Muddy Creek Project Conclusions

Conclusion Organization

This section is divided into two main sections: Discussion of Project Results, which describes the conclusions, indications, and limitations of the project in direct relation to the Muddy Creek Watershed; and Revisiting Project Goals, a discussion of the broader implications of studies of this nature, and some of the opportunities and constraints presented in transferring this approach to other locales and communities.

Discussion of Project Results

Summary

Results from the evaluative models illustrate how the assumptions made in each possible future, and the landscape trajectories which follow, can impact biodiversity and water quality. Awareness of these potential impacts can inform land use decisions and help guide future research, land conservation and development policies and land management. In summary, within their stated scope, project results point to targeting conservation efforts and incentives associated with new residential development, the soil erosion potential of logging roads and the effects on riparian vegetation of agricultural practices. Development efforts will likely focus on issues of water supply.

The following discussion is organized under three headings: conclusions, indications, and limitations. Conclusions are findings directly supported by the planning process, biodiversity and water quality evaluations of the possible futures. Indications are correlated with conclusions, but constitute opinions of the research team based on prior experience, professional judgement or corroborating information apparent during the project. Limitations are acknowledgments of topics or analyses which were beyond the scope of this project, but highly relevant to its findings. They are most often related to high priority recommendations for future research.

Conclusions, Indications, Limitations

Understanding Land Use Management and Ecological Resources

Characterizing Landscape Conditions

To improve people's understanding of human use of land and its effects on natural resources, a characterization of current conditions is essential. This project created a current condition Land use/Land cover map that consisted of vegetative cover, structures and infrastructure as a tool for helping community members understand the effects of human land use on natural resources. However, in addition to the land cover portion of the map, this project examined specific land use conditions that shape the character of the watershed. For the past twenty years two intertwined factors seem to have most strongly conditioned the relationship between human use of land and its effects on biodiversity and water quality in the Muddy Creek Watershed. These two are land ownership patterns and the state/local land use zoning adopted in the 1970's and 1980's ( see Ownership and Zoning). With the inherited cultural practices and landscape trajectory described earlier in this report, these two factors and their associated mandates and incentives have led to a more spatially consolidated landscape in which contiguous patches of forest, agriculture and rural residential land have been gathered into groups. This has constrained change in use and development across the watershed during the past twenty years. The possible futures, to the extent that they bracket a plausible range of what may be expected to happen in the watershed, show that the kinds of change anticipated by the extremes of development and conservation may overwhelm the ability of land ownership and zoning to constrain landscape change in the next thirty years as powerfully as they have during the past twenty years.

The 1850's historic vegetation information, unavailable until the final stakeholder meeting, proved an effective tool in conveying how management practices have acted to alter the watershed. Had this information been available from the beginning of the process, stakeholders' understandings about the impacts multiple land uses have on natural systems could have been strengthened, thus assisting the process of envisioning the possible futures. Additionally, the development of a "recent past" GIS map, ca. 1965 would have been a useful conceptual tool. Such a map would show land cover conditions at the same interval into the past which the stakeholders were asked to imagine into the future.

One approach to accessing historical data early in the process consists of having those students involved collect historic photos, maps and oral histories from the stakeholders. With such an approach, the gathering of essential information is expedited and stakeholders are further engaged in the process. An effort like this, that employs stakeholders' knowledge as a resource can help create a forum for exchange allowing researchers and stakeholders to build a common vocabulary, which then benefits later stages of the process.

Characterizing Biodiversity

Using an evaluative model to examine changes in biodiversity over time has the potential to provide an understanding of population viability for species studied, given specific land management practices. As the model has the potential to produce visual representations that quantitatively rank these various land use changes for their effects on biodiversity, it is a useful tool in engaging community members in the planning and decision making process as these relate to biodiversity. The time and effort intensive task of field validating species-habitat relationships, and the effects of variations in habitat quality on these relationships, is not trivial. Until resources become available for such field work, evaluative approaches like those used in this project offer a tractable, credible option for characterizing current and possible future biodiversity.

The biodiversity evaluative modeling approach employed in the Muddy Creek Project is a computationally simple model, making it easily transferable to other studies. Consequently this approach to assessing biodiversity can be used with data of different resolution and applied to other spatial and temporal scales in other regions. In doing so, these models can facilitate a land use planning approach that addresses impacts to biodiversity.

Characterizing Water Quality

The approach used to analyze water quality in the Muddy Creek Watershed provides accurate and detailed data. Because of project constraints, model source and output data were of coarse spatial resolution, making delineation of how landscape design or policy changes impact water quality a challenge. In other words, the grain of data used to describe the mapped possible futures, together with the model's tendency to generalize standard land use and management practices across the watershed, resulted in output of high accuracy, but coarse spatial articulation.

This approach enables researchers and the community to learn about the intricacies of water quality and water processes. The model was constrained by available data in this project, and as a result was able to produce analyses that inform policy and design broadly but was not able to produce parcel-level guidance. This was never an explicit goal for the water quality model in this project, but is a worthy goal in future applications of such models. Like the biodiversity model, the water quality model used in this project is easily transferrable to other studies. It too can facilitate an improved approach to land use planning by explicitly addressing impacts to water quality.

Linking Human and Natural Systems Through a Participatory Process: A Participatory Process From the Bottom-Up

The public involvement process used in this project provides an example of public participation that aims to heighten a community's awareness of and connection to the larger landscape in which they live. Unlike so-called top-down approaches that engage the public in a planning process through presentation of a set of preformulated options from which they are then asked to choose (USDA Expanding Horizons of Forest Ecosystem Management 1994), this project involved the participants in a process of articulating guiding assumptions, then developing, depicting, and refining a range possible future land use options.

In this bottom-up approach, stakeholders were primary participants in the envisioning phase of the process from its inception. Because the project provided a framework in which the stakeholders could envision multiple futures for the watershed, rather than one preferred future, numerous community perspectives were accommodated. The stakeholders controlled the range of decisions, from the composition of the land uses in the spectrum of possible futures and goals represented within each future, to the names ascribed to them.

The approach enabled researchers and stakeholders to compare insights about the watershed through an exchange of knowledge, experience and skills. Use of such an approach in resource planning may increase understandings about how stakeholders' decisions affect ecological function, and in this way may be said to link human and natural systems. Stakeholders' Evaluations of the Participatory Process The stakeholders involved with the project were sent an evaluation that enabled them to comment on and evaluate the process. The evaluation consisted of eight questions asking stakeholders to comment on various aspects of the process ranging from length and frequency of meetings to how successful the process was and how it could be improved. Sixty percent (five of eight) of the mailed evaluations were completed and returned. Altogether, responses to the process were positive. There were some concerns however, about how meetings were organized. It was felt that the amount of information the researchers expected to be generated at each meeting restricted in-depth discussion about issues stakeholders considered important. Additional concerns raised in the evaluations were directed at the approach the research team used to make initial contact with the community. In response to this approach the stakeholders felt confused and questioned the intentions of the research team's goals. However, once involved, stakeholders believed that their presence in the process made a difference. It was generally agreed that attending meetings was a worthwhile effort, as the meetings afforded opportunities for stakeholders to learn from researchers and from each other. Based on the questionnaires that were returned, initial contact with a community should be clear and unintimidating. Researchers should work to ensure a strong community presence by limiting research team presence, particularly initially. At initial meetings community members should be given an opportunity to speak about their desired project results to counter any perceived research team bias. Additionally, the amount of work to be done by researchers and stakeholders at each meeting should be flexible.

Encapsulating the Process for Other Communities and Landscapes

The process this project employs can be defined in five objectives: 1) selecting a study area, 2) characterizing the landscape, 3) depicting possible futures, 4) evaluating possible futures, and 5) responding to the planning process, i.e. using an evaluative model to refine and enhance future visions. These objectives are important individually and as an integrated set. Selecting a study area entails identifying a focal area based on parameters such as representativeness, likelihood of change and potential for improvement. Using explicitly identified criteria to locate a study area increases the likelihood that work done in that area will usefully inform management at broader scales. Characterizing the landscape helps further understanding about the natural and cultural histories of that area. This understanding is important in making informed decisions during the project. Depicting a range of possible futures for a given study area involves envisioning how the landscape will change over time given specific assumptions about future land use. In depicting possible futures, residents and policy makers are primary participants, defining parameters for change. Evaluating possible futures provides an opportunity for residents and policy makers to see how certain changes in the landscape affect natural and human systems using best available data and ecological process models. These objectives consolidate available information and informed depictions of future possibilities into an understandable and accessible format, providing opportunities for exchange of knowledge. The objectives identified here can be used individually or as a whole process. This adaptability enables this process or part of this process to be transferable elsewhere to be used with different scales, communities and regions.

There is, however, a potential circularity in the logic behind this process. Depictions of possible futures may create their own momentum and tend to become self-fulfilling prophecies. From one perspective, this is precisely what planning seeks to do; a representative group of people devotes sufficient time and effort to achieve a shared vision of a preferred circumstance and then sets about organizing the changes necessary to bring that vision to reality. In an exploratory research project such as described in this report, we believe it is incumbent on the researchers to avoid this to the extent practical by keeping the steps of describing possible futures separate and distinct from the process of evaluating possible futures.