Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Burks-Copes, Kelly A

Titel

Finding integrated solutions to wicked environmental challenges: Ecosystem-based management of cottonwood communities on the Missouri River

Ort / Verlag

ProQuest Dissertations & Theses

Erscheinungsjahr

2014

Quelle

ProQuest Dissertations & Theses A&I

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• A century’s worth of “command and control” river management decisions made by the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) to reduce flooding, provide hydropower, increase navigation, and stimulate economic development along our nation’s waterways has resulted in numerous unintended system-wide environmental consequences ranging from the degradation of water quality to the reduction of sediment transport and the loss of biodiversity. The latter has triggered Endangered Species Act (ESA) regulations forcing the USACE to take “reasonable and prudent” actions to recover threatened and endangered species imperiled by these flood control projects. With an ever-growing sense of environmental awareness and appreciation, communities on these rivers have challenged the USACE to pursue holistic and sustainable solutions that adaptively restore ecosystems while maintaining flood protection for the floodplain’s inhabitants. The involvement of numerous stakeholders with disparate and often conflicting values and agendas generate a dynamic decision-making environment riddled with critical knowledge gaps, teeming with uncertainty, and driven by high stakes negotiations perpetuated by a sense of institutional urgency to embrace quick fixes. These highly uncertain, risky situations cannot be resolved solely with hard-science or technical solutions. The USACE needs a transparent and prescriptive approach grounded in collaborative adaptive management to address these wicked problems. Here, a suite of decision support tools has been developed to assist the USACE in their endeavors. An integrative framework is described herein that utilizes conceptual modeling to uncover critical lines of evidence that are then woven into a multimetric ecosystem response index to characterize benefits produced by proposed recovery plans. A series of GIS-based participatory strategies are deployed to locate and prioritize potential recovery sites, and an expert-based procedure is devised to forecast future conditions under a “no action” plan. A case study on the Missouri River addressing the recovery of the plains cottonwood community (Populus detltoides W. Bartram Marsh. Subsp. monilifera (Aiton) Eckenwalder), is used to demonstrate the value of the spiraling strategy and the spinoff toolsets. USACE can now utilize the entire suite to adaptively co-manage the system, transparently communicating the success of their recovery activities to the basin’s stakeholders and the public at large.