Digital Commons Network^™

A New Valuation School: Integrating Diverse Values Of Nature In Resource And Land Use Decisions, Sander Jacobs, Nicolas Dendoncker, Berta Martin-Lopez, David Nicholas Barton, Erik Gomez-Baggethun, Fanny Boeraeve, Francesca L. Mcgrath, Kati Vierikko, Davide Geneletti, Katharina J. Sevecke, Nathalie Pipart, Eeva Primmer, Peter Mederly, Stefan Schmidt, Alexandra Aragao, Himlal Baral, Rosalind H. Bark, Tania Briceno, Delphine Brogna, Pedro Cabral, Rik De Vreese, Camino Liquete, Hannah Mueller, Kelvin S.H. Peh, Anna Phelan, Alexander R. Rincon, Shannon H. Rogers, Francis Turkelboom, Wouter Van Reeth, Boris T. Van Zanten, Hilde Karine Wam, Carla-Leanne Washbourne

New Hampshire EPSCoR

We are increasingly confronted with severe social and economic impacts of environmental degradation all over the world. From a valuation perspective, environmental problems and conflicts originate from trade-offs between values. The urgency and importance to integrate nature's diverse values in decisions and actions stand out more than ever.

Valuation, in its broad sense of ‘assigning importance’, is inherently part of most decisions on natural resource and land use. Scholars from different traditions -while moving from heuristic interdisciplinary debate to applied transdisciplinary science- now acknowledge the need for combining multiple disciplines and methods to represent the diverse set of values of …

Will Dam Removal Increase Nitrogen Flux To Estuaries?, Arthur J. Gold, Kelly Addy, Alisa Morrison, Marissa Simpson

New Hampshire EPSCoR

To advance the science of dam removal, analyses of functions and benefits need to be linked to individual dam attributes and effects on downstream receiving waters. We examined 7550 dams in the New England (USA) region for possible tradeoffs associated with dam removal. Dam removal often generates improvements for safety or migratory fish passage but might increase nitrogen (N) flux and eutrophication in coastal watersheds. We estimated N loading and removal with algorithms using geospatial data on land use, stream flow and hydrography. We focused on dams with reservoirs that increase retention time at specific points of river reaches, creating …

Surf Science In The Gulf Of Maine: Understanding Perceptions Of Risk Related To Water Quality And Decision Making In The Surfing Community, Sophia Scott, Shannon Rogers

New Hampshire EPSCoR

Surfers represent a culturally and economically important subpopulation of beachgoers who are subject to greater health risks from impaired coastal waters. These increased risks relate to the amount of time surfers spend in the water, their higher incidence of water ingestion, and the propensity for surfers to surf around storm events when water quality is most likely to be poor.

To better understand this important stakeholder group, we surveyed almost 300 surfers and conducted 20 interviews with key informants in the surfing communities of Maine and New Hampshire in 2015. We employed a mixed methods approach, combining the qualitative and …

Measuring The Impact Of Pollution Closures On Commercial Shellfish Harvest: The Case Of Soft-Shell Clams In Machias Bay, Maine, Keith S. Evans, Kevin Athearn, Xuan Chen, Kathleen P. Bell, Tora Johnson

New Hampshire EPSCoR

Temporary closures of polluted coastal waters to shellfish harvesting protect human health but also generate broad socioeconomic impacts on rural, fishing-dependent communities. Improved understanding of these impacts could help coastal managers prioritize investments to protect water quality and mitigate the effects of coastal pollution. Using a regression model of monthly landings, we explore the impact of temporary closures on the commercial harvest of soft-shell clams (Mya arenaria) in the Machias Bay region of Maine (USA). We find that economic losses are significant and depend heavily on tidal activity, and the size, frequency and timing of closures. Over the nine-year sample …

Patterns And Predictors Of Recent Forest Conversion In New England, Alexandra M. Thorn, Jonathan R. Thompson, Joshua S. Plisinski

New Hampshire EPSCoR

New England forests provide numerous benefits to the region’s residents, but are undergoing rapid development. We used boosted regression tree analysis (BRT) to assess geographic predictors of forest loss to development between 2001 and 2011. BRT combines classification and regression trees with machine learning to generate non-parametric statistical models that can capture non-linear relationships. Based on National Land Cover Database (NLCD) maps of land cover change, we assessed the importance of the biophysical and social variables selected for full region coverage and minimal collinearity in predicting forest loss to development, specifically: elevation, slope, distance to roads, density of highways, distance …

Understanding Nitrogen Sources In The Great Bay Watershed, Michelle L. Daley

New Hampshire EPSCoR

No abstract provided.

Understanding Stakeholder Preferences For Flood Adaptation Alternatives With Natural Capital Implications, Jonathon R. Loos, Shannon H. Rogers

New Hampshire EPSCoR

Inland flood risks are defined by a range of environmental and social factors, including land use and floodplain management. Shifting patterns of storm intensity and precipitation, attributed to climate change, are exacerbating flood risk in regions across North America. Strategies for adapting to growing flood risks and climate change must account for a community’s specific vulnerabilities, and its local economic, environmental, and social conditions. Through a stakeholder-engaged methodology, we designed an interactive decision exercise to enable stakeholders to evaluate alternatives for addressing specific community flood vulnerabilities. We used a multicriteria framework to understand what drives stakeholder preferences for flood mitigation …

Examining The Ecosystem Service Of Nutrient Removal In A Coastal Watershed, Chelsea E. Berg, Madeleine M. Mineau, Shannon H. Rogers

New Hampshire EPSCoR

Globally, managers are trying to prevent or halt the eutrophication of valuable estuaries and bays by reducing nutrient inputs, but justifying the cost of conservation or processing facility upgrades often proves challenging. We focus on a coastal watershed in Maine and New Hampshire struggling with the financial burdens of nitrogen pollution mandates due to the eutrophication of the Great Bay estuary. After creating two future watershed land cover scenarios comparing plausible extremes, we ran them through two models, the Natural Capital Project’s InVEST (Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Tradeoffs) and a detailed hydrologic and biogeochemical river network model FrAMES …

Building Scenarios For Ecosystem Services Tools: Developing A Methodology For Efficient Engagement With Expert Stakeholders, Chelsea Berg, Shannon Rogers, Madeleine Mineau

New Hampshire EPSCoR

The ecosystem services framework provides a holistic perspective for planning on local, national, and global scales. Often, scenarios are utilized to quantify and contrast the potential impacts of anthropocentric or climatic drivers of change on ecosystem services. One freely available modeling suite, Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Tradeoffs (InVEST), from the Natural Capital Project, aims to aid in decision making and planning processes by quantifying ecosystem services in spatially explicit context. Several of their modeling tools require land cover data layers, and the user can generate future land cover data layers through the scenario generator tool, released in 2014. …

Environmental Conditions Associated With Elevated Vibrio Parahaemolyticus Concentrations In Great Bay Estuary, New Hampshire, Erin A. Urquhart, Stephen H. Jones, Jong W. Yu, Brian M. Schuster, Ashley L. Marcinkiewicz, Cheryl A. Whistler, Vaughn S. Cooper

New Hampshire EPSCoR

Reports from state health departments and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicate that the annual number of reported human vibriosis cases in New England has increased in the past decade. Concurrently, there has been a shift in both the spatial distribution and seasonal detection of Vibrio spp. throughout the region based on limited monitoring data. To determine environmental factors that may underlie these emerging conditions, this study focuses on a long-term database of Vibrio parahaemolyticus concentrations in oyster samples generated from data collected from the Great Bay Estuary, New Hampshire over a period of seven consecutive years. Oyster …

Mobilizing The Power Of Higher Education To Tackle The Grand Challenge Of Sustainability: Lessons From Novel Initiatives, David D. Hart, James L. Buizer, Jonathan A. Foley, Lewis E. Gilbert, Lisa J. Graumlich, Anne R. Kapuscinski, Jonathan G. Kramer, Margaret A. Palmer, David R. Peart, Linda Silka

New Hampshire EPSCoR

No abstract provided.

Automated Riverbed Sediment Classification Using Low-Cost Sidescan Sonar, Daniel Buscombe, Paul E. Grams, Sean M. C. Smith

New Hampshire EPSCoR

The use of low-cost, low-profile, and highly portable sidescan sonar is on the ascendancy for imaging shallow riverine benthic sediments. A new automated, spatially explicit, and physically-based method for calculating lengthscales of bed texture elements in sidescan echograms (a 2D plot of acoustic intensity as a function of slant range and distance) is suggested. It uses spectral analysis based on the wavelet transform of short sequences of echograms. The recursive application of the transform over small overlapping windows of the echogram provides a robust measure of lengthscales of alternating patterns of strong and weak echoes. This textural lengthscale is not …

The Skunkwork Of Ecological Engagement, John Ackerman, Caroline Gottschalk Druschke, Bridie Mcgreavy, Leah Sprain

New Hampshire EPSCoR

Ecological engagement is about attending to the possibilities of dwelling in a place; skunkwork is a way of orienting this dwelling. Skunkwork refers to creative, self-coordinated, collective work in informal spaces of learning and reminds us that ecologically attuned work in the world can promote unexpected, yet collectively desired, change. In this essay, we describe how we used skunkwork to orient our ecological engagement in two workshops on ‘community resilience.’ In both workshops, Boulder Creek became our commonplace, with its history of flooding and abatements as well as one city’s planning and management of crisis and sustainability. We draw from …

New Hampshire University Research And Industry Plan: A Roadmap For Collaboration And Innovation, Teconomy Partners, Keen Point Consulting

New Hampshire EPSCoR

This University Research and Industry plan for New Hampshire is focused on accelerating innovation-led development in the state by partnering academia’s strengths with the state’s substantial base of existing and emerging advanced industries. These advanced industries are defined by their deep investment and connections to research and development and the high-quality jobs they generate across production, new product development and administrative positions involving skills in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM).