Soft Sciences and the Hard Reality of Lake Management

Abstract

Few would question that lake management requires multiple disciplines, such as fisheries biologists, limnologists, engineers, and hydrologists. Yet, watershed and lake management is fundamentally social in nature. Socioeconomic disciplines are essential if water and watershed research is to be policy and management relevant. Understanding the mental models not only of land owners and lake managers, but also the community and general public is critical if watershed and lake management practices are to be implemented and sustained. Where the mental models do not reflect factual information, social marketing approaches can be used to change both the fallacious mental model and the underlying behavior. The hard reality is that lake management practices can not be sustained without insight from the “soft sciences.”

Key Words:

• interdisciplinary
• mental model
• social marketing
• socioeconomic