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Collaborative Spaces And Places: From Reslilient Management To Resilience Management In Water Governance: A Case Study From Sierra Nevada,CaliforniaGladin, LizCommunication NetworksGovernance, Multi‐level, Water, self‐organization, complex adaptive systems, networksTHURS.PM2There is increasing evidence that organizational systems capable of addressing the complex problems inherent in natural resource management are likely to bedecentralized, polycentric, multi‐level systems comprising multiple layers of nested enterprises where “collaboration and learning are key, including epistemiccommunities, boundary organizations, policy networks, and institutional interplay” (Berkes & Turner 2006). This doctoral research is exploring these themesthrough examination of collaborative processes in a case study in the Sierra Nevada region of Northern California. The CABY region is a cross‐watershedplanning region identified as part of the California State Water Plan programme on integrated regional water management (IRWM). As such it transcendsjurisdictional, hydrological, institutional and socio‐economic boundaries. Within the CABY region, as well as the IRWM planning process for which CABY wasformed, multiple collaborative processes have emerged at local, watershed and cross‐watershed levels and scales, involving diverse stakeholders, issues, goals,drivers and operational structures, within a highly complex State water management infrastructure. Water management has been identified as especiallysensitive to scale issues exemplifying “fundamental issues and dilemmas of scale in…governance” (Moss & Newig 2010). The CABY‐region case study offers anopportunity to explore the nature of ‘multi‐level, nested and polycentric governance’ (Ostrom 2008) in‐situ, and analyze these processes in the context ofadaptive governance of natural resources. The research to be presented is underpinned by theoretical and methodological perspectives derived from socialnetwork, stakeholder and institutional analysis, exploring whether the emerging governance systems have the capacity to steer the complex and dynamicrelationships between human‐natural systems in order to respond adaptively to change and uncertainty. Such systems will involve: “…individuals,organizations, agencies, institutions at multiple organizational levels…[where]…systems often self‐organize as social networks with teams and actor groups thatdraw on various knowledge systems and experiences for the development of a common understanding and policies” (Folke et al 2005). It involves analyses ofthe institutions, stakeholders and social/policy networks involved in the multiple collaborative processes operating with the CABY hydro‐region. In the contextof the focus on multi‐level, nested, polycentric governance, characterized by both vertical and horizontal links and overlaps, it is especially concerned withissues of scale (i.e. jurisdictional, institutional, geographical spaces), boundary interactions and barriers, and the emergence of collaborative, self‐organizing‘fuzzy and overlapping’ (Davis and Carley 2008) network structures and processes. In viewing the CABY‐region as a complex adaptive system (CAS), theresearch focuses on aspects of particular relevance to CAS including: diversity, heterogeneity, asymmetry and redundancy (e.g. actors, institutions, functionalroles, knowledge systems and resource characteristics); processes of self‐organization; adaptive learning (e.g. social learning, monitoring, (re‐) evaluation). Itexamines the ‘ecology of games’ (Lubell 2010) that stakeholders enter into and within which they develop relationships, share resources and enact influence inorder to promote interests and make rules. In this way the collaborative networks and clusters within the CABY region, which form the local, self‐organizingmechanisms from which decisions, rules and policy outcomes emerge during ‘multiple, interdependent and rule‐structured games’ (ibid p229), will beidentified, explored and analyzed.