Adaptive Management on Public Lands in the United States: Commitment or Rhetoric?

Adaptive management (AM) is the process of implementing land management activities in incremental steps and evaluating whether desired outcomes are being achieved at each step. If conditions deviate substantially from predictions, management activities are adjusted to achieve the desired outcomes. Thus, AM is a kind of monitoring, an activity that land management agencies have done poorly for the most part, at least with respect to ground-based monitoring. Will they do better in the future? We doubt it unless costs, personnel, and future commitment are seriously addressed. Because ecosystem responses to management impacts can ripple into the distant future, monitoring programs that address only the near future (e.g., 10–20 years), are probably unreliable for making statements about resource conditions in the distant future. We give examples of this. Feedback loops between ecosystem response and adjustment of management actions are often broken, and therefore AM again fails. Successful ground-based monitoring must address these and other points that agencies commonly ignore. As part of the solution, publics distrustful of agency activities should be included in any monitoring program.     

What Influences Innovation Adoption by Water Managers? Climate Information Use in Brazil and the United States1

Abstract: This paper examines the use of climate forecasting in water management in Brazil and the United States (U.S.). Specifically, it seeks to understand how different institutional arrangements shape the willingness and ability of water managers to incorporate technoscience, especially seasonal climate forecasting (SCF), in their decision‐making process. It argues that among the many factors shaping the willingness of water managers to use SCF, institutional design and change is critical to explain different patterns in Brazil and the U.S. Moreover, factors related to individual flexibility, discretion, and accountability also affect the ability of managers to use climate information in water management. This paper finds that while water managers in the U.S operate in a mostly fragmented and risk‐averse system – which constrains the adoption of innovation – decision makers in Brazil can afford more flexibility to introduce new decision tools as a result of widespread water management reforms initiated in the 1990s.     

Reasonable Use?: The Challenges of Transboundary Groundwater Regulation in the Eastern United States

Regulating groundwater in the Eastern United States (U.S.), particularly transboundary aquifers between states, is a challenge given the patchwork quilt of common law, statutory frameworks, and agency rules. Such regulation is made more challenging by the need for better quantification of pumping and use. These dynamics are exemplified through several case studies, including the first ever U.S. Supreme Court case related to groundwater withdrawals (set in the Eastern U.S.). As dynamics such as expanded irrigation, population increases, and ecological considerations influence groundwater use across the Eastern U.S., water use will continue to be an important driver for economic activity and interaction within and between states. To effectively regulate transboundary aquifers, governance solutions must incorporate current science into decision making and be implemented at local, state, regional, and federal scales.     

Private Property Rights and Selective Private Forest Conservation: Could a Nordic Hybrid Policy Address a United States Problem?

Political and legal conflicts between the need for targeted private forest conservation and the continued assurance of private property rights in the U.S. presents a seemingly intractable resource management problem. Scandinavian use of habitat protection areas on private forests offers an additional tool that may be suitable for solving the historical and on-going tension found within U.S. efforts to reconcile desires to maintain lands in a forested condition while also respecting private property rights. This article presents a comparative cross-sectional policy analysis of Sweden, Finland, and the U.S., supported with a supplemental case example from the Commonwealth of Virginia. Similarities in all three countries among forest ownership patterns, use of public subsidies, and changing attitudes towards conservation are generally encouraging. Additionally, Virginia’s current consideration and development of state-wide forest policies focused on forestland and open space conservation suggests both a need and an opportunity to systematically assess the applicability of the Nordic forest reserve approach to local private forest conservation. Future research at a high-resolution, and specifically at the state level, should focus on the social and political factors that would ultimately determine the viability of a forest reserve program.     

Implementing the EU Water Framework Directive in Norway: Bridging the Gap Between Water Management Networks and Elected Councils?

To handle the challenge of complex cross-sector and multilevel coordination in the implementation of the European Union Water Framework Directive, Norway has established multilevel governance networks. Observers have pointed to a risk of such governance arrangements being dominated by experts. This article studies the highly complex multilevel governance networks of water management in Norway, and unveils the importance of political anchorage of such governance networks at local and regional levels. The study finds evidence that political anchorage matters for further network achievements. Because the water governance networks are subordinated to the hierarchy of government, they need to ‘talk to' the system of hierarchical government in order to be effective. In this regard, it seems crucial that networks are politically anchored. Furthermore, the study unveils the important role of political leadership and network managers in ensuring political anchorage.     

