ALBERT

Description: Many water management decisions have evolved from addressing simple problems, such as accessing water near its source, to complex problems of managing and allocating water in the face of multiple and competing demands in the natural, societal and political domains. The Water Diplomacy Framework (WDF) is emerging as an alternative to traditional techno- or values-focused approaches to water management. The WDF is an approach that diagnoses water problems, identifies intervention points, and proposes sustainable resolutions that incorporate diverse viewpoints and uncertainty as well as changing and competing demands. As such, WDF rests upon diverse forms of contextual inquiry of and intervention in complex water problems, with negotiation functioning as the fulcrum of diagnosis and intervention. Several case studies from this volume are used to highlight the utility of this framework for understanding and managing complexity, uncertainty and contingency when addressing complex water problems. We invite the reflective water community to identify and analyze water case studies - from different places, settings, and scales - that will contribute to our collective effort of developing actionable approaches to manage complex water problems in our AquaPedia database.

Description: River otters ( Lontra canadensis ) were reintroduced from 1994–1996 into parts of Illinois where the species was extirpated due to over harvest and habitat loss. At the time of reintroduction, managing for the persistence of the population through habitat was very important and research was conducted to determine which watersheds had quality habitat and which needed increased management and protection. In a study conducted in the mid-1990s, biologists used pattern recognition (PATREC) modeling to identify high and low quality habitat for river otters at the subunit level (i.e., divided watershed), based on specific habitat attributes including wooded area, sinuosity, and wetland edge. We compared the habitat quality ratings of subunits with river otter use at 112 bridge sites from 2012–2014 to determine if river otters have distributed themselves according to previously determined habitat quality. We found that the PATREC model was a poor predictor of river otter use when sites were located close to the otter reintroduction points. The PATREC model was most likely a poor predictor of river otter use due to an over-emphasis on the importance of woody vegetation to habitat suitability for river otter in the model. We recommend that future work on the assessment of habitat suitability for river otter use, and accuracy of this assessment, be conducted at a local spatial scale and over a shorter temporal scale. We also recommend that watershed policies and habitat assessments consider changes to land-cover and follow an adaptive management approach to assess habitat suitability for reintroduced species.

Description: Anthropogenic pollution has impacted ecosystems and organisms globally. Aquatic freshwater systems are of particular concern because of their importance to human health and livelihoods. Sentinel species can serve as indicators for both individual and population-level health risks to both wildlife and humans, and therefore facilitate the mitigation and prevention of such contamination. When such species are also keystone species and/or ecological engineers in aquatic ecosystems, understanding the influence of pollutants on their physiology and behavior acquires added importance. Given that river otters ( Lontra canadensis and Lutra lutra ) and beavers ( Castor canadensis and C. fiber ) serve such roles and are susceptible to a wide-range of anthropogenic pollution, this makes them prime candidates as indicators or sentinels of aquatic ecosystem health. We review published evidence on the toxicological impacts of pollutants in beavers and river otters and discuss the implications of exposure to their behavioral systems, conservation, and surrounding ecosystem.

Description: New records of the endemic semi-aquatic Nimba Otter Shrew Micropotamogale lamottei (Tenrecidae, Potamogalinae) were obtained during recent Environmental Impact Assessments (EIAs) in Liberia. We discuss the future of this Evolutionary Distinct and Globally Endangered (EDGE) species in the face of large-scale landscape transformations. In an attempt to assess genetic diversity and genetic differentiation of M. lamottei throughout its distributional range, we examined two mitochondrial loci (cytochrome b and 12S rRNA) from five samples of Nimba Otter Shrews at three localities in Liberia and compared the 12S sequences with a GenBank sequence from Côte d'Ivoire. While all six individuals examined had unique mitochondrial haplotypes, the sequence divergence among these haplotypes was less than 1 %. However, the F ST values indicated substantial differences between East Nimba and the other two populations. Recognizing that the genetic results are based on very small samples, the data suggest that the three populations experienced sufficient gene flow in the past, preventing sequence divergence, but currently there is substantially reduced gene flow with the East Nimba population. More targeted surveys in the Upper Guinea Region are recommended for this elusive species using aquatic traps in combination with an environmental DNA (eDNA) approach.

Description: Riparian ecosystems provide important habitat for wildlife and serve as corridors for animal movements. Surface mining activities clearly impact wildlife habitat by removing vegetation needed by wildlife. However, few studies have assessed longer-term success of habitat restoration in riparian ecosystems following surface mining. During 2012–13, we evaluated microhabitat quality at three stream segments restored 30 years ago following surface mining for coal and one unmined stream segment in Perry County, Illinois. Microhabitat differences were very minor among restored and control stream sites. Of the 41 habitat variables measured, 14 differed among sites, four of which were uncorrelated: canopy cover, overstory hard mast, bare ground, and herbaceous ground cover; thus, restored riparian buffers were comparable to unmined sites, indicating that habitat restoration efforts were successful. Our analysis from data collected at Burning Star 4 mine in Perry County, Illinois, is of value to land managers for it shows how the reclamation process has successfully jump-started wildlife habitat in buffers around streams affected by mining.

