Please describe the number of ecosystem services that you considered. There seem to be too many to consider in this system of mixed ecosystems, from aquatic to riparian to terrestrial to coastal, with several specialized ecosystems within each broad system.

Given the complexity of the problem, can you place your concerns for the environment and/or local economy on some sort of scale of importance to deliver the most needed predictive models as rapidly as possible?

Looking at the production function plots on your poster, I noticed two distinct forms. A linear decrease in several ecosystem services with increasing discharge (e.g., July oyster density), and the more common peaked responses. These peaked responses are interesting and potentially concerning because they suggest that some ecosystem services are only provided within a very narrow range of discharge. If this is correct, then area residents have always had to live with discrete trade-offs between services (in your examples, mostly fisheries). Are you then proposing a way to maximize provisioning of multiple services, or to help residents understand they must chose one over the other?

Dear Justin et al.,

Great project! You mention towards the end of your video, that you hope the results from your project will help managers. Could you tell me a little more if/how you are collaborating with managers in your work? Have they informed your research questions? What plans you have to share your results, both interim and final with them? How you would handle a situation where your findings would be critical of what they have done?

Thanks,
Volker

The video was wonderful; what an interesting and daunting task your group has! It is a massive and (no doubt) under-appreciated project.How do the group members of Louisiana Resource and Promotion Board align their own priorities since many of these groups are so disparate? What kinds of scientific and social communications have you been able to establish with them or do you only share documents?

“How do the group members of Louisiana Resource and Promotion Board align their priorities with each other since many of these groups are disparate?”

Daunting is a very good word for it. The multiple interests and the radical uncertainty in the bio-physical system are characteristics we have had to negotiate in our studies and the Research and Promotion Board (RPB) must also in their capacity. The RPB seeks to align their priorities with each other through an Annual Plan process with the mission to “conserve, restore, and enhance (where possible) the natural habitat of the Atchafalaya Basin and give all people the opportunity to enjoy the Atchafalaya Experience.” The RPB’s duties include adopting criteria for water management and water quality projects for the Annual Plan, soliciting project proposals at public hearings, approving and prioritizing developed projects, addressing public comments, and publishing the Annual Plan. Most of these projects require a suite of spatially dispersed features which allows for multiple considerations across a variety of disciplines. Our experience is that the groups of the RPB work well to manage their different missions and objectives among themselves as they are often complementary. Over the years the governance structure of the ARB has evolved to promote this beneficial collaboration among both state and federal agencies. Presently, conflicts are not rooted among the groups of the RPB but rather between the RPB and the many stakeholder groups who perceive a back-end inclusion of their ideas.

“How have you been able to share ideas with them as you studied the existing data?”

So far, our interaction with the agencies involved has been discussions on the larger water management issues and the stakeholder dynamics in the Basin as a means to guide our research. Ultimately, our goal is to share documents and continue to find a way to promote collaboration between these groups. Our status as outsiders can be seen as both a negative and a positive, potentially. Because of past interactions (a rather heavy-handed top-down approach given the ARB’s designation as a federal floodway), there is lingering mistrust of managing agencies; our project may be viewed as more neutral. One of our approaches has been to work with non-governmental organizations (NGOs) doing work in the ARB. We feel they may be able to play a unique role in changing the communication dynamics to facilitate more productive collaborations between government agencies and local stakeholders since the mission and core values of many NGOs include a commitment to non-confrontational, collaborative approaches that respect local cultures while remaining committed to the best available conservation science. Also, they already have established working relationships with many of the key players in the basin (both the RPB and TAG), providing us with an invaluable resource as we explored these issues.

*Please see the response to Dr. Radeloff’s question above for a bit more on our scientific and social communications with managers of the ARB.

Has there been any talk of using adaptive management to help manage this system?

Since 2008 there has been a state-level Annual Planning process (the first Annual Plan was released in 2010) in which water management and water quality projects are proposed by local stakeholders and developed by a Technical Advisory Group composed of subject area experts in agencies and academia. This approach espouses adaptive management principles as it allows managers to incorporate new information into future annual plans. However, funding issues and a lack of cooperation by various stakeholder groups has slowed the process considerably. We feel that a possible solution to this dilemma is the inclusion of non-governmental stakeholders (e.g. private landowners and commercial fishermen)throughout the decision-making process. Their cooperation, traditional ecological knowledge, and capacity for significant monitoring could go a long way to improving an adaptive management approach in a system where agency resources are stretched thin. As is usually the case, though, this is much easier said than done.

A very effective video presentation — I am on a team of people developing a “biocomplexity” course for high school, with NSF funding, and this is a PERFECT case study of a CNH system.
I notice in your poster that the “stakeholders” in the “Social component” include few or no real representatives of on-the-ground folk, like fishermen or local land-owners, such as you mention. I see proxies for them — state fisheries people, etc. So it seems very agency heavy. Are there fishermen’s or landowners’ associations that could more fully represent those points of view? And who is paying attention to your developing models of the system (which seem very useful even at their current stage of development)?

That is an excellent observation and lies at the heart of the problem regarding the current management structure. While the Annual Plan process includes local stakeholder input and project proposals through a limited number of public hearings during initial planning stages, these hearings involve fairly low-level stakeholder inclusion (although it is important to note that this is an improvement upon earlier efforts). Ultimately, these local stakeholders are not involved in the decision-making process as it progresses; rather project development and final decisions are left to the RPB and TAG, which as you note are quite agency heavy. For local stakeholders, the lack of ownership throughout the decision-making process has led to some disillusionment with the process, which is unfortunate given the large number of them whose support is needed for policy decisions to be viewed as legitimate and equitable. Further, we feel that the inclusion of local stakeholders throughout the decision-making progress would substantially expand the resources and information available to managers in the Basin.
In addition to the federal, state, local, and tribal governmental stakeholder groups, other important stakeholders can be roughly placed into two broad groupings: 1) non-governmental organizations and 2) local business and industry stakeholder groups (including commercial fishing, recreation, navigation and ports, energy, timber, and landowners).
We plan to make our findings available to any managing agencies, academic institutions, NGOs, or others who may find them useful for guiding further research or policy implementation.

Nice project on a complex system. Your poster mentions the need for a new approach to stakeholder involvement in decision making. This would seem to be a key problem, on which the ultimate benefits of your research could hinge.

This is very true. The success of many of the environmental restoration and water management projects currently approved or underway in the Basin are dependent on the cooperation of local stakeholder groups, especially with half the Basin in private ownership. There is ongoing work on a proposal for a new approach to stakeholder involvement that fits with the existing governance system which has many good qualities to it: capacity for adaptive management, a dedicated governing body, and a strong commitment to a structured, scientific review process for management decisions.