Climate change adaptation requires understanding of complex social ecological systems (SESs). One source of uncertainty in complex SESs is ambiguity, defined as the range and variety of existing perceptions in and of an SES, which are considered equally valid, resulting in a lack of a unique or single system understanding. Current modelling practices that acknowledge the presence of ambiguity in SESs focus on finding consensus with stakeholders; however, advanced methods for explicitly representing and aggregating ambiguity in SESs are underdeveloped. Moreover, understanding the influences of ambiguity on SES representation is limited. This paper demonstrates the presence and range of ambiguities in endogenous and exogenous system drivers and internal relationships based on individual fuzzy cognitive maps derived from stakeholder perceptions of climate change adaptation in Kenya and introduces an ambiguity based modelling process. Our results indicate that acknowledging ambiguity fundamentally changes SES representation and more advanced methods are required.

适应气候变化需要了解复杂的社会生态系统（SESs）。复杂SES中不确定性的一个来源是歧义，歧义定义为SES内和对SES的现有感知的范围和多样性，它们被认为是同等有效的，导致缺乏唯一或单一的系统理解。承认SES中存在歧义的当前建模实践着重于与利益相关者达成共识；但是，在SES中显式表示和聚合歧义的高级方法尚不完善。此外，了解歧义对SES表示的影响是有限的。本文基于从利益相关者对肯尼亚气候变化适应的感知中得出的个体模糊认知图，证明了内源性和外源性系统驱动因素以及内部关系中歧义的存在和范围，并介绍了基于歧义的建模过程。我们的结果表明，认识到歧义从根本上改变了SES表示，并且需要更高级的方法。