A social-ecological approach to estuary restoration planning: integrating social networks into landscapes
Presentation Abstract
Restoring the Salish Sea and its watersheds is vital for human wellbeing in the Pacific Northwest. However, restoring large regions is challenging from both social and ecological perspectives. Many government, non-profit, business, and citizen groups, acting at different scales (from local to national), need to coordinate their efforts to achieve restoration goals. Furthermore, the areas where groups work - formally or informally - often do not align with watershed boundaries, a phenomenon known as scale mismatch, which can undermine restoration efforts and natural resource governance more broadly. Thus, understanding how restoration groups are connected to one another and across the landscape is essential for restoration success. We provide this network perspective by integrating social and hydrologic networks and assess how social collaboration bridge hydrologic boundaries at multiple spatial levels. We then discuss how network actors perceive social borders and collaborations affect their restoration work. We use salmon recovery in the Whidbey Basin region, northeast Puget Sound, WA as a case study. We surveyed and interviewed people (n = 167 and a subset of 94, respectively) at local, county, state, federal, tribal government, non-profits, citizen groups, farming and shellfishing industries, and dike/drainage districts. We use the survey data to build a social network of organizations involved with restoration and relate this to the hydrologic network. This social-ecological integration allows us to visualize and identify where the structure of social collaborations may hinder, or promote restoration efforts. Our in-depth qualitative interviews ground our structural analysis revealing how collaborations and borders affect restoration. We present our framework as a social-ecological planning tool that can be integrated with ecological planning efforts such as WA Dept. of Ecology’s Watershed Characterization Project to better restoration efforts.
Session Title
Session S-02H: Integrating the Social and Natural Sciences for Decision Making
Conference Track
Social Science Plus
Conference Name
Salish Sea Ecosystem Conference (2014 : Seattle, Wash.)
Document Type
Event
Start Date
30-4-2014 1:30 PM
End Date
30-4-2014 3:00 PM
Location
Room 607
Genre/Form
conference proceedings; presentations (communicative events)
Contributing Repository
Digital content made available by University Archives, Heritage Resources, Western Libraries, Western Washington University.
Subjects – Topical (LCSH)
Estuarine restoration--Salish Sea (B.C. and Wash.); Environmental sociology--Salish Sea (B.C. and Wash.); Environmental management--Salish Sea (B.C. and Wash.)
Geographic Coverage
Salish Sea (B.C. and Wash.)--Environmental conditions
Rights
This resource is displayed for educational purposes only and may be subject to U.S. and international copyright laws. For more information about rights or obtaining copies of this resource, please contact University Archives, Heritage Resources, Western Libraries, Western Washington University, Bellingham, WA 98225-9103, USA (360-650-7534; heritage.resources@wwu.edu) and refer to the collection name and identifier. Any materials cited must be attributed to the Salish Sea Ecosystem Conference Records, University Archives, Heritage Resources, Western Libraries, Western Washington University.
Type
Text
Language
English
Format
application/pdf
A social-ecological approach to estuary restoration planning: integrating social networks into landscapes
Room 607
Restoring the Salish Sea and its watersheds is vital for human wellbeing in the Pacific Northwest. However, restoring large regions is challenging from both social and ecological perspectives. Many government, non-profit, business, and citizen groups, acting at different scales (from local to national), need to coordinate their efforts to achieve restoration goals. Furthermore, the areas where groups work - formally or informally - often do not align with watershed boundaries, a phenomenon known as scale mismatch, which can undermine restoration efforts and natural resource governance more broadly. Thus, understanding how restoration groups are connected to one another and across the landscape is essential for restoration success. We provide this network perspective by integrating social and hydrologic networks and assess how social collaboration bridge hydrologic boundaries at multiple spatial levels. We then discuss how network actors perceive social borders and collaborations affect their restoration work. We use salmon recovery in the Whidbey Basin region, northeast Puget Sound, WA as a case study. We surveyed and interviewed people (n = 167 and a subset of 94, respectively) at local, county, state, federal, tribal government, non-profits, citizen groups, farming and shellfishing industries, and dike/drainage districts. We use the survey data to build a social network of organizations involved with restoration and relate this to the hydrologic network. This social-ecological integration allows us to visualize and identify where the structure of social collaborations may hinder, or promote restoration efforts. Our in-depth qualitative interviews ground our structural analysis revealing how collaborations and borders affect restoration. We present our framework as a social-ecological planning tool that can be integrated with ecological planning efforts such as WA Dept. of Ecology’s Watershed Characterization Project to better restoration efforts.