The long iron line: Water resources development at the United States Military Academy,West Point (1802–1943)

Comprehensive analyses of long-term region-specific water resources developments could offer new insights for contemporary water resources planners and decision makers. The objective of this work was to analyze water supply development at the United States Military Academy (USMA) during the 19th and early 20th Centuries through the lens of selected modern water resources planning and management practices. Analysis of water usage, population, and technological growth revealed that changes in technology had a greater influence on total water withdrawals than an increase in population. The USMA water supply system evolved incrementally over much of the 141-year study period and failure to adequately recognize shortcomings in water supply options resulted in several suboptimal decisions. Communications and enhanced stakeholder participation might have resulted in alternative decisions.     

Carbon Stocks and Projections on Public Forestlands in the United States, 1952–2040

Approximately 37% of forestlands in the conterminous United States are publicly owned; they represent a substantial area of potential carbon sequestration in US forests and in forest products. However, large areas of public forestlands traditionally have been less intensively inventoried than privately owned forests. Thus, less information is available about their role as carbon sinks. We present estimates of carbon budgets on public forestlands of the 48 conterminous states, along with a discussion of the assumptions necessary to make such estimates. The forest carbon budget simulation model, FORCARB2, makes estimates for US forests primarily based on inventory data. We discuss methods to develop consistent carbon budget estimates from inventory data at varying levels of detail. Total carbon stored on public forestlands in the conterminous US increased from 16.3 Gt in 1953 to the present total of 19.5 Gt, while area increased from 87.1 million hactares to 92.1 million hactares. At the same time the proportion of carbon on public forestlands relative to all forests increased from 35% to 37%. Projections for the next 40 years depend on scenarios of management influences on growth and harvest.This article was written and prepared by US Government employees on official time, and it is therefore in the public domain and not subject to copyright.     

Can We Manage for Resilience? The Integration of Resilience Thinking into Natural Resource Management in the United States

The concept of resilience is now frequently invoked by natural resource agencies in the US. This reflects growing trends within ecology, conservation biology, and other disciplines acknowledging that social–ecological systems require management approaches recognizing their complexity. In this paper, we examine the concept of resilience and the manner in which some legal and regulatory frameworks governing federal natural resource agencies have difficulty accommodating it. We then use the U.S. Forest Service’s employment of resilience as an illustration of the challenges ahead.     

Impact of 20 Years of Land-Cover Change on the Hydrology of Streams in the Southeastern United States1

Cruise, James F., Charles A. Laymon, and Osama Z. Al-Hamdan, 2010. Impact of 20 Years of Land-Cover Change on the Hydrology of Streams in the Southeastern United States. Journal of the American Water Resources Association (JAWRA) 46(6):1159–1170. DOI: 10.1111/j.1752-1688.2010.00483.x Abstract: Land-cover changes for portions of Alabama, Georgia, and Tennessee were estimated for the years 1980, 1990, and 2000 using classified Landsat images, and associated with hydrologic indices for 12 watersheds in the region. Rainfall-adjusted mean annual streamflow, an ET proxy (precipitation minus runoff), frequency of inundation above thresholds, and duration of inundation were used to characterize the hydrologic response of the test basins over the two-decade study period. Results indicate that several of the watersheds had undergone significant (>20%) reductions in agricultural land cover with a coincident increase in forested land. Attempts to correlate the hydrologic results with the land-cover changes were only partially successful. Watersheds with the largest land conversion from agriculture to forest (20% or more) did show significant trends in hydrologic indices indicating decreasing streamflow; however, other basins evidenced ambiguous results. The net conclusions of the study are that land-cover effects on hydrologic variables may be nuanced and can sometimes be only indirectly evident, and that a rigorous and detailed land-cover classification effort along with a battery of statistical tests with the same objective may be necessary to uncover these effects.     

Water resource management in Japan: Forest management or dam reservoirs?

