Transforming (perceived) Rigidity in Environmental Law Through Adaptive Governance

The Endangered Species Act (ESA) is often portrayed as a major source of instability and crisis in river basins of the U. S. West, where the needs of listed fish species frequently clash with agriculture dependent on federal irrigation projects subject to ESA Section 7 prohibitions on federal agency actions likely to jeopardize listed species or adversely modify critical habitat. Scholarship on Section 7 characterizes the process as unwaveringly rigid, the legal “hammer†forcing federal agencies to consider endangered species’ needs when proposing operations and management plans for federally funded irrigation. In this paper, we identify barriers to an integrated approach to Section 7 implementation and characterize a set of strategies for overcoming its rigidity that may have broader applicability. We draw on lessons derived from the Klamath Basin along the Oregon-California border, where cross-scale processes and venues involving interagency collaboration among leaders in the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Marine Fisheries Service, and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation supported efforts to replace an ecologically and socially fragmented Upper Basin/Lower Basin approach to ESA implementation fraught with conflict. The result was the nation’s first joint biological opinion (BiOp), which effectively institutionalized an adaptive, flexible, integrated approach to water sharing among competing interests. Keys to success included existing collaborative capacity related to shifting stakeholder networks, trust, and relationships and a shift in local agency culture facilitated by empathic leadership leading to a greater sense of shared responsibility for Section 7 compliance. A collaborative hydrologic modeling process enhanced participatory capacity, facilitated transformative social and technical learning, and cultivated greater understanding of the social-ecological system among key stakeholders. The 2013 joint BiOp exemplifies both governmental capacity for flexibility and evolution within the constraints of formal law and the potential for greater integration among federal agencies and between federal agencies and stakeholders involved in ESA implementation

Micromechanics and Piezo Enhancements of HyperSizer

The commercial HyperSizer aerospace-composite-material-structure-sizing software has been enhanced by incorporating capabilities for representing coupled thermal, piezoelectric, and piezomagnetic effects on the levels of plies, laminates, and stiffened panels. This enhancement is based on a formulation similar to that of the pre-existing HyperSizer capability for representing thermal effects. As a result of this enhancement, the electric and/or magnetic response of a material or structure to a mechanical or thermal load, or its mechanical response to an applied electric or magnetic field can be predicted. In another major enhancement, a capability for representing micromechanical effects has been added by establishment of a linkage between HyperSizer and Glenn Research Center s Micromechanics Analysis Code With Generalized Method of Cells (MAC/GMC) computer program, which was described in several prior NASA Tech Briefs articles. The linkage enables Hyper- Sizer to localize to the fiber and matrix level rather than only to the ply level, making it possible to predict local failures and to predict properties of plies from those of the component fiber and matrix materials. Advanced graphical user interfaces and database structures have been developed to support the new HyperSizer micromechanics capabilities

Spherical Cryogenic Hydrogen Tank Preliminary Design Trade Studies

A structural analysis, sizing optimization, and weight prediction study was performed by Collier Research Corporation and NASA Glenn on a spherical cryogenic hydrogen tank. The tank consisted of an inner and outer wall separated by a vacuum for thermal insulation purposes. HyperSizer (Collier Research and Development Corporation), a commercial automated structural analysis and sizing software package was used to design the lightest feasible tank for a given overall size and thermomechanical loading environment. Weight trade studies were completed for different panel concepts and metallic and composite material systems. Extensive failure analyses were performed for each combination of dimensional variables, materials, and layups to establish the structural integrity of tank designs. Detailed stress and strain fields were computed from operational temperature changes and pressure loads. The inner tank wall is sized by the resulting biaxial tensile stresses which cause it to be strength driven, and leads to an optimum panel concept that need not be stiffened. Conversely, the outer tank wall is sized by a biaxial compressive stress field, induced by the pressure differential between atmospheric pressure and the vacuum between the tanks, thereby causing the design to be stability driven and thus stiffened to prevent buckling. Induced thermal stresses become a major sizing driver when a composite or hybrid composite/metallic material systems are used for the inner tank wall for purposes such as liners to contain the fuel and reduce hydrogen permeation

Progressive Failure Analysis of Composite Stiffened Panels

A new progressive failure analysis capability for stiffened composite panels has been developed based on the combination of the HyperSizer stiffened panel design/analysis/optimization software with the Micromechanics Analysis Code with Generalized Method of Cells (MAC/GMC). MAC/GMC discretizes a composite material s microstructure into a number of subvolumes and solves for the stress and strain state in each while providing the homogenized composite properties as well. As a result, local failure criteria may be employed to predict local subvolume failure and the effects of these local failures on the overall composite response. When combined with HyperSizer, MAC/GMC is employed to represent the ply level composite material response within the laminates that constitute a stiffened panel. The effects of local subvolume failures can then be tracked as loading on the stiffened panel progresses. Sample progressive failure results are presented at both the composite laminate and the composite stiffened panel levels. Deformation and failure model predictions are compared with experimental data from the World Wide Failure Exercise for AS4/3501-6 graphite/epoxy laminates

Preliminary Structural Sizing and Alternative Material Trade Study of CEV Crew Module

This paper presents the results of a preliminary structural sizing and alternate material trade study for NASA s Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) Crew Module (CM). This critical CEV component will house the astronauts during ascent, docking with the International Space Station, reentry, and landing. The alternate material design study considers three materials beyond the standard metallic (aluminum alloy) design that resulted from an earlier NASA Smart Buyer Team analysis. These materials are graphite/epoxy composite laminates, discontinuously reinforced SiC/Al (DRA) composites, and a novel integrated panel material/concept known as WebCore. Using the HyperSizer (Collier Research and Development Corporation) structural sizing software and NASTRAN finite element analysis code, a comparison is made among these materials for the three composite CM concepts considered by the 2006 NASA Engineering and Safety Center Composite Crew Module project

Quantifying Uncertainty and Trade-offs in Resilience Assessments

Several frameworks have been developed to assess the resilience of social-ecological systems, but most require substantial data inputs, time, and technical expertise. Stakeholders and practitioners often lack the resources for such intensive efforts. Furthermore, most end with problem framing and fail to explicitly address trade-offs and uncertainty. To remedy this gap, we developed a rapid survey assessment that compares the relative resilience of social-ecological systems with respect to a number of resilience properties. This approach generates large amounts of information relative to stakeholder inputs. We targeted four stakeholder categories: