When the social, economic, or ecological conditions under which socio-ecological systems are expected to adaptbecome untenable, a system may transform into a fundamentally new system. Within agricultural systems,farmers have the option of significantly transforming their practices, or migrating elsewhere in the search for abetter lifestyle (and exiting the agricultural socio-ecological system). However, if governments, communities andindustry leaders are to provide climate change impact support to agricultural regions, then it becomes critical topredict the conditions under which farmers, households and communities will choose to either transform theirfarming or migrate. We hypothesize that those conditions are likely to reflect environmental, economic andsocial conditions within a region, where some communities and/or some farmers may respond differently de-pending on their environmental, economic and social factors. Here, we examine how the perception of farmers totransformational change is influenced by social, environmental and economic factors in six villages within theFamenin County of western Iran, which have experienced a notable recent decrease in groundwater levels, anincrease in temperature due to reduced rainfall and no support from government. Results show that environ-mental, economic and social factors were all important influences on the social transformations that were oc-curring within each village and across the region. In sum, environmentalflexibility and local corporation easedthe transformation process. Place attachment and social capital were critical to facilitate transformation duringall parts of the transformation process. These results are discussed as two separate scenarios
