Brief Summary of Minutes of Annual Meeting

Minutes attached as PDF file.

Objective 1: Identify and Develop Typologies of Catalysts for Change in Conservation Behavior, Resource Management, and Governance in a Water Context. Objective 2: Determine the mechanisms and conditions by which catalysts are translated into individual, collective, and institutional action. Objective 3: Understand and develop typologies of individual, institutional, and collective actions and social and ecological outcomes. Objective 4: Synthesize and assess conceptual frameworks and analytical models of catalysts, conditions, and potential outcomes. Objective 5: Identify, develop, and evaluate adaptive strategies to achieve desired actions and capacities to protect water resources. Several projects are underway in Minnesota (M. Davenport) that address aspects of objectives 2, 3, & 5. The Building Climate Readiness in Nature-Based Tourism-Dependent Coastal Communities project goals are to (1) assess vulnerability and adaptive capacity in recreation and tourism dependent communities and (2) engage decision makers and actors in assessment, discussion, and action planning to build climate readiness. Six presentations were given at professional conferences and one journal article accepted for publication. Team also completed and submitted an interim report to funder. The Community Capacity Assessment for Storm Water Management Project examines drivers of and constraints to community capacity to engage in storm water management in the watersheds, values, beliefs and norms associated with water resources and water resource management, perceptions of existing water resource programs, water resource programming most likely to influence future conservation behavior. The project team has conducted more than 50 interviews is designing a resident survey, and completed and submitted an interim report to funders. The Community Capacity Assessment, Governance and Program Evaluation is assessing (1) landowner/resource user values and beliefs about their communities, the environment, water quality issues and water resource conservation; (2) current and future conservation actions; and (3) who or what influences conservation decisions. The project was also designed to evaluate existing or potential conservation programs including a watershed planning and management approach, collaborative farmer decision making, and farmer-led councils. Conducted more than 50 interviews with farmers, farmland owners and water resource and land use planners/managers and administered a landowner survey to 1,000 property owners in 5 subwatersheds. Completed and submitted four project reports to funders, gave multiple invited seminars and workshops statewide, had one journal article accepted for publication. The Social Measures for Clean Water Funds Effectiveness Tracking project tracks the social outcomes of Clean Water Funds through a social measures monitoring system to assess the impacts of clean water projects on community capacity. Several Iowa projects made progress toward objectives. LW Morton collected data and published papers on changing climate in the Mississippi River Basin, farmer practices and management decisions and riverine flooding in leveed agricultural landscapes. Received $50,000 from Midwest Climate Hub to gather social science data on Great Lake specialty crop growers on impacts of precipitation and changing climate on soil and water resources and production practices. Conducted Nutrient Reduction Research for $175,000 grant titled Social-Economic Research on Iowa Nutrient Reduction. Continued to work with two NE Iowa farmer-led watershed groups funded by $21,000 watershed Improvement grants. Farmer identity work focused on relationships between identity and social biophysical environmental context, consultation with Wisconsin watershed groups developing a survey using farmer identity theory but modifying for applications to dairy producer, preliminary collaboration with Kansas State University developing farmer identity instrument for use with beef producers in KS, OK, & IA as part of SARE proposal. A second farmer identity analysis in preparation as it relates to the role of farmer identity in addressing agricultural water quality within the US Corn Belt utilizing Sustainable Corn CAP survey data. Gathered identity data as part of NOAA-SARP grant with Purdue project interviewing 24 Iowa farmer advisors around agronomic, financial, conservation themes associated with water and soil management (in conjunction with Nebraska, Indiana colleagues) Coding of 40+ transcripts begun. J. Arbuckle has been examining the relationships between two catalytic forces: 1) the establishment of the Iowa Nutrient Reduction Strategy and 2) the creation of the Iowa Farm Environmental Leader Award, and shifts in farmers’ water quality awareness, attitudes, and behaviors. At the US Forest Service, K. Floress secured funding to analyze regional social indicators data to build models of individual behavior. She is working with L. Prokopy and others to conduct innovative, integrative model building that will provide findings leading regional recommendations on catalyzing positive water quality behaviors. A. Rissman published several NC1190-related papers. One, which received significant local media coverage, focused on the long-term changes in policy and drivers of water quality in the Yahara Watershed, Wisconsin (Gillon et al. 2015 listed above) and examines the reasons that improving water quality outcomes has been difficult despite significant institutional and collective action. Another examined barriers to targeting high-phosphorus yielding areas, demonstrating a disconnect between spatial areas of policy implementation and areas of high phosphorus yield and examined the barriers including institutional fragmentation responsible for that disconnect. A third paper summarizes the challenges in both producing and using science to improve water quality. Indiana NC1190 members N. Babin and L. Prokopy analyzed agricultural industry trade articles and interviews with agricultural advisors on both adaptation to climate risk as well as the adoption of conservation practices as a result of the 2012 drought. They also evaluated the maintenance and diffusion of rain barrels in several Indiana watersheds, the results of which will contribute to our understanding of the adoption and maintenance of water quality and climate change BMPs in urban and sub-urban landscapes within the Lake Michigan region, a topic about which we have very little scientific understanding. Other efforts included a paper focused on baseline social capacity and other conditions that are necessary for catalysts to lead to change, to help identify watersheds that have baseline conditions that may lead to more successful outcomes, and the potential for proximate concerns (e.g., local species of concern such as mussels) vs. distant concerns such as Gulf hypoxia to catalyze farmer behavior change. Jessica Ulrich-Schad successfully surveyed and conducted interviews with a small population of Amish farmers in a watershed in NE Indiana about their conservation practices and attitudes; she will be analyzing those data soon and providing recommendations to local conservation practitioners so that they can improve their relationships with Amish farmers in the area and increase their uptake of conservation practices. She also analyzed data and wrote two papers on nutrient management decision-making and conservation practices among agricultural landowners (absentee) and producers in Indiana. She is also in the process of analyzing pre-post social indicator survey data from two watersheds in Indiana; this will provide a sense of whether local water conservation outreach efforts were effective among both agricultural and urban/lake residents. She has collaborated extensively with Linda Prokopy and Nick Babin on some of these efforts. M. Burbach, K. Floress, and E. Kaufman collaborated on research showing that water-related leadership development programs should be theory based and provide assessment, challenge, and support; and offer a variety of developmental experiences and the opportunity to learn from experience. E. Kaufman continued to explore eco-leadership as a mechanism and condition for translating catalysts into action. Observed relationships between community groups’ leadership style, group cohesion, and community project engagement. Significant factors included idealized attributes and inspirational motivation.

A list of 2014-2015 publications, presentations, and grants was uploaded as a PDF file.