Small islands have limited natural resources, isolated and remote from mainland as territorial areas, and exposed to natural disasters, so that, they have special characteristics and vulnerabilities to global, regional and local influences. Therefore, the resilience, vulnerability and carrying capacity of the area are important to understand as the basis for forming appropriate management and sustainable. The study aims to assess spatial resilience in small islands, with an integrated social-ecological system (SES) framework using the analysis methods of vulnerability, carrying capacity, adaptive capacity and adaptive cycles based on historical and model approaches.
The results of study showed that the spatial changes affected the dynamics of the spatial resilience variables on the Gili Matra Islands, both for biocapacity (BC), spatial ecological footprint (SEF), connectivity index (CI) and spatial heterogeneity (SH). The Gili Matra Islands had a resilient level from moderate to non-resilient, and had adaptive capacity from high to moderate (one to six years). The variables that had good adaptive capacity were CI and SH variables, although the BC variable also indicated good adaptive capacity. Based on the assessment and simulation, the total value of resilience in Gili Ayer Island ranged from 0.566551 to 0.51322 (moderate), Gili Meno Island ranged from 0.604796 to 0.608992 (resilient) and Gili Trawangan Island ranged from 0.326409 to 0.142658 (low resilient to non-resillent).
Based on the value of resilience variables, the Gili Matra Islands were in the reorganization phase for Gili Ayer Island and Gili Meno Island, and exploitation phase for Gili Trawangan Island in adaptive resilience cycles. This condition confirms that Gili Ayer and Meno Island ware re-arranging spatial structures and existing development directions, namely small island tourism, which showed the development activities, while for Gili Trawangan Island described the development and growth of intensive tourism. Therefore, management efforts must be carried out so that the existing phases can be passed, so the system does not focus on the exploitation phase alone, without passing through the conservation, release and reorganization phases, so that the spatial system can be resilient and sustainable development can be achieved.
Generally, the study can be concluded that the Gili Matra Region have vulnerability level from low into moderate, however, with the bad conditions of Coastal Water Quality Indeks (CWQI), the high of EF and the low of BC, and the results of land changes simulation, then a vulnerability status will immediately increases from time to time. They are approved by adaptive capacity assessment, which is relatively small and need a long time from tipping point, and are confirmed by resilience assessment results, that is low.