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Uncovering lines of evidence hidden in complex problems: using conceptual models to inform ecosystem-based management of the Missouri River cottonwoods

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Abstract

Unintended consequences arising from the damming and regulation of large multi-state river systems have generated complex socioecological conflicts that must now be addressed to facilitate ecosystem-based management in a holistic, sustainable, and resilient fashion. In these situations, the involvement of numerous stakeholders with disparate and often conflicting values, mindsets, and agendas generate a dynamic decision-making environment riddled with critical knowledge gaps, teeming with uncertainty, and driven by high stakes negotiations perpetuated by a sense of institutional urgency to embrace quick fixes. The system complexity calls for a transparent and prescriptive approach grounded in creative problem solving, transformative design, and collaborative adaptive management. Here, a spiral-based approach to ecosystem modeling is presented emphasizing system conceptualization while encouraging reflection, active learning, and hypothesis-driven monitoring. A case study on the Missouri River focuses on the development of a conceptual model for the cottonwood forest community lining the banks of this highly regulated river system. Between 2006 and 2010, eighty local stakeholders were engaged in six, week-long interactive workshops to integrate their existing knowledge of the cottonwood ecosystems and to synthesize this information into critical drivers, stressors, and valued ecosystem components using conceptual diagramming and tabular crosswalks. The final product has exposed clear lines of evidence tying essential ecosystem responses to measureable endpoints that are now being used to establish performance measures for both alternative comparisons and adaptive management thresholds that will trigger future management responses.

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Acknowledgments

This work is part of an ongoing and much larger effort to develop basin-wide understanding of cottonwood forest structure, composition, and dynamics, and was funded in part by the USACE, and by the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center’s (ERDC) System-Wide Water Research Program (SWWRP) under the Habitat-Based Ecological Response Models Work Unit (#141740). We thank the project’s stakeholders who actively participated in the development of this model and the framework’s application presented here, and we especially acknowledge core members of the study team including: Ms. Lisa Rabbe of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Dr. Mark Dixon from the University of South Dakota, Dr. Robert Jacobson and Dr. Mike Scott from the USGS, Dr. Carter Johnson from South Dakota State University, Ms. Theresa Smydra from the NRCS, Mr. Tim Cowman of the Univ. of South Dakota’s Missouri River Institute, and Mr. Rich Pfingsten and Ms. Suzie Boltz of EA Engineering who contributed significantly to the development of the conceptual model. The generous contributions, advice and support of Dr. Edmond Russo, Dr. Todd Bridges, and Ms. Antisa Webb of the ERDC must also be acknowledged.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Environmental Laboratory, US Army Engineer Research and Development Center, 3909 Halls Ferry Road, Vicksburg, MS, 39180, USA

    Kelly A. Burks-Copes

  2. Agricultural and Biological Engineering Department, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA

    Gregory A. Kiker

  3. School of Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa

    Gregory A. Kiker

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  1. Kelly A. Burks-Copes
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Correspondence to Kelly A. Burks-Copes.

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Burks-Copes, K.A., Kiker, G.A. Uncovering lines of evidence hidden in complex problems: using conceptual models to inform ecosystem-based management of the Missouri River cottonwoods. Environ Syst Decis 34, 425–442 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10669-014-9509-2

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