Climate Change Adaptation: Perspectives at the Nexus of Science, Society, and Resource Management

Cienega Watershed PartnershipWater Sustainability Seminar SeriesAcademy VillageApril 16, 2014Part 1.1 Watershed Overview and CWP

OverviewGeneral introduction

Cienega Watershed: Area, geography, ecosystems

Watershed and hydrologyConservation and watershed protection

The Cienega Watershed Partnership

Achievements to date, challenges and opportunities ahead

General introduction

The Cienega Watershed

Cienega Watershed Partnership

Todays presentersThe Cienega Watershed

The Cienega Watershed

Source: PAGThe Cienega watershedContains five of the rarest habitat types in the American SouthwestCienegas (marshlands)Cottonwood-willow riparian forestsSacaton grasslandsMesquite bosques, and Semi-desert grasslandsCienega Creek is one of the few remaining perennial streams in Arizona, providing critical habitat for wildlife, especially Threatened and Endangered speciesHistorically important ranching operationsImportant sites for cultural/archaeological resourcesLCNCA managed by the Bureau of Land Management

Las Cienegas NCAUnique effort to protect landscape threatened by fragmentation and development (1990s)

Has become a national example of effective stakeholder engagement and adaptive management

Strong partnerships b/w federal and state agencies, NGOs, university, ranchers, and local communities

mesquite bosque Harold E Malde

cienega wetlands

sacaton grasslandsWildlife habitat

semi-desert grasslands

cottonwood-willow riparian8Las Cienegas NCA is a special place

Las Cienegas features 5 of the Southwests rarest vegetation communities; these support over 230 species of birds, 60 mammals, 43 herps, 3 native fish.

Especially key in our arid southwest are LCs ~20 miles of riparian habitat, ~8 of which support perennial surface water.

The high quality grassland watershed is rare and valuable in ts own right, but also is key to sustaining flows in the creek. This includes both the upland grass communities and this special sacaton flat floodplain grass community.

Natural Resource Values

Chiricahua leopard frogHuachuca water umbel

Southwestern willow flycatcher

Western yellow-billed cuckooimages courtesy of Pima County, SDCP

Lesser long-nosed bat

Mexican garter snakeGila chub

Gila topminnow9LCNCA Site hosts six federally listed species (pictured), plus 26 other special status plant and animal species (includes 2 T&E candidate spp, 26 BLM sensitive spp list.

topminnow, garter snake and cuckoo in particular have experienced dramatic declines in range and number in recent decades; for each of these, LC supports one of the best remaining populations in the US.

These drawings are from Pima Countys Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan, These species, are a symbol of how were really all in this together, all jurisdictions have to work together to protect and manage intact, functional landscapes. Youll see this tomorrow at the landscape overview site, efforts to preserve connectivity.

Pima Countys efforts have made the work at Las Cienegas more valuable, made it a centerpiece of a whole societys attempts to retain the natural character of their homeland as our towns and cities grow. Las Cienegas NCA - Multiple uses

10Las Cienegas NCA legislation also call s for BLM to provide for environmentally responsible livestock grazing and recreationStakeholder Involvement

History of strong public engagement

Consensus based decision making

Strong partnerships

Adaptive managementLas Cienegas NCA and Cienega Watershed has a history of strong collaboration going back into the 1970s in earlier efforts to protect the area, continuing with efforts to bring the area into BLM ownership to prevent development and then to work with BLM on developing a management plan for the area and now continued support to work with BLM on implementation.

In 1995, SVPP formed in response to BLMs invitation to participate in a collaborative planning effort to develop a land use plan for LCNCA.

Participants from Nine Federal, State, and Local Agencies; Twenty Organizations, Institutions, and Businesses including ranching, environmental, and recreation interests; and Individual participants from twelve Arizona Communities.

Stakeholders worked on developing a vision and desired condition goals and objectives for the Cienega watershed area; reached consensus on their preferred alternative for RMP

Several other groups formed along way: CCCC, SCCF etc.

RMP completed in 2003 using an open collaborative process involving Sonoita Valley Planning Partnership

11LCNCA Management PlanCollaborative plan

Ecologically-based, measurable objectives

Adaptive design

12Main point: Stakeholder involvement produced a GREAT management plan for LCNCA which was the foundation for monitoring program and AM BLM completed a resource management plan in 2003, after several years of input from stakeholders. This stakeholder input shed light on conflicting views of how things should be managed, but ultimately also reconciled many of these conflicts by developing broad agreement on over-arching goals of ecosystem health. The planning group put a lot of effort into formulating objectives by which one could measure progress towards sustaining ecological health. Plan recognizes that we cant always predict with certainty how a complex natural system will react to management actions or other changes. It sets up an Adaptive Management framework to deal with this uncertainty.

Shared watershed goals with measurable objectivesFoundations Baseline Inventories

13Beginning in 1988, BLM has collected resource data on conditions of upland areas, riparian and aquatic habitats, native fish populations and established permanent monitoring plots and transects and associated photo points.Foundations Ecological Monitoring Program

Plot 17Plot 18

Monitoring must beTargeted ReliableFeasibleTransparent

14Scientifically robust ecological monitoring program

In 2004, BLM invited TNC to help them get more from their monitoring. They needed it to be more TARGETED, so we evaluated how well it addressed their management objectives, whether they could tell when they were succeeding, or nearing thresholdsReliable, i.e. have adequate power to detect change around thresholdsTargeted: at telling us whether weve met our objectives or are moving in the right directionPowerful enough to give managers a solid foundation for their decisionsAs Efficient as possible, to make best use of shrinking resources. When you put targeted and efficient together, you may decide to drop monitoring thats not tied to objectives. Other monitoring may be interesting, but we at least need to have our objectives covered.Transparent: AM is particularly attractive in situations where there is a lot of controversy, where you can get agreement on ultimate land-health goals but still have a lot of disagreement on how to achieve ones goals These tend to be the situation in which openness and transparency are most important for building trust.

BLM design criteria for monitoring: Parameters must explicitly relate to management objectives and critical stressesground cover, grass/shrub diversity, shrub/tree cover, composition by wt., grass/shrub heightSensitive to detect change (statistical) over appropriate parameter values, time framesTime & cost effective

Collaborative Structure

Biological Planning Meetings, Science on the Sonoita Plains Meeting, State of the Watershed Meeting15

Plot 17Plot 18 .ActEvaluatePlanMonitorAdjust16Karen: Stakeholder involvement continues throughout AM cycle:stakeholders have remained involved after main planning effort, Continue to help implement The RMP, and are the core of the Biological Planning process that loops new information back into the decision process. BP = mechanism for data to inform decisions**

Climate Change and Uncertainty

Scenario planning allows us to identify robust management actionsPrioritize ecological monitoring efforts17