 336), Charcas (n = 311), Matehuala (n = 273), and Cedral (n = 269). Because many goat producers remain unregistered, the spatial assessment covered ejidos where CaprinoCultura is known to occur rather than relying on registered LPU locations. Each criterion was mapped independently to capture its specific spatial expression and relative contribution to pastoral vulnerability (Figure 8 panel).

Reduced annual precipitation: All stakeholder groups identified low rainfall as a major environmental stressor. The SPEI24 data indicated drought episodes across the Altiplano Potosino during 1998, 2000–2001, 2005, 2011, and 2022–2023 (Figure 9). Similar SPEI trends among municipalities indicate that drought was a broadly shared regional stressor. Given its limited spatial differentiation at the scale of analysis, drought was retained as contextual information and excluded from the MCA and stakeholder weighting, as described in the Methods.

Limited access to urban centers: Distance to urban centers shapes access to markets and services. Matehuala, with 86,686 inhabitants, is the main regional market for goat meat and cheese. Remote herders face higher transportation costs and fewer opportunities to commercialize perishable products, often relying on local or informal markets with limited income opportunities. Animal movement across administrative boundaries requires compliance with animal health standards, traceability and official permits (e.g., NOM-041-ZOO-1995 for brucellosis control in goats or the registers in SINIIGA) (Figure 8A).

Low suitability of land-use and vegetation conditions for goat pastoralism: Participants identified desert scrub vegetation and rainfed agriculture as the most favorable for goat production because they provide forage and crop residues. These land-cover types occupy much of the Altiplano Potosino, resulting in relatively low scores for this criterion across large areas. Higher scores occurred where vegetation and land were less suitable for pastoral production (Figure 8B).

Terrain steepness: Steep, rugged terrain constrains pastoral mobility. The highest scores ocurred in the municipalities of Catorce, Villa de la Paz, Villa de Guadalupe, Charcas, Guadalcázar, and Villa Hidalgo (Figure 8C).

Exposure to megaprojects: Large-scale agricultural, mining, and energy developments were associated with rangeland fragmentation, restricted grazing areas, disrupted mobility routes, and reduced resource access. The highest vulnerability-associated conditions occurred in Vanegas, Villa de la Paz, Cedral, Santo Domingo, Villa de Guadalupe, Matehuala, and Charcas (Figure 8D). Although these developments may provide temporary employment, participants emphasized longer-term threats to pastoral livelihoods, consistent with previous studies (Mora-Ledesma, 2011; 2020; Urquijo Torres, 2017; Morán et al., 2023).

Communal land governance constraints: Scores varied across the region, with the highest values in Vanegas, Venado, Catorce, Charcas, Villa de Guadalupe, and Villa Hidalgo (Figure 8E). Participants described difficulties coordinating resource use, enforcing local agreements, and regulating grazing pressure. However, cases such as the ejido El Castañón illustrate how strong internal organization can support sustainable rangeland management (Negrete-Sánchez et al., 2016).

Ecosystem degradation and high grazing pressure: Cedral, Matehuala and Villa de Guadalupe, exhibited the highest grazing pressure, with stocking rates exceeding recommended thresholds (Figure 8F). These municipalities together with Guadalcázar, also had the lowest SAVI values (Figure 8G). CONABIO data indicated moderate soil degradation across much of the region, with high to extreme degradation in Charcas, Villa de Guadalupe, Villa Hidalgo, and Guadalcázar (Figure 8H). The convergence of grazing pressure, reduced vegetation cover, and soil degradation was particularly evident in Villa de Guadalupe.

High migration intensity: Participants associated youth out-migration with reduced household labor and disrupted intergenerational knowledge transmission, leaving herding increasingly in the hands of older family members, often over 70 years of age. Reported consequences include smaller herds, shorter grazing routes, and reduced capacity to maintain labor-intensive practices. Migration was highest in Cedral, Santo Domingo, Villa de Ramos, Venado, Moctezuma, and Villa de Guadalupe (Figure 8I).

Limited access to watering points: Livestock water sources include seasonal ponds, small reservoirs (bordos), wells, and water-storage infrastructure. Water bodies suitable for livestock use occupied the largest portions of territory in Matehuala (0.71%), Santo Domingo (0.68%), and Vanegas (0.60%), and the smallest in Villa de la Paz (0.019%), Villa de Arista (0.025%), and Guadalcázar (0.04%) (Figure 8J). However, this measure does not fully capture effective access, as water sources may be unevenly distributed, seasonal, or restricted by land-tenure arrangements.

