http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5063-2060
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Abstract
In this article, we describe ecological recovery efforts – restoration – as a crucial component of strategic delta planning. We present restoration as a design process at once biogeophysical and territorial that entails socioecological uncertainties. Adaptive management is an approach to dealing with uncertainties through active monitoring and recalibration of actions taken. We have developed a ‘socioecological monitoring’ program that uses existing biophysical monitoring protocols to collect data on human use. Beyond provisioning demographic and use data, this program also helps to change the relationship between the monitors and managers involved in adaptive management and diverse non-scientific publics, who have thus far been removed from the process. Our approach highlights the importance of user experiences and affective labor to bring people into the design of restoration areas, both as actors to be managed for, as well as agents whose values and desires can help guide landscape evolution.
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to acknowledge all the monitoring teams that assisted and contributed to this research project.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1 Adaptive co-management, is an iteration of adaptive management where social and cultural considerations have been more robustly integrated (Armitage et al. Citation2009; Berkes Citation2009; Cundill and Fabricius 2009; Leys and Vanclay Citation2011), and is one of a number of biocultural approaches to conservation (Gavin et al. Citation2015; Maffi and Woodley Citation2010).
2 We acknowledge the similarities between this definition and the criteria of Reed et al. (Citation2010). has a change in understanding taken place in individuals involved? Has this change become situated in wider social units? Did change occur through social interactions between actors in a social network? (Reed et al. Citation2010).
3 To our knowledge, the field of recreation ecology has, thus far, avoided looking at the ecological impact of scientific monitoring, via the ‘observer effect’.
4 EcoRestore, the current restoration plan for Sacramento San Joaquin Delta (Delta) will create 30,000 acres of aquatic and terrestrial habitat by 2020 (CNRA Citation2018). This restoration will occur at multiple sites throughout the Delta and will entail large-scale land conversions and management shifts that affect socio-cultural patterns of use. In addition to planned ‘restoration’, unplanned ‘naturalization’ will likely continue to occur in the Delta, including the flooding of heavily subsided Delta islands.
5 California’s Public Resources Code, Section 6301, gives the California State Lands Commission (SLC) jurisdiction over navigable and tidally influenced waterways. Furthermore, recreational access is protected and encouraged in regional laws throughout California, including, the California Coastal Act, managed by the California Coastal Commission, which protects public access to the coastline and tidelands; the aforementioned Delta Reform Act of 2009; and the Integrated Regional Water Management Planning Act, which requires integrated regional water management plans to consider California Water Plan recommendations related to recreational access (CWC Section 10541[e][1]).
6 These legacy town and farmland protection efforts have been spearheaded on the regional level by the Delta Protection Commission (DPC), the state agency charged with developing and implementing a land use plans to address agriculture, natural resources, access and recreation and access, and utilities and infrastructure within the Delta (DPC Citation2018).
7 As a 1997 report by the DPC states, “[the] basic problem is that there are numerous roads and highways across the Delta, but there is no single entrance where visitors can be counted and surveyed. This makes any meaningful effort to measure total recreation use time consuming and expensive” (DPC Citation1997).
8 The field of restoration ecology has developed methods to assess biophysical changes associated with environmental impacts. The most common method being the Before-After-Control-Impact (BACI) design, a statistically robust experimental design in environmental impact studies (Paul Citation2011) and econometrics (Smith Citation2006). Our quantitative methods combine methods from restoration and recreation ecology to determine how human use changes in response to restoration, and how human use affects the efficacy of restoration. Our qualitative methods will be used to augment quantitative data and provide insights into those sociocultural place values that motivate use, and how these values respond to restoration.
10 This is a passage from a draft charge that has been circulated internally among taskforce participants.
12 Several science communication workshops have been held for Delta scientists, focusing on topics including science-policy integration, media relations, social media, and public and visual communication.
13 Similar data has been used to place an economic value on recreational uses through the hedonic and travel cost method. However, given our resource constraints, we rely on presence as a proxy for value. In so doing we assume that those who choose to engage in activities in restoration areas value both the area and the activity. Qualitative methods, such as surveys or interviews are required to enhance this basic picture. Also, the satisfaction of Delta publics can be roughly accessed by way of proxies such as fish abundance, aquatic vegetation coverage, or water quality, once the connection between these metrics and user values are established.
14 We contributed a chapter on community perspective in the Franks Tract Feasibility Study, a restoration planning study for a 3,000 acre flooded tract, which is seen by agency proponents as a pilot for the DCF. To inform our contribution, we conducted interviews, a survey with approximately 750 respondents, and a community design charrette. The report and survey results (appendix) can be found here: https://www.wildlife.ca.gov/conservation/watersheds/dcf
15 We interpret values related to ‘Delta as an Evolving Place’ as consisting of both the economic and non-economic, tangible and intangible. Methods for non-economic value solicitation include scenario planning, participatory mapping, and deliberative multi-criteria evaluation (DMCE) (Mavrommati, Borsuk, and Howarth Citation2017). Application of these methods may support double or triple-loop learning (i.e. ‘higher-order learning’) that will begin to challenge the assumptions that are foundational to restoration actions, and transform the values and norms that have dictated restoration planning and management.
16 Following Newman et al. we would encourage citizen science programs to “leverage the power of place” (Newman et al. Citation2017, 55).