Community-Based Collaboration: Bridging Socio-Ecological Research and Practice

3 How CBCs Learn Ecological Monitoring and Adaptive Management

The previous chapter described how local knowledge and scientific research could play powerful roles in developing and maintaining effective community -based collaboratives (CBCs). CBCs use local knowledge to form project goals, ask meaningful questions, gather and interpret information about the surrounding ecosystem, and learn whether their management actions are having an effect. In partnership with researchers, a few CBCs have used science to test their understanding of how ecosystems work. In this chapter we examine how CBCs learn about the ecology of their region and the impacts of their activities on it through formal ecological monitoring and adaptive management, an organized cycle of intentional “learning by doing .” We ask why and how CBCs use ecological monitoring and adaptive management to advance their objectives, and how these activities contribute to learning and applying new knowledge to management. To start, we discuss why ecological monitoring and adaptive management are important to CBCs, and define these terms as we use them in this chapter. We then review current knowledge about CBCs’ monitoring and adaptive management activities, drawing on both published accounts and case studies from our experiences. Next, we report on the challenges that CBCs face in implementing effective ecological monitoring and adaptive management and discuss potential strategies for addressing them, although barriers to and strategies for collaboration are mostly developed in chapter 4. Finally, we consider the social implications of ecological monitoring, and conclude by suggesting future directions for CBCs, agencies, and researchers to enhance monitoring capacity and cooperation within and among CBCs and among CBCs, agencies, and researchers. 3 How CBCs Learn Ecological Monitoring and Adaptive Management María E. Fernández-Giménez and Heidi L. Ballard 46 María E. Fernández-Giménez and Heidi L. Ballard Why Do CBCs Monitor? One obvious reason for CBCs to monitor is to assess progress toward meeting ecological goals and objectives. Monitoring in an adaptive management context can also help CBCs learn about the most effective or efficient management strategies (such as the effects of a salvage logging operation, discussed later in the example of the Public Lands Partnership) and answer questions about how the ecosystem works (how climate change affects a desert rangeland ecosystem in the Malpai borderlands). CBCs’ deliberate efforts to monitor and evaluate their progress in turn can help build internal accountability and external credibility (Harding and Moote 2005; see also McDermott, Moote, and Danks this volume). For example, both funders and skeptics of collaboration want to know whether the environmental outcomes of collaboration are an improvement over the results of conventional resource management approaches. Ecological monitoring can also have social consequences. When CBCs involve diverse stakeholders with differing values and knowledge about the land, collaborative or multiparty monitoring can help participants gain greater respect for and understanding of each other’s perspectives. It can also forge a shared understanding of the ecosystem and its response to natural and human-caused events. The previous chapter provided an excellent example of the way that ranchers, agency staff, and scientists in the Malpai Borderlands Group developed a shared conceptual model of the ways that grazing, fire, and rainfall affected vegetation dynamics in the borderlands. Joint monitoring by stakeholders can sometimes help resolve controversial issues (see the example of the Public Lands Partnership, below), or at least clarify and distinguish questions of fact from value-based differences. In sum, monitoring by CBCs can advance learning about the ecosystem, specifically about management impacts, and can foster collaborative learning among participants about their diverse views, values, and knowledge (Daniels and Walker 2001; Guijt 2007). Many CBCs have social and economic goals as well as goals for the ecological condition of their landscapes. Thus, socioeconomic monitoring can also play an important part in CBC efforts to track progress toward meeting goals. Socioeconomic monitoring involves a different set of processes than ecological monitoring, so we do not address it in this chapter. However , many CBCs are specifically concerned with the relationship between a healthy ecosystem and a healthy, economically vibrant community, and may therefore be especially well suited to develop integrated monitoring programs involving both ecological and socioeconomic variables. Several manuals (Moseley and Wilson 2002; Ecological Restoration Institute 2004; How CBCs Learn 47 Yaffee 2004) and other examples (Danks, Wilson, and Jungwirth 2002; Christoffersen et al. 2004; Muñoz-Erickson 2004) are available to help community -based groups develop integrated systems of monitoring their progress . Case 1. Public Lands Partnership: Monitoring to Resolve...