Researchers and journalists in Japan recently proposed forest management as an alternative to dam reservoir development for water resource management. To examine the validity of the proposal, we compared the potential low-flow increase due to forest clearcutting with the increase due to dam reservoir development. Here, we focused on forest clearcutting as an end member among various types of forest management. We first analyzed runoff data for five catchments and found a positive correlation between annual precipitation and the low-flow increase due to deforestation. We then examined the increase in low-flow rates due to dam reservoir development (dQ_d) using inflow and outflow data for 45 dam reservoirs across Japan. Using the relationship between annual precipitation and the low-flow increase due to deforestation, we estimated the potential increase in the low-flow rate for each dam reservoir watershed if forests in the watershed were clearcut (dQ_f). Only 6 of the 45 samples satisfied dQ_f > dQ_d, indicating that the potential increase in the low-flow rate due to forest clearcutting was less than the increase due to dam reservoir development in most cases. Twenty-five of the 45 samples satisfied dQ_f < 0.2 dQ_d, indicating the potential increase in the low-flow rate due to forest clearcutting was less than 20% of the increase due to dam reservoir development in more than half the cases. Therefore, forest management is far less effective for water resource management than dam reservoir development is in Japan.     

Participatory development for regional sustainability in Western Australia: an enabling state?

Regionally specific sustainability processes that account for diverse environments and populations and that integrate social, economic, political and ecological spheres are being developed in Western Australia. A coordinated commitment to sustainability principles and a participatory philosophy by the state and local governments is necessary. This requires a transformation of the public service, from a director of passive programmes and laws to a facilitator of community projects and outcomes, towards an enabling state. An international participatory paradigm provides an array of concepts and methods for local and regional communities in partnership with government and industry to achieve this. Participatory methodologies are utilised successfully around the globe to create an institutional framework that facilitates a process of dialogue, partnership, networking, learning and managing change. This paper examines the potential contribution of a participatory approach to improve the participatory capacity of regional communities and both local and state governments towards the facilitation of regional sustainability processes.     

Modeling the Effects of Potential Salinity Shifts on the Recovery of Striped Bass in the Savannah River Estuary,Georgia–South Carolina,United States

Increased salinity in spawning and nursery grounds in the Savannah River estuary was cited as the primary cause of a 97% decrease in adult striped bass (Morone saxatilis) and a concomitant 96% decrease in striped bass egg production. Restoration efforts focused on environmental remediation and stock enhancement have resulted in restored salinity patterns and increased egg and adult abundances. However, future water needs or harbor development may preclude further recovery by reducing freshwater inflow or increasing salinity intrusion. To assess the effect of potential changes in the salinity regime, we developed models relating discharge, tidal phase, and salinity to striped bass egg and early larval survival and re-cast these in a quantitative Bayesian belief network. The model indicated that a small upstream shift (≤1.67 km) in the salinity regime would have the least impact on striped bass early life history survival, whereas shifts >1.67 km would have progressively larger impacts, with a 8.33-km shift potentially reducing our estimated survival probability by >28%. Such an impact could have cumulative and long-term detrimental effects on the recovery of the Savannah River striped bass population. The available salinity data were collected during average and low flows, so our model represents some typical and some extreme conditions during a striped bass spawning season. Our model is a relatively simplistic, “first-order” attempt at evaluating potential effects of changes in the Savannah River estuarine salinity regime and points to areas of concern and potential future research.     

Floods in the Douala metropolis,Cameroon: attribution to changes in rainfall characteristics or planning failures?

With urban populations worldwide expected to witness substantial growth over the next decades, pressure on urban land and resources is projected to increase in response. For policy-makers to adequately meet the challenges brought about by changes in the dynamics of urban areas, it is important to clearly identify and communicate their causes. Floods in Douala (the most densely populated city in the central African sub-region), are being associated chiefly with changing rainfall patterns, resulting from climate change in major policy circles. We investigate this contention using statistical analysis of daily rainfall time-series data covering the period 1951–2008, and tools of geographic information systems. Using attributes such as rainfall anomalies, trends in the rainfall time series, daily rainfall maxima and rainfall intensity–duration–frequency, we find no explanation for the attribution of an increase in the occurrences and severity of floods to changing rainfall patterns. The culprit seems to be the massive increase in the population of Douala, in association with poor planning and investment in the city's infrastructure. These demographic changes and poor planning have occurred within a physical geography setting that is conducive for the inducement of floods. Failed urban planning in Cameroon since independence set the city up for a flood-prone land colonization. This today translates to a situation in which large portions of the city's surface area and the populations they harbor are vulnerable to the city's habitual annual floods. While climate change stands to render the city even more vulnerable to floods, there is no evidence that current floods can be attributed to the changes in patterns of rainfall being reported in policy and news domains.     

Does External Funding Help Adaptation? Evidence from Community-Based Water Management in the Colombian Andes

Despite debate regarding whether, and in what form, communities need external support for adaptation to environmental change, few studies have examined how external funding impacts adaptation decisions in rural resource-dependent communities. In this article, we use quantitative and qualitative methods to assess how different funding sources influence the initiative to adapt to water scarcity in the Colombian Andes. We compare efforts to adapt to water scarcity in 111 rural Andean communities with varied dependence on external funding for water management activities. Findings suggest that despite efforts to use their own internal resources, communities often need external support to finance adaptation strategies. However, not all external financial support positively impacts a community’s abilities to adapt. Results show the importance of community-driven requests for external support. In cases where external support was unsolicited, the results show a decline, or “crowding-out,” in community efforts to adapt. In contrast, in cases where communities initiated the request for external support to fund their own projects, findings show that external intervention is more likely to enhance or “crowds-in” community-driven adaptation.     

Does the housing market respond to information disclosure?: Effects of toxicity indices in Japan

The policy instruments that provide information on a firm’s or facility’s environmental performance, such as the U.S. Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) and the Pollutant Release and Transfer Register system (PRTRs) used in some European countries and Japan, play an important role in encouraging firms or facilities to improve their environmental performance, if investors, consumers and residents recognize their environmental performance. This study uses a hedonic approach to explore how the Japanese rental housing market responds to carcinogenic risk arising from releases and transfers of chemical substances produced and used at close facilities. We found that residents do not perceive carcinogenic risk generated more than 1.0 km away from their residence and that they seem to recognize the increased carcinogenic risk at distances from 0.5 km to 1.0 km away; a 1% increase in carcinogenic risk reduces the average rent by 0.0007%. The distance at which residents perceive the risk arising from such facilities is less than in previous studies. This suggests that the risk perception recognized in previous studies may capture the other externalities in addition to the chemical risk because the risk is measured by the distance.     

Genetic Engineering in Agriculture: Who Stands to Benefit?

The use of genetic engineering inagriculture has been the source of much debate. Todate, arguments have focused most strongly on thepotential human health risks, the flow of geneticmaterial to related species, and ecologicalconsequences. Little attention appears to have beengiven to a more fundamental concern, namely, who willbe the beneficiaries of this technology? Given the prevalence of chronic hunger and thestark economics of farming, it is arguable thatfarmers and the hungry should be the mainbeneficiaries of agricultural research. However, theapplication of genetic engineering appears unlikely tobenefit either of these two groups. This technology islargely controlled by the private sector, and itscontinued development hinges on its profitability.Thus, the only likely beneficiaries of the applicationof genetic engineering in agriculture are companieswith the capacity to use it.     

Rising to the Kyoto challenge: is the response of Canadian industry adequate?

A major weapon in Canada's CO2-emissions reduction arsenal is reliance on moral suasion and voluntary action. In this regard, the Voluntary Challenge and Registry (VCR) program constitutes a major effort to encourage industrial firms to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. In this paper, we begin by providing a critical review of Canadian climate change policy and Canada's international commitments. We then investigate the effectiveness of Canadian policies by analyzing a survey of industrial firms, examining factors that determine firms' familiarity with, participation in and commitment to the VCR program, and their stated potential to reduce emissions by 2008-2012 (Kyoto's commitment period). Results indicate that voluntary programs are unlikely to make a significant contribution to emissions reduction, with industrial firms indicating that, on average, they plan to reduce emissions by some 1-2% below their 1990 level under the current policy approach, much lower than Canada's 6% reduction target.