Abstract
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; for this effort to be worthwhile, the information generated must be useful and used. We apply an evaluation framework of salience (type of information), credibility (quality of information), and legitimacy (trustworthiness of information) to assess how hydrologic modeling outputs have been used in NBS projects by three types of decision makers: advocates, implementers, and analysts. Our findings, based on documents and interviews with watershed management programs in South America currently implementing NBS, consider how hydrologic modeling supports two types of decisions for NBS projects: quantifying the hydrologic impact of potential and existing NBS and prioritizing where NBS might be sited within a watershed. To help inform future modeling studies, we identify several problematic assumptions that analysts may make about the credibility of modeled outputs for NBS when advocates and implementers are not effectively engaged. We find that salient, credible, and legitimate results in applications evaluating NBS for water are not always generated in the absence of clear communication and engagement. Integr Environ Assess Manag 2022;18:135–147.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 135-147 |
| Number of pages | 13 |
| Journal | Integrated environmental assessment and management |
| Volume | 18 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Jan 2022 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:We thank the many Water Producer Project managers, project management unit members, participants, and supporters for sharing their experiences and input. In particular, we thank Paulo Petry, Hendrik Mansur, Claudio Klemz, Andre Targa, Samuel Barreto, and Henrique Bracale from The Nature Conservancy; Júlio Cesar, Décio Tubbs, and Caroline Lopes (Guandu Watershed Committee); Marie Ikemoto (INEA); Ronaldo Aruturo Sabion Figueiredo (Municipality of Rio Claro); Kelly Dacol and Rafaela Comparim Santos from EMASA, Iran Bittencourt Borges (formally ITPA); Devanir Garcia dos Santos and Flavio Carvalho (Brazil National Water Agency); Sergio Razera (Agency of PCJ Committee); Paulo Henrique Pereira and Benedito Arlindo Cortez (Municipality of Extrema); Pedro Francez (City Council of Camboriú); Everton Balinski (CIRAM‐ EPAGRI); Carla Rosana Krug and Mauro Eichler (FUCAM‐Muncipality of Camboriú); Patricia Zimmerman (Municipality of Balneário Camboriú); and Susan Suheesen. Kate A. Brauman, Leah L. Bremer, and Perrine Hamel were supported by NSF grant 1624329 through the Belmont Forum project ClimateWIse and Leah L. Bremer was also supported by NSF EPSCoR 1557349. Perrine Hamel acknowledges funding support from the National Research Foundation, the Prime Minister's Office, Singapore, under award NRF‐NRFF12‐2020‐0009. The Natural Infrastructure for Water Security project, funded by USAID and the Government of Canada, led by Forest Trends, with local partners CONDESAN and the Peruvian Society for Environmental Law (SPDA), as well as international experts EcoDecisión and researchers from Imperial College London, supported Boris F. Ochoa Tocachi, Francisco Roman‐Dañobeytia, Vivien Bonnesoeur, Edwing Arapa, and Gena Gammie. We acknowledge Natalia Aste (NIWS geographer at CONDESAN) for generating Figure 1 . Boris F. Ochoa TocachiBOT acknowledges the National Secretariat of Higher Education, Science, Technology, and Innovation of Ecuador (SENESCYT).
Funding Information:
We thank the many Water Producer Project managers, project management unit members, participants, and supporters for sharing their experiences and input. In particular, we thank Paulo Petry, Hendrik Mansur, Claudio Klemz, Andre Targa, Samuel Barreto, and Henrique Bracale from The Nature Conservancy; Ju?lio Cesar, De?cio Tubbs, and Caroline Lopes (Guandu Watershed Committee); Marie Ikemoto (INEA); Ronaldo Aruturo Sabion Figueiredo (Municipality of Rio Claro); Kelly Dacol and Rafaela Comparim Santos from EMASA, Iran Bittencourt Borges (formally ITPA); Devanir Garcia dos Santos and Flavio Carvalho (Brazil National Water Agency); Sergio Razera (Agency of PCJ Committee); Paulo Henrique Pereira and Benedito Arlindo Cortez (Municipality of Extrema); Pedro Francez (City Council of Camboriu?); Everton Balinski (CIRAM- EPAGRI); Carla Rosana Krug and Mauro Eichler (FUCAM-Muncipality of Camboriu?); Patricia Zimmerman (Municipality of Balnea?rio Camboriu?); and Susan Suheesen. Kate A. Brauman, Leah L. Bremer, and Perrine Hamel were supported by NSF grant 1624329 through the Belmont Forum project ClimateWIse and Leah L. Bremer was also supported by NSF EPSCoR 1557349. Perrine Hamel acknowledges funding support from the National Research Foundation, the Prime Minister's Office, Singapore, under award NRF-NRFF12-2020-0009. The Natural Infrastructure for Water Security project, funded by USAID and the Government of Canada, led by Forest Trends, with local partners CONDESAN and the Peruvian Society for Environmental Law (SPDA), as well as international experts EcoDecisio?n and researchers from Imperial College London, supported Boris F. Ochoa Tocachi, Francisco Roman-Da?obeytia, Vivien Bonnesoeur, Edwing Arapa, and Gena Gammie. We acknowledge Natalia Aste (NIWS geographer at CONDESAN) for generating Figure?1. Boris F. Ochoa TocachiBOT acknowledges the National Secretariat of Higher Education, Science, Technology, and Innovation of Ecuador (SENESCYT).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 The Authors. Integrated Environmental Assessment and Management published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Society of Environmental Toxicology & Chemistry (SETAC).
Keywords
- Green infrastructure
- Natural infrastructure
- Payment for ecosystem services
- Value of information
- Water resources
PubMed: MeSH publication types
- Journal Article
