In a world of resource constraints and value preferences, trade-offs are everywhere. For example, plant life-history strategy (e.g. energy for growth or defense), ecosystem function incompatibility (e.g. carbon capture but water loss), ecosystem service compromise (e.g. increasing food production and biodiversity conservation), human well-being choice (e.g. material or spiritual well-being), stakeholder conflict (e.g. different interest groups), and management objective (e.g. social, economic, or environmental). Trade-offs exist within and between almost all of the components and processes of the social-ecological systems (SES). There has been a lot of discussion about trade-offs in the literature, but the meaning of this term is sometimes confused when it is used in different contexts, sometimes mixed with other issues such as mismatches. Efforts to connect different trade-offs and analyze their relationships are also inadequate. This paper is to analyze the key trade-offs in the SES and, as an example, illustrate how fully considered trade-offs will contribute to wiser decision making in dryland SES.
