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Introduction
Publications
Publications (88)
Marine macroalgae are important indicators of healthy nearshore groundwater dependent ecosystems (GDEs), which are emergent global conservation priorities. Submarine groundwater discharge (SGD) supports abundant native algal communities in GDEs via elevated but naturally derived nutrients. GDEs are threatened by anthropogenic nutrient inputs that p...
Projects designed to incentivize ecosystem management for societal benefits are becoming increasingly popular and are often touted as win–win solutions for social and environmental challenges. Yet, there are important concerns about the equity and justice implications of these programs, and there is strong evidence that a lack of attention to justi...
Groundwater dependent ecosystems (GDE) are increasingly recognized as critical components of sustainable groundwater management, but are threatened by multiple drivers of environmental change. Despite this importance, data that link drivers of hydrologic change to GDEs are scarce. This study adapts a land‐sea modeling framework by calibrating marin...
Agricultural land abandonment affects millions of hectares of cultivated lands globally. While ending cultivation can lead to spontaneous reforestation and ecological benefits, the resulting landscapes often have lower social and agricultural benefits than the native forests and agricultural systems they replace, especially when non-native species...
Worldwide, an increasing number of watershed management programs invest in nature-based solutions (NbS) to water security challenges. Yet, NbS for water security currently are deployed at well below their hypothesized cost-effective global potential, with uncertainty about costs identified as one key constraint on increased investment. Data on admi...
Mainstreaming of ecosystem service approaches has been proposed as one path toward sustainable development. Meanwhile, critics of ecosystem services question if the approach can account for the multiple values of ecosystems to diverse groups of people, or for aspects of inter- and intra-generational justice. In particular, an ecosystem service appr...
Groundwater dependent ecosystems (GDEs) are increasingly recognized as important conservation targets with linked ecological and social value. However, the social uses and values of GDEs have received relatively little research attention in the peer-reviewed literature, precluding their greater inclusion in policy and management decisions. To help...
Effective and equitable coastal decision-making under sea level rise (SLR) requires managing for multiple coastal uses and values. This study explores how coastal decision-makers in Hawaiʻi perceive diverse uses and values of beaches and coastlines to be important and how they see recognition of these uses and values ideally shaping SLR response. W...
Coastal groundwater‐dependent ecosystems benefit from lowered salinity, nutrient‐rich submarine groundwater discharge (SGD). Across Pacific islands marine macroalgae appear to have been challenged by and adapted to the stress of lowered salinity with a trade‐off of nutrient subsidies delivered by SGD. Human alterations of groundwater resources and...
As water funds and other watershed investment programs expand around the world, there is growing interest in designing equitable programs that provide both upstream and downstream benefits. While research demonstrates that diverse values underlie upstream participation, existing communication and outreach materials from non-governmental organizatio...
Fresh groundwater is a critical resource supporting coastal ecosystems that rely on low-salinity, nutrient-rich groundwater discharge. This resource, however, is subject to contamination from point- and nonpoint-sources such as on-site sewage disposal systems (OSDS) and urban developments. Thus, the significance of flow and transport processes near...
Untreated and minimally treated wastewater discharged into the environment have the potential to adversely affect groundwater dependent ecosystems and nearshore marine health. Addressing this issue requires a systems approach that links land use and wastewater management decisions to potential impacts on the nearshore marine environment via changes...
Nature‐Based Solutions (NBS) are an increasingly popular approach to water resources management, with a growing number of projects designed to take advantage of landscape effects on water flow. As NBS for water are developed, producing hydrologic information to inform decisions often requires substantial investment in data acquisition and modeling;...
Groundwater sustainability initiatives, including sustainable yield and watershed policy protection policies, are growing globally in response to increasing demand for groundwater, coupled with concerns about the effects of climate and land-cover change on groundwater supply. Improved understanding of the impacts of watershed management on groundwa...
Well-managed rangelands provide important economic, environmental, and cultural benefits. Yet, many rangelands worldwide are experiencing pressures of land-use change, overgrazing, fire, and drought, causing rapid degradation. These pressures are especially acute in the Hawaiian Islands, which we explore as a microcosm with some broadly relevant le...
As the extent of secondary forests continues to expand throughout the tropics, there is a growing need to better understand the ecosystem services, including carbon (C) storage provided by these ecosystems. Despite their spatial extent, there are limited data on how the ecosystem services provided by secondary forest may be enhanced through the res...
The ecosystem service (ES) community aspires to illuminate how nature contributes to human well-being, and thereby elevate consideration of nature in decision making. So far, however, policy impact of ES research has been limited. To understand why, we identify five key elements of ES research that help inform decisions by connecting the supply of...
Worldwide, water utilities and other water users increasingly seek to finance watershed protection and restoration in order to maintain or enhance water quality and quantity important for drinking water supply and other human use. Hydrologic studies which characterize the relative effectiveness of watershed management activities in terms of metrics...