Restrictions associated with Protected Natural Areas: Sierra La Mojonera, Wirikuta, and the Guadalcázar State Reserve influence pastoral activities through land-use restrictions and opportunities for conservation support (Figure 8K). While these areas provide opportunities for conservation and restoration programs, may also restrict land use and grazing expansion. The highest levels of vulnerability-associated conditions occurred in Cedral, Matehuala, Villa de Guadalupe, Santo Domingo, Venado, Moctezuma, and Villa de Arista.

Low eligibility for technological support programs: The Regional Goat Program, introduced in 2016, primarily benefited larger producers, particularly those managing more than 100 goats. Reported improvements in animal health and milk processing were limited by insufficient follow-up and technologies poorly suited to local production systems. Equipment underuse, discontinued practices and occasional conflicts over shared infrastructure further reduced program benefits. The highest levels of this vulnerability-associated condition occurred in Santo Domingo, Salinas, Villa de Ramos, Villa Hidalgo, Guadalcázar, and Vanegas (Figure 8L).

The integrated map, based on equally weighted stakeholder perspectives showed clear spatial variation in the convergence of vulnerability-associated conditions (Figure 10). Higher scores occurred in Vanegas, Cedral, Matehuala, Villa de Guadalupe, Guadalcázar, and Villa Hidalgo. Charcas, Catorce, Venado, Moctezuma, Santo Domingo, Villa de Ramos, and Salinas, exhibited lower and more heterogeneous scores. Contrasts among neighboring ejidos in Matehuala and Charcas also revealed within-municipality variation in grazing pressure, governance, vegetation condition, and resource access.

Stakeholder-specific maps showed broadly similar patterns, with substantial overlap in high-scoring areas in the central-eastern and northern Altiplano Potosino (Figure 11 panel). Differences in stakeholder weighting nevertheless affected MCA score magnitude and distribution. Pastoralists’ emphasis on grazing pressure and soil degradation produced higher scores near population centers, particularly in Matehuala, Villa de Guadalupe, Cedral, and Vanegas. Government priorities yielded a more homogeneous distribution of moderate-to-high scores, while academic priorities produced greater spatial differentiation. NGOs weight areas with high migration and limited access to resources and institutional support.

Sensitivity analyses indicated that spatial MCA patterns were highly robust to moderate changes in criterion weights (±20%), with Spearman’s ρ generally above 0.98. The leave-one-criterion-out analysis revealed that some criteria, particularly ecosystem degradation and overgrazing, had a stronger influence on the spatial organization of results, although their influence varied among stakeholder groups. Alternative stakeholder aggregation produced highly consistent spatial patterns, with equal- and sample-size-proportional weighting yielding high spatial agreement with the integrated assessment. Detailed sensitivity analysis results are provided in Supplementary Material S4.

The findings suggest that adaptive capacity in CaprinoCultura depends on conditions that allow households to put their knowledge and management strategies into practice. Pastoral households are embedded within broader territorial, institutional and ecological processes that shape their capacity to respond to socioenvironmental change (Linstädter et al., 2016; Tolera and Senbeta, 2020; Postigo, 2021).

Mobility illustrates this relationship: enables responses to variability in forage and water, but depends on ecological knowledge and arrangements governing access to grazing areas (Kakinuma et al., 2019; Turner and Schlecht, 2019; D’Abramo et al., 2021; Sharifian et al., 2023). In the Mexican ejido context, its adaptive value is therefore closely tied to communal resource governance. Territorial fragmentation and demographic change appear to constrain this capacity jointly. While privatization and competing land uses restrict accessible grazing areas, migration and population aging reduce the household labor available to use them. These processes have also been documented in other pastoral systems (Robinson and Flintan, 2022; Ntombela et al., 2024).

Local ecological knowledge is similarly dependent on opportunities for its continued use and transmission. It provides detailed information relevant to herd management and territorial planning, like forage quality, seasonal resource availability, grazing suitability, animal health, and production potential (León Villalobos et al., 2018; Sharifian et al., 2022), but its adaptive role may weaken when access to familiar grazing territories is lost or intergenerational participation declines. Participatory territorial planning offers one means of bringing this knowledge into dialogue with technical assessments and land-use decisions (Arteaga Aguilar et al., 2014). These findings shift attention from the presence of adaptive practices to the conditions that sustain them. Ejido governance is central to this distinction because collective rules and decisions shape whether households can access and manage the resources on which those practices depend.

Variation among ejidos suggests that communal tenure should not itself be interpreted as a vulnerability factor. Its implications depend on how collective institutions regulate grazing, negotiate resource access and enforce agreements. This interpretation is consistent with studies showing that collective institutions can support adaptive capacity through collective action and flexible resource management (Fernández-Giménez et al., 2015; Gongbuzeren et al., 2021; Pappagallo, 2024). The ejido is therefore a governance arena in which household interests, ecological variability, and external pressures are negotiated.

