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PSNERP-Nearshore Science Team (NST)
Monthly Meeting Synthesis
28 June 2005

Venue:

Deans Conference Room, Ocean Sciences Bldg., University of Washington, Seattle, WA

Attendance:

Si Simenstad (UW), Fred Goetz (ACOE), Miles Logsdon (UW), Curtis Tanner (USFWS), Phebe Drinker (UW), Tom Leschine (UW), Bernie Hargraves (ACOE)

Guests: Teresa Mitchell and Sascha Petersen (SMA)

Primary Meeting Topics:

(1) Seahurst Park case study presentation
(2) Social valuation of VECs white paper presentation
(3) Monitoring plan discussion
(4) ESRP enhancement funding

Seahurst Park case study (Teresa Mitchell and TomL):

  • SMA M.S. thesis: “Interagency Collaboration in Puget Sound Nearshore Restoration: A case study of the Seahurst Park bulkhead removal project”
  • Focused on interagency collaboration, as “joint activity between two or more agencies”
  • Research Questions
    • Does the Seahurst Park project meet conditions necessary for successful interagency collaboration as defined by Bardach (1998)?
    • 2) What can we learn from this shoreline restoration project that can be applied to future projects?
  • Methods and analyses:
    • Evaluative Case Study (Yin, 2003)
    • Data Collection: interviews and document review
    • Grouping of responses with similar themes to identify emergent themes and categorize in correlation with document review data
    • Identify factors important in Seahurst project
    • Assessed for their fit into Bardach’s framework for ICC
    • Interagency cooperation, community participation, skilled participants, rationale/reasoning, education, leadership, etc.
  • Conclusions:
    • Leadership will come in many forms and at many levels
    • Skilled staff and council members of the City of Burien facilitated project completion
    • Corps should not expect future non-federal sponsors to have the same skill set and circumstances to result in completed projects (the “serendipity” factor)
    • Post project monitoring should be planned for and funded in advance
  • Observation: “One person’s serendipity is another’s calculated moves to perceive and exploit opportunity”

Social valuation of VECs (TomL and Sascha Petersen):

  • VEC white paper: Valuing Puget Sound’s VECs (provisional title)—“only addressing the V in VEC, nothing else”
  • PSNERP VECs somewhat divergent from mainstream literature
    • Canadian Environmental Agency (very social and cultural, less ecological)
    • E.O. Wilson and biophilia
    • ecosystem services from Millennium Ecosystem Assessment
    • natural capital based ecological system
    • ecosystem goods and services
  • This white paper is designed to help explain the complex bundle of values of VECs and how those values can be assessed; while market valuation techniques depend on the basis of valuation, they also have different limitations
  • Changing values over time?—connections to emergence of environmentalism and differences between US and European views of “wild” —also the transition from past condition values to future condition values

Monitoring plan discussion (Si):

  • Discussion issue: What should constitute PSNERP Monitoring Plan and how to go about preparing it?
  • There is considerable general guidance on monitoring plans, but not many specific examples of how that guidance should be applied to specific projects
  • Important to define different types and approaches to monitoring:
    • Ambient, ecosystem monitoring for status and trends
    • Project manager’s post-project monitoring
    • What is the purpose of the monitoring?
  • Recommended next steps:
    • Form new NST working group: Tom Mumford, Fred Goetz, Kurt Fresh, Tom Leschine and some IT members (Paul Ceraghino?)
    • Identify different types of monitoring and necessary elements of “good” monitoring
    • Find an example of a “good” monitoring plan
    • First priority is development of a monitoring plan to Feasibility Report to compliment SNAR
    • Where is the place for adaptive management and how to institutionalize that in cooperation with Corps requirements and methods?

ESRP enhancement funding (Curtis):

  • Recommendations – reached by consensus at end of Ft. Worden meeting
    • Fund 1st 8 project in order as ranked by review team: seek cost savings sufficient to fund projects #9 and #10
    • Set aside 5-10% (even at expense of funding projects #9 and #10) of ESRP funds to advance learning opportunities
  • What about these projects can be integrated, e.g., support funding of cross comparison?
  • Should PSNERP evaluate whether the models being funding are going to be useful for future restoration? Can they be expanded upon? Will they be open source (code) that can be used by and subsequent research project, and built on to assess cumulative effects of restoration?

Next NST meeting and preliminary agenda:

  • July 26-27 in Olympia
    • NST priorities for FY07 PSNERP funding
    • FWOP pilot project for WRIA9
    • NST issues (survey results), e.g., communication problems; Is the science team meant to have lengthy discussions or make decisions?
    • Interpretive Typology Workshop – “A Narrative of Evolution” – proposal by M. Logsdon
    • Monitoring topics to frame discussion with Greg Steyer (USGS-BRD) visit at August NST meeting