Healthy ecosystems are intricately connected to healthy communities and human well-being. Nature-based solutions (NBS) are an important tool for water security, while also providing additional human health, climate mitigation, and livelihood benefits that contribute to multiple Sustainable Development Goals. NBS also play out in landscapes of curre...
The contributors to this volume have approached nature-based solutions (NBS) from many different angles. Our collective experience with NBS includes applied research but primarily comprises practical experience supporting, developing, and implementing NBS policies and guidance for governments and businesses; advising local to international entities...
Cultural ecosystem services (CES) are associated with diverse and profound values, such as spiritual fulfillment, cultural heritage, and identity-related phenomena. Early ecosystem services research often omitted these deep meanings, but they are increasingly explored in recent studies through a range of disciplinary and epistemological perspective...
Globally, an increasing recognition of the importance of ecosystem-based management (EBM), Indigenous resource management (IRM), and Indigenous-led research and management is emerging; yet, case studies within scholarly literature illustrating comprehensive application of these theories and philosophies are scarce. We present the collaborative mana...
Concerns over groundwater depletion and ecosystem degradation have led to the incorporation of the concept of groundwater sustainability as a groundwater policy instrument in several water codes and management directives worldwide. Because sustainable groundwater management is embedded within integrated, co-evolving hydrological, ecological, and so...
As urban areas expand around the world, there are growing efforts to restore and protect natural and agricultural systems for the multitude of ecosystem services they provide to urban communities. This study presents a researcher-farmer collaboration in a highly urbanized area of Oʻahu focused on understanding the historical and current challenges...
Calls for, and commitments to, forest restoration and regenerative agriculture are booming. While these practices are often conceptualized and implemented separately, in many contexts, research and practice at the intersection of forest restoration and diversified agriculture can accelerate the mutual goal of increasing biodiversity and ecosystem s...
Groundwater management policy around the world increasingly seeks to protect groundwater-dependent ecosystems and associated human uses and values. This includes uses of ecosystems and agricultural systems linked to natural spring discharge. Yet, there are few examples of practical tools to balance human groundwater use with ecological water demand...
As watershed management programs have become more common globally, so have efforts to support these initiatives through hydrologic modeling and monitoring. However, these efforts are often guided by oversimplified assumptions of how management programs work and the quantity, quality, and type of information needed to support their planning, impleme...
Here, we expand on the term “ecomimicry” to be an umbrella concept for an approach to adaptive ecosystem-based management of social-ecological systems that simultaneously optimizes multiple ecosystem services for the benefit of people and place. In this context, we define ecomimicry as a strategy for developing and managing cultural landscapes, bui...
Investments in watershed services programs hold the promise to protect and restore ecosystems and water resources. The design and implementation of such programs is often accompanied by hydrologic modeling and monitoring, although the role of hydrologic information in meeting the needs of program managers remains unclear. In the Camboriú watershed,...
This article shows the two‐way relation between global norms and local conditions as they shape Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) theory and practice, through a case study of a water fund in Valle del Cauca, Colombia, the heartland of the country's sugarcane industry. Drawing on interviews, survey data and historical research, the article argue...
This study synthesizes findings from studies of the social and behavioral outcomes of collective payment for ecosystem services (PES) programs. The collective PES model is distinct from the conventional PES model in that by working with groups, not individuals, it breaks the direct relationship between an individual's consent to participate, the ec...
Declining natural resources have contributed to a cultural renaissance across the Pacific that seeks to revive customary ridge-to-reef management approaches to protect freshwater and restore abundant coral reef fisheries.We applied a linked land–sea modeling framework based on remote sensing and empirical data, which couples groundwater nutrient ex...
Declining natural resources have contributed to a cultural renaissance across the Pacific that seeks to revive customary ridge‐to‐reef management approaches to protect freshwater and restore abundant coral reef fisheries. We applied a linked land–sea modeling framework based on remote sensing and empirical data, which couples groundwater nutrient e...
As payment for ecosystem services (PES) programs grow around the world, so have concerns over whether a focus on ecosystem services will also protect biodiversity. Biodiverse Ecuadorian páramo grasslands have become a hotspot for PES in an effort to protect water supplies, sequester carbon, conserve biodiversity, and improve rural livelihoods. Howe...
Demand for clean, abundant water is increasing, yet the supply of clean water is increasingly at risk. As of 2010, about 40 percent of watersheds upstream of large urban areas had high to moderate levels of land and vegetation degradation caused by deforestation, poor agricultural practices, and development. This can reduce the amount of available...
There are growing efforts around the world to restore biocultural systems that produce food while also providing additional cultural and ecological benefits. Yet, there are few examples of integrated assessments of these efforts, impeding understanding of how they can contribute to multi-level sustainability goals. In this study, we collaborated wi...