Robinson, (2019) similarly shows that pastoral tenure systems often involve flexible and overlapping arrangements of access and use that do not conform to conventional communal–private distinctions. Pappagallo, (2024) likewise shows how collective institutions can maintain connectivity and flexible access to heterogeneous resources across tenure arrangements. Together, these studies suggest that the adaptive value of pastoral institutions depends less on formal tenure categories than on their capacity to maintain connectivity, negotiate access, and adjust resource-use arrangements under changing conditions.

Evidence from El Castañon associates rangeland parcelization with improved rangeland condition, livestock production, and individual stewardship (Negrete-Sánchez et al., 2016). Our findings do not rule out such benefits, but caution against attributing outcomes to tenure categories alone. Pastoral access arrangements often extend beyond communal-private distinctions, and their adaptive value depends on maintaining connectivity and negotiating access to heterogeneous resources (Robinson, 2019; Pappagallo, 2024). Strengthening local governance may therefore support adaptation without necessarily requiring changes in tenure.

This perspective favors support tailored to local institutional capacities over uniform prescriptions. Research across pastoral contexts worldwide highlights the importance of collaborative institutions and governance networks to coordinate communities, governments, and other actors under changing conditions like climate-related pressures (Tolera and Senbeta, 2023; Weng et al., 2023; Yang et al., 2023; Zhang, 2023). Thus, while institutional arrangements are various a common principle is that pastoral adaptive capacity depends partly on institutions’ ability to maintain flexible and collectively negotiated access to heterogeneous resources while connecting local knowledge and decision-making with broader institutional support. In our study, we show that differences in local governance effectiveness become spatially differentiated across a pastoral landscape. For CaprinoCultural, this implies attending to how ejido rules operate in practice and whether households can participate in, negotiate, and implement collective decisions.

The household is both a productive unit and a social setting through which labor, knowledge, resource management and production and risk are organized. This helps explain how pastoral families combine livelihood activities to respond to changing conditions, as documented in other pastoral and smallholder goat systems (Oseguera Montiel et al., 2014; Mairomi and Kimengsi, 2021). Livelihood diversification can buffer income fluctuations, but its adaptive benefits depend partly on whether households retain sufficient labor and knowledge to sustain pastoral practices. Migration and demographic aging may weaken these adaptive capacities (Ntombela et al., 2024).

Household continuity also has a sociocultural and territorial dimension. Herders’ descriptions of grazing areas as places of family history and learning suggest that these territories sustain relationships beyond production and are rooted in memory, identity, and social meaning. This interpretation is consistent with research linking pastoral knowledge to landscapes, intergenerational transmission, and cultural identity and heritage (Sharifian et al., 2022; Chao et al., 2025). Consequently, migration and territorial fragmentation affect not only production but also relationships through which CaprinoCultura is maintained and renewed.

The spatial assessment represents the relative convergence of selective vulnerability-associated conditions rather than an absolute measure of vulnerability. Its interpretation depends on the indicators, scale, and aggregation procedures used (de Sherbinin et al., 2019; Thiault et al., 2021). Mobility, livelihood diversification and household organization were identified through participatory activities but could not be consistently represented spatially. Their omission from the spatial model reflects methodological scope rather than the lack of relevance to adaptive capacity.

The maps should therefore guide further inquiry and locally negotiated responses rather than serve as definitive classifications of territories. Areas with higher scores warrant closer examination of how mapped conditions interact with capacities not captured by the indicators. Sensitivity analyses support the stability of spatial rankings under the tested weighting changes, but do not establish that the indicators capture all dimensions of vulnerability. This limitation also highlights a broader contribution of the study. Rather than treating vulnerability as a fixed territorial attribute, our results distinguish between the spatial distribution of selected vulnerability conditions and the broader processes shaping adaptive capacity.

Equal weighting balanced the contribution of stakeholder sectors to the integrated map but did not eliminate differences in representation within them, including the limited participation of women and younger generations. Spatial indicators also only partially capture the governance arrangements and adaptive practices identified through participatory research. Although sensitivity analyses supported the stability of spatial rankings under the tested scenarios, future research could examine how these patterns relate to observed livelihood outcomes and changes in pastoral continuity.

Stakeholder-specific maps also remain important alongside the integrated assessment. Although their broad patterns were similar, differences in priorities reveal distinct concerns that averaging can obscure. These differences provide information for deliberation rather than simply uncertainty to be eliminated (Findlater et al., 2022). Reading the maps together can support dialogue among complementary knowledge systems while preserving their distinct perspectives (similarly to Tengö et al., 2017; Fernández-Giménez, 2020; Reid-Shaw et al., 2021; Seiferth et al., 2024). In pastoral systems, collaborative research has similarly shown that co-production, integration of knowledges, social learning, networking, and collective action can strengthen connections between knowledge generation and governance (Reid et al., 2021).

