OysterFutures: Integrating Stakeholder Objectives with Natural System Models to Promote Sustainable Natural Resource Policy

Elizabeth W North1, Jeff Blair2, Jeffrey C Cornwell3, Amy E Freitag4, Rasika K Gawde1, Troy W Hartley5, Raleigh R Hood6, Robert M Jones2, Thomas J Miller7, Jane E Thomas8, Lisa A Wainger7 and Michael J Wilberg7, (1)University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, Horn Point Laboratory, Cambridge, MD, United States, (2)Florida State University, FCRC Concensus Center, Tallahassee, FL, United States, (3)University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science Horn Point Laboratory, Horn Point Laboratory, Cambridge, MD, United States, (4)Virginia Institute of Marine Science, Gloucester Point, VA, United States, (5)Virginia Institute of Marine Science, Virginia Sea Grant College Program, Gloucester Point, VA, United States, (6)University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science Horn Point Laboratory, Cambridge, MD, United States, (7)University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, Chesapeake Biological Laboratory, Solomons, MD, United States, (8)University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, Integration Application Network, Cambridge, MD, United States
Abstract:
Achieving effective natural resource management is challenged by multiple and often competing objectives, a restricted set of policy options, and uncertainty in the performance of those options. Yet, managers need policies that allow continued use of natural resources while ensuring access for future generations and maintenance of ecosystem services. Formal approaches are needed that will assist managers and stakeholders in choosing policy options that have a high likelihood of achieving social, ecological, and economic goals. The goal of this project, OysterFutures, is to address this need by improving the use of predictive models to support sustainable natural resource policy and management. A stakeholder-centered process will be used to build an integrated model that combines estuarine physics, oyster life history, and the ecosystem services that oysters provide (e.g., harvest, water quality) to forecast outcomes under alternative management strategies. Through a series of facilitated meetings, stakeholders will participate in a science-based collaborative process which will allow them to project how well policies are expected to meet their objectives using the integrated model. This iterative process will ensure that the model will incorporate the complex human uses of the ecosystem as well as focus on the outcomes most important to the stakeholders. In addition, a study of the socioeconomic drivers of stakeholder involvement, information flow, use and influence, and policy formation will be undertaken to improve the process, enhance implementation success of recommended policies, and provide new ideas for integrating natural and social sciences, and scientists, in sustainable resource management. In this presentation, the strategy for integrating natural system models, stakeholder views, and sociological studies as well as methods for selecting stakeholders and facilitating stakeholder meetings will be described and discussed.
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