Description: Population modeling is an invaluable tool for predicting wildlife population dynamics and the effects of management. I created a state-space population model for unharvested river otters in the Illinois, Kaskaskia, and Wabash river basins in Illinois, and modeled future harvest at 5%, 10%, and 20% levels. River otter populations increased in the absence of harvest during 2000 – 2009 to 8,408 ± 1,934 individuals (λ = 1.11 ± 0.09). Harvest at 0%, 5%, 10%, and 20% levels resulted in continued population growth over time, with annual harvest numbers ranging from 446 – 1,786 in 2010 to 884 – 2,614 in 2014, depending on harvest scenario. I concluded that river otter populations in Illinois were thriving and capable of withstanding a regulated harvest.

Description: Water access, demand, usage and management become complex due to the crossing of multiple boundaries: political, social and jurisdictional, as well as physical, ecological and biogeochemical. This paper focuses on a particular class of complex water problems: the allocation of transboundary water (TBW) among competing riparians with conflicting needs. The complexity in TBW allocation lies in the dynamic consequences of competition that arise from the interconnections and feedbacks among actors, processes and institutions operating in the knowledge and political communities. Consequently, many TBW allocation issues become contingent upon the dynamic changes that occur within the knowledge and political communities as well as the interactions and feedback occurring between these two communities. In addition to understanding and addressing the contingent contextual factors that span the knowledge and political communities, resolving complex TBW problems also needs to be guided by contextual application of two global principles – equity and sustainability – as anchors to accommodate the values and interests of the stakeholders involved in a TBW problem. This paper examines the process that led to the relatively successful resolution of conflict over allocating the waters in the Indus basin between India and Pakistan. Using the Indus water treaty as an illustrative case, the paper identifies three enabling conditions that underlie the effectiveness of negotiating a treaty and its continuous efficacy in addressing TBW problems. The paper argues that effective resolution of complex TBW problems is rooted in the nature of the negotiation process, the provisions in the negotiated agreement and the establishment of institutional means to solve emergent problems that are related to the original agreement.

Description: Adaptive governance has been recognized as an integrative approach for analyzing the social, institutional, ecologic, and economic aspects of decision-making to build resilience against climate change. Although closely aligned with adaptive co-management and ecosystem management, adaptive governance is a distinct framework that explicitly focuses on decentralized decision-making through social processes such as collaborative learning, networking, and the promotion of cross-sectoral partnerships to enhance adaptive capacity. In this paper, we explore an ongoing engagement process for climate change adaptation planning in Exeter, New Hampshire, and its alignment with key principles of adaptive governance. Climate change poses multiple challenges to Exeter, including increased flooding, reduced low flows, water quality degradation, and associated threats to estuarine ecosystems and public health. Engagement strategies include community conversations, workshops, experiential activities, and a community advisory board comprised of different stakeholder representatives (Citizens' Working Group) collaborating with the scientific team on water resources modeling and scenario analysis. We present important lessons about conveying expectations and timeframes of technical modeling to participants, developing multiple forums for interaction between researchers and other stakeholders, and making climate change locally relevant to residents by drawing connections to the community's experiences, cultural memory, values, and upcoming decisions. This study contributes to the literature on adaptive governance and climate change adaptation by evaluating stakeholder involvement in a local institutional setting, an important arena where adaptation decisions must be deliberated. It is also among the first studies to evaluate the ways in which a climate change adaptation stakeholder engagement process aligns with adaptive governance principles, particularly through boundary objects and experiences.

Description: Contemporary water management strategies call for the inclusion of ecological research in the decision-making process and emphasize environmentally sustainable management solutions. Most ecological information used in water management shares two problematic characteristics; 1) simplistic, phenomenological approaches and aggregated data that may not properly describe system behavior, and 2) a “zero-sum” perspective treating ecological water needs as constraints to management. We argue that the newly devised Water Diplomacy Framework (WDF) can help overcome these shortcomings. We also provide a simple and intuitive method for integrating ecological factors into the WDF. We suggest that treating ecological phenomena as “surrogate stakeholders” in water negotiations increases opportunities for discovering mutual-gains solutions and encourages a hypothesis-based approach to research on the ecology of water management. By differentiating between the “positions” and “interests” of ecological stakeholder surrogates, decision-makers can make greater use of the potential added value of ecosystem services in water management and avoid costly misunderstandings of the behavior of relevant ecological systems. We outline how the WDF can be applied to better integrate ecological factors into water management, and show how our approach could create synergies between endangered waterbird conservation and sustainable water management on the island of Oahu, Hawaii.

Description: As freshwater supplies become increasingly threatened by overuse, pollution, and changes in climate, governing bodies have begun to recognize the urgent need for flexible, sustainable solutions to water use and management. Collaborative governance of water resources has arisen as a widespread strategy to develop such solutions in a way that integrates diverse stakeholder needs and works to create consensus-driven management actions. Directly linking the outputs of collaborative processes to improved water sustainability is difficult even on a local scale. However, examining diverse collaborative governance processes, particularly the outputs and outcomes produced and barriers faced, is necessary as these processes continue to flourish at a multitude of scales and settings. In 2005, the state of Colorado initiated a collaborative governance process to assess its existing water resources and future water needs; the information gathered through this endeavor is now being used to inform the creation of Colorado's first statewide water plan. Using data from 28 in-depth interviews with key participants in this process, this paper highlights not only what outputs and outcomes may be produced through a high-stakes collaborative process, but also what barriers exist to producing desired outputs (and therefore, consequent outcomes). Gaining a better understanding of outputs, outcomes, and barriers within a statewide collaborative water governance process can provide insight into improving future decision-making processes and evaluations of those processes in a variety of natural resource arenas.