Browsing by Subject "Watershed management"

Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
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    The foundations of community capacity: an exploration of the role of fairness, trust and legitimacy in sustainable watershed management
    (2014-11) Sames, Amanda
    Water resource managers and policymakers are increasingly turning to a watershed approach using hydrologic rather than political boundaries to address water resource problems. However, transboundary, interjurisdictional water resource management can be especially challenging for local government officials and citizens. This thesis examines community capacity for sustainable watershed management within two southeastern Minnesota mixed land use and multi-jurisdictional watersheds. Specific objectives were to describe and compare conditions and capacities that promote or constrain sustainable watershed management from the perspective of water resource professionals, government officials and active community members. Data were gathered though 49 key informant interviews conducted with resource professionals, community decision makers and active residents in 2011and 2012 and analyzed using grounded theory and comparative analysis. Findings indicate the importance of fairness, trust and legitimacy in relation to community capacity for sustainable watershed management. The emergence of fairness, trust and legitimacy in this study indicate a new aspect of community capacity: foundational conditions. As foundational conditions, they allow previously identified actionable capacities to be leveraged in response to community needs, in this case, sustainable watershed management. Implications for resource managers are discussed.
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    Identifying the Impact and Efficacy of Watershed Management on an Urban Stream
    (2020-02) Distel, JohnMichael
    Restoration and management of water resources have become a common counter to the degradation of hydrologic ecosystem services, specifically from the effects of urbanization. This project used a long-term data set to see if changes in discharge and concentration-discharge relationships could be attributed to water resources management at the watershed scale and for specific streamside infrastructure. The stream at the focus of this inquiry is Minnehaha Creek. It flows through the west metropolitan Minneapolis, Minnesota area – located in the north-central region of the United States. Two data sets were used in this study: 1) mean daily discharge, collected by a United States Geological Survey (USGS) stream gauge from 2007 – 2018, and 2) flow and water chemistry data, collected by the Minnehaha Creek Watershed District (MCWD) from 2009 – 2017. The water chemistry parameters used in the analysis include total phosphorus (TP), total nitrogen (TN), total suspended solids (TSS). Analysis showed an increase in discharge moving through the stream over time, likely due to increases in precipitation. Increasing minimum flows point to increasing shallow groundwater contributions and, therefore, increased infiltration across the watershed – a goal of the stormwater management within the Minnehaha Creek watershed. All C-Q relationships were negative and, corresponding to the discharge trends, concentrations decreased over time. However, flux of solutes remained steady. With increasing flows, a decrease in concentration with no change in flux is indicative of a reduction in sediment and solute transport – another goal of watershed management. No significant influence from the specific infrastructure analyzed in this study was observed. This is likely due to the data’s collection rate. Recommendations on improving data collection include adding temporal variety and ensuring representation of all levels of discharge. Recommendations are broken into three main categories: 1) assurance of representative sampling, 2) inclusion of temporal range in data collection and 3) broad distribution of sampling locations.
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    A moral obligation model of landowner conservation norms and behavior
    (2014-06) Pradhananga, Amit K.
    Despite efforts to reduce water pollution, water resource managers have yet to find a solution to the problem of non-point sources: pollution from diffusely distributed urban and rural land use practices. Current management approaches to NPS pollution are not regulatory and thus require voluntary human action. Changing human behavior, though, is a challenging task. Any intervention aimed at altering behavior should be based on an understanding of the determinants of behavior. Although varying in their theoretical and methodological approaches, researchers have focused on internal motivators such as values, attitudes, beliefs and norms as a basis to understand pro-environmental behavior. The purpose of this dissertation is to examine the factors that influence pro-environmental norms and behaviors in the context of water resource management. To this end, an integrated moral obligation model (MOM) was developed to investigate the relationship between environmental and cultural values, a series of activators, personal norm and behavior. The specific research objectives of this dissertation are to i) determine the factors that activate landowners' personal norms to protect water resources, and ii) determine the influence of activators and personal norm on landowners' civic engagement in water resource issues. Data were collected through a self-administered survey of a random sample of landowners from three Minnesota watersheds: Sand Creek, Vermillion River and Cannon River watersheds. Latent variable structural equation modeling was used to understand the hypothesized relationships between values, beliefs, norms and behavior. Findings provide support for MOM as a useful theoretical basis to understand norms and behaviors related to water resource management. Structural equation modeling revealed that personal norms to act influence pro-environmental behavior. While personal norms are rooted in collectivistic and altruistic-biospheric values, beliefs about consequences of pollution, local responsibility, social pressure to take action and ability to act fuel personal norms. Overall, findings suggest that intervention strategies are likely to be successful if landowners perceive water resource protection as a moral issue and a collective responsibility of local landowners. Further, findings suggest that conservation programs must provide incentives that address real or perceived barriers.