PARENT SESSION
MP1 - Sustainable Development: Science, Adaptive Management & Ecosystem Restoration
Chair: Luoma, Sam1, 1 USGS, Menlo Park, CA
2:10 PM to 5:30 PM - Monday, 18 November 2002
Room Ballroom G-I
(258) Incorporating science and adaptive management into plans for sustainable water management in Northern California.
Luoma, Samuel*,1,2, Taylor, Kimberly1,2, 1 CALFED Bay-Delta Program, Sacramento, CA, USA2 US Geological Survey, Menlo Park, CA, USA
ABSTRACT- The CALFED Bay-Delta Program is designed to improve the sustainability of water and ecosystem management over 40% of the watershed of California and 60% of the state's water supplies. The Environmental Water Account (EWA) and the Ecosystem Restoration Program (ERP) are two instances in CALFED where science, adaptive management and sustainable development intersect. They provide some lessons for implementation of other sustainable develop exercises. Both EWA and ERP are based upon hypotheses and conceptual models that are more implicit than explicit. This has led to some confusion about appropriate performance measures. Neither is a formally designed as an experiment. But experimental treatments might be derived from systematic evaluation of responses to climate-driven variability through time (EWA) or landscape-scale variability (ERP). These "natural treatments" are underway, however, and identifying effective approaches or the talent to take advantage, retrospectively, is a challenge. Most knowledge about performance is linked to measures that are easy to implement (e.g. counting fish) and threats that are easy to quantify ("take" at a water diversion point). Linking performance to an actual goal (recovery of threatened populations or habitat for native species) is made difficult by the need for fundamental knowledge about systems, watersheds and species; and the poor quantification of complex threats. Capabilities in ecosystem science are rapidly growing, however. Where it has been applied to well-defined questions, new science has pointed to creative solutions and re-definition of fundamental aspects of conceptual models. Institution of formal science approaches to CALFED activities has helped advance the debate, and maybe even better manage conflict; although engineering and water use activities are more difficult to hold to a scientific standard than is biology.
Key words: San Francisco Bay, Sustainable development, Adaptive management, Ecosystem Restoration