Policy- making in social-ecological systems increasingly looks to iterative, evolutionary approaches that can address the inherent complexity of interactions between human wellbeing, provision of goods, and the maintenan ce of ecosystem services. Here, we show how the analysis of available time-series in tropical delta regions over past decades can provide important insight into the social -ecologica l system dynamics in deltaic regions. The paper provides an exploratory analysis of the recent changes that have occurred in the major ele ments of three tropic al deltaic social-ecological systems, such as demography , economy, health, climate, food, and water . Timeseries data from official statistics, monitoring programmes, and Earth observation data are analysed to explore possible trends, slow and fast variables, and observed drivers of change in the Amazon, Ganges–Brahm aputra–Meghna and Mekong deltas. In the Ganges–Brahmaputra–Meghna delta zone, increasing gross domestic product and per capita income levels since the 1980s mirror rising levels of food and inland fish production. In contrast, non-food ecosystem services, such as water availability, water quality, and land stability appear to be deteriorating. In the Amazon delta, natural and anthropogenic perturbations are continuou slydegrading key ecosy stem services, such as carbon storage in biomass and soils, the regulation of water balance, and the modulation of regional climat e patterns. In the Mekon g delta, rapid economi c devel opment, changi ng land -use practices , and sal inity intrusion are progressively putting more pressure on the delivery of important provisioning service s, such as rice and inland aquac ulture produc tion, which are key sources of staple food, farm incomes, and export reve nue. Observed changes in many key indicator s of ecosystem services point to a changing dynamic state and increased proba bility of systemic threshold transformations in the near future.