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Freshwater social-ecological systems are shaped by site-specific characteristics, environmental change and annual fluctuations, and the actions of resource users and managers. Our primary aim is to analyze the relative effects of these multifacted forces on fishery productivity and biodiversity using the case of community-managed protected areas within Cambodia's rice field fisheries, known as community fish refuges. Our secondary aim is to take advantage of fixed-effects regression models, a rigorous approach that is common in other disciplines, yet novel to analysis of social-ecological system productivity, and allows comparison of each site to itself across time using observational data. We analyze the relative associations of site characteristics, annual fluctuations, biophysical modifications (e.g., deepening, creation of inlet/outlets, etc.), and governance capacity (i.e., community committee meeting intensity, fundraising to support illegal fishing patrols, etc.) with fish biomass and biodiversity within 40 refuges over three years. We find that seasonal and site-specific effects within this system relate strongly to biomass and species richness patterns. We also find an association between biomass and biodiversity and some elements of governance capacity building. Our findings suggest that in this setting solutions tailored and responsive to the local context may be most appropriate given the strong interannual and site-specific drivers. Methodologically, the dynamism and site specificity of such systems befits within-site comparisons over long time horizons to appreciate the factors that drive biomass and biodiversity.

Fisheries of the Mekong Basin are crucial to regional food security. They rely on seasonal monsoon rains that inundate rice fields and reconnect water bodies. Species assemblages vary over time and space, but infrastructure developments and climate change are negatively impacting the timing and magnitude of the flood pulse as well as fish migration routes and populations. In lowland rice field landscapes of Cambodia, community fish refuges (CFRs) are used to maintain fish abundance and biodiversity, with varying success. There is little knowledge of the drivers of this variation to guide management interventions. We used beta diversity to explore the effectiveness of 40 CFRs in maintaining species abundance and diversity during the dry seasons from 2012 to 2015. Results show CFR connectivity to the floodplain is important and suggest the type of inlet/outlet influences fish retention. CFRs connected to a large area of rice fields during the wet season had lower losses in species abundance through the dry season. However, large CFRs, or those part of a larger body of water, had higher losses in species abundance. Key design features of CFRs must be coupled with strong management capacity to guide the conservation and fisheries strategy in the Mekong Basin.