Shared priorities may function as “theme bridges” around which stakeholders begin this dialogue (Hernández-Valdez et al., 2025). Our approach links co-produced criteria, stakeholder priorities, and spatial analysis to examine vulnerability-associated conditions within their local social-ecological contexts (as mentioned previously by Ayantunde et al., 2015; Yang et al., 2023). Beyond mapping these conditions, this integration can support joint learning, priority setting, and dialogue to inform adaptive governance (Thiault et al., 2021).

These findings support context-specific policies that coordinate actions across households, ejido authorities, government, academia, and civil society across various scales. Production-oriented interventions should account for the governance arrangements, household capacities, and resource constraints that shape their feasibility and adoption. This is particularly relevant where programs have incorporated pastoralists’ priorities and knowledge only to a limited extent (Anzaldo Montoya, 2024) and is consistent with calls for differentiated pastoral policies and coordination across scales (Zhang, 2023).

For territorial planning, stakeholder-informed assessments can complement existing information on environmental suitability, livestock production, infrastructure, land use, and resource availability In Mexico, combining INEGI and SIAP datasets with participatory diagnosis could help distinguish biophysical suitability from the social-ecological conditions needed to sustain pastoral activities. This would inform decisions about which interventions are appropriate, where, and for whom.

At the ejido level, support should strengthen capacities to negotiate grazing access, regulate grazing pressure, resolve conflicts, and monitor rangelands. Communal tenure should not be treated as a constraint; attention should focus on how community-based institutions organize resource access and collective management, strengthening adaptive capacity through knowledge exchange, social capital, and collective action (Fernández-Giménez et al., 2015; Gongbuzeren et al., 2021; Pappagallo, 2024). At the household level, productive support should be accompanied by measures that enable women’s and younger generations’ participation, intergenerational learning and livelihood diversification.

At the regional level, the maps can identify areas requiring closer diagnosis. Where grazing pressure and ecosystem degradation converge, restoration and grazing management may warrant consideration; elsewhere, water access, institutional/technological support or demographic change may require different responses like infrastructure, mobility, market access, training, diversification, and generational strategies. These options should be evaluated locally, since the spatial assessment neither prescribes interventions nor implies an absence of adaptive capacity (Thiault et al., 2021; Balew et al., 2022). In this way, vulnerability assessment can contribute not only to territorial analysis, but also to dialogue, priority setting, and adaptive governance (Metcalf et al., 2015; Yang et al., 2023).

Monitoring vulnerability-associated conditions over time could strengthen the policy relevance of the assessment by tracking whether selected conditions improve, persist, or intensify. Such comparisons would require consistent methods and explicit attention to dataset reference years. Interpreting changes jointly with pastoralists, ejido authorities, and other stakeholders could connect monitoring with locally informed decisions without treating indicator trends as direct measures of changing vulnerability.

This study supports a relational understanding of pastoral vulnerability as an emergent, relational, and spatially differentiated property of social-ecological systems. In which environmental pressures acquire different implications through their interaction with resource access, governance, household organization and local knowledge (Turner et al., 2003; Yang et al., 2023). In CaprinoCultura, this directs attention to the social and institutional conditions that enable pastoralists to exercise adaptive capacity, rather than solely to the pressures they face.

The methodological contribution lies in connecting this contextual understanding with spatial assessment while distinguishing mapped conditions from adaptive processes that require qualitative interpretation. This is particularly relevant in pastoral systems, where mobility, livelihood diversification, household organization, and local knowledge may be central to adaptive capacity but difficult to consistently spatialize (Ayantunde et al., 2015; Thiault et al., 2021). The resulting framework identifies where selected conditions converge and how stakeholders prioritize them, providing a basis for further diagnosis and negotiation. Its broader relevance lies in supporting place-based decisions that sustain pastoralists’ capacity to mobilize knowledge, labor, mobility, collective institutions, and external support in response to change (as described in (Wilmer et al., 2018; 2022; Reid et al., 2021).

Beyond its analytical contribution, participatory vulnerability assessment can create opportunities for dialogue by connecting spatial evidence with different knowledge systems and stakeholder priorities (as suggested by Reid et al., 2021; Seiferth et al., 2024). Its value therefore lies not only in identifying where vulnerability-associated conditions converge, but also in providing a shared basis for negotiating responses that sustain CaprinoCultura and the capacities of those who maintain it.