April 7, 2004

Ecosystem Management.

  1. Case study of ecosystem connections and management
  • Hypoxic zones are regions in the marine environment that have very low oxygen concentrations (< 2 mg/l). They establish were the rates of oxygen consumption by decomposing bacteria outpace the rate of oxygen diffusion from above. Mobile animals usually leave these regions if they can, but less mobile organisms, such as bottom dwellers may become very stressed or die. Thus, hypoxic regions make for poor fishing grounds and reduce the amount of habitat or the habitat quality of marine life.
  • In coastal water, several factors facilitate the establishment of hypoxia. One is the poor mixing of surface with deeper waters, because this slows the downward transport of oxygen. Poor mixing, or stratification, occurs where warm freshwater (from river outlets) meets colder salt water and when the ocean is relatively calm, in summer. When the less dense river water sits on top of the denser salt water and the two layers hardly mix, oxygen can only travel by diffusion and this form of transport is quite slow. The second factor is the nitrogen concentration of the river water. If this concentration is high, algal productivity is also high, producing in turn high amounts of detritus falling towards the ocean floor (either dead algal digest from fish). This detritus is food for the decomposing bacteria, which, in the course of respiration sweep up a lot of oxygen and leave the water oxygen depleted. Non-decomposed detritus will accumulate on the ocean floor.
  • The Gulf of Mexico has the second largest coastal hypoxic zone on earth. Records show that the extent of the hypoxic zone, and the overall frequency of hypoxia in summer increased sharply in the last 30 years. Sediment analysis revealed that there may have been no hypoxic zones before 1900. Records showed that the nitrate concentration of the Mississippi River increased since the 1950s, simultaneously with rapidly increasing use of fertilizer in the Mississippi River basin (essentially all of the midwest and beyond). Evidence of increases in algal productivity followed closely behind. From this and other kinds of data scientists concluded that nitrogen loading of the Mississippi River, to a large extent driven by fertilizer use, was directly responsible for the increase in the occurrence of hypoxia.
  • This knowledge developed between 1972, when hypoxic zones were first discovered in the Gulf of Mexico, and 1995. Though scientists submitted reports to policymakers and held frequent meetings with land managers, nothing was done to change policies or practices. This changed after 1995, when the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund led 17 stakeholder groups in petitioning the EPA for a management conference under the Clean Water Act. This came in the aftermath of a campaign to publicize hypoxia in the Gulf of Mexico through press reports and public outreach.
  • After the EPA got involved, several workshops and congressional actions followed, leading eventually to the completion of an Integrated Assessment and Action Plan, delivered to Congress in 2001.
  • The action plan calls for a reduction of the spatial extent of the hypoxic zone to < 5000 km2 by 2015. To reach that goal, federal and state agencies agreed to reduce nitrogen loading to the Gulf by 30%, primarily through voluntary, incentive-based actions, mediated by educational activities. As of today, these agencies are still developing strategic plans to accomplish this goal in the sub-basins through reduction of fertilizer applications, restoration of wetlands and other measures.
  • New studies show that effects of climate change alone, e.g. changes in river discharge through precipitation change, and global warming may also affect hypoxic zones on magnitudes equal to or greater than a 30% reduction in N loading. This suggests that action plans may have to get revised as climate change unfolds.

Adaptive Co-Management of Natural Resources.

  • Adaptive Co-Management (ACM) describes an innovative management of natural resources that combines collaborative learning and adaptive management. It is a form of bottom-up management that builds upon the collective knowledge of stakeholders, managers, scientists and policymakers.
  • ACM demands that current management policies must be continually re-evaluated in the light of new data, observations, a changing environment or changing economic conditions. ACM assumes that there is no universal “best management practice” but that best management is site specific and will change in time.
  • This assumption is based on complex adaptive systems theory, which says that socio-ecologic systems, because they are highly non-linear and self-organizing, will be unpredictable and generate surprise. Therefore it is impossible that one fixed management strategy will always be successful.
  • Collaborative learning is a process of knowledge generation through the interactions of people with many different viewpoints, experiences and belief systems. This process has a philosophical foundation called Constructivism. Constructivism holds that what we perceive as “reality” is a construction of our mind interacting with the outside world. Therefore, people with different experiences may very well construct different visions of reality (e.g. an American Scientist, a Yanomani Indian from the Amazon Basin, or a Shiite Cleric). Obviously, if you hold constructivism to be true, it may be easier for you to accept the opinions of other people, even if they seem really strange to you. Collaborative learning takes advantage of this attitude towards knowledge and hopes to find common knowledge that is acceptable to persons of all belief systems.
  • These ideas are quite different from our traditional management approaches and frames of mind. In the traditional view, scientists and managers are the experts, the ultimate judges of the way things are. In the new view, scientists, managers, ranchers, environmentalists, the owners of mining operations all have equally valuable views to contribute. In the traditional management, agencies may solicit the opinions of stakeholders but will ultimately decide on management practices within the legal framework. In the new management, stakeholders work together from day one, identifying the needs, designing and implementing an action plan and monitoring the outcome.