With growing calls to scale up reforestation efforts worldwide, conservation managers increasingly must decide whether and how to restore highly altered ecosystems. However, empirical research on potential trade‐offs remains scarce. We use a Hawai'i watershed to demonstrate a collaborative, interdisciplinary approach to identifying synergies and tr...
Across the Pacific Islands, declining natural resources have contributed to a cultural renaissance of customary ridge-to-reef management approaches. These indigenous and community conserved areas (ICCA) are initiated by local communities to protect natural resources through customary laws. To support these efforts, managers require scientific tools...
We developed a linked land-sea modeling framework based on remote sensing and empirical data, which couples sediment export and coral reef models at fine spatial resolution. This spatially-explicit
(60 × 60 m) framework simultaneously tracks changes in multiple benthic and fish indicators as a function of land-use and climate change scenarios. We a...
Water Funds are collective-action watershed
conservation mechanisms where groups of water
users transfer resources to upstream communities
and land stewards for protection and restoration
of areas critical for water supplies. This approach
is rapidly growing in popularity around the world,
particularly in Latin America, where 19 Water
Funds are in...
Los Fondos de Agua son mecanismos de acción
colectiva para conservación de cuencas en donde
grupos de usuarios de agua transfieren recursos
a comunidades y propietarios de tierra para la
protección y restauración de áreas críticas para el
abastecimiento de agua. La popularidad de este
enfoque está creciendo rápidamente en el mundo,
y particularment...
Declining natural resources have led to a cultural renaissance across the Pacific that seeks to revive customary ridge-to-reef management approaches to protect freshwater and restore abundant coral reef fisheries. Effective ridge-to-reef management requires improved understanding of land-sea linkages and decision-support tools to simultaneously eva...
Modeling framework predictor variables description and processing methods.
This table provides a description of all the predictor variables modeled in the coral reef models. Each metric is classified by type (terrestrial drivers or marine drivers) and assigned a code for modeling. The table below indicates the data source and analytical tool used t...
Copyright permission Charles Fletcher.
(PDF)
Response variables and drivers’ relationships.
This table provides the hypothesized relationships between the drivers and coral reef indicators.
(DOCX)
Measured versus modeled nutrients for groundwater and coastal discharge at Ka‘ūpūlehu.
(TIFF)
Response curves of benthic indicators at Ka‘ūpūlehu.
(TIF)
Response curves of herbivore fish indicators at Ka‘ūpūlehu.
(TIF)
Response curves of piscivore fish indicators at Ka‘ūpūlehu.
(TIF)
Observed versus predicted coral reef indicators at Hā‘ena.
(TIF)
Observed versus predicted coral reef indicators at Ka‘ūpūlehu.
(TIF)
Fish species composition per functional groups.
(DOCX)
Coral reef predictive model performance per indicator.
The percent deviance explained (PDE) by the BRT models for the calibration and cross-validation (CV) processes and the final number of predictors (Xi) is shown for Hā‘ena and Kaʻūpūlehu.
(DOCX)
Response curves of the benthic indicators at Hā‘ena.
(TIF)
Response curves of the herbivore fish indicators at Hā‘ena.
(TIF)
Modeling framework response variables description.
Benthic (% cover) and fish biomass (g.m-1) coral reef indicators were derived from the coral reef surveys and used as response variables in the coral reef models.
(DOCX)
Coastal water quality data at Ka‘ūpūlehu.
See Carlson and Wiegner [169] for more details on sample collection, processing, and analytical methods.
(DOCX)
Response curves of the piscivore fish indicators at Hā‘ena.
(TIF)
As ecosystem service assessments increasingly contribute to decisions about managing Earth’s lands and waters, there is a growing need to understand the diverse ways that people use and value landscapes. However, these assessments rarely incorporate the value of landscapes to communities with strong cultural and generational ties to place, precludi...
Resource managers increasingly seek to implement cost-effective watershed restoration plans for multiple ecosystem service benefits. Using locally adapted ecosystem service tools and historical management costs, we quantified spatially explicit management costs and benefits (in terms of groundwater recharge and landscape flammability) to assist a s...
Watersheds are under increasing pressure worldwide, as expanding human activities coupled with global climate change threaten the water security of people downstream. In response, some communities have initiated investments in watershed services (IWS), a general term for policy-finance mechanisms that mitigate diverse watershed threats and promote...
Watersheds are under increasing pressure worldwide, as expanding human activities coupled with global climate change threaten the water security of people downstream. In response, some communities have initiated investments in watershed services (IWS), a general term for policy-finance mechanisms that mitigate diverse watershed threats and promote...
Andean páramo grasslands have long supported human populations that depend on them as forage for livestock and, increasingly, have been recognized as critical water sources with large soil carbon stores and high levels of biodiversity. Recent conservation efforts have used payment for ecosystem services (PES) to incentivize land management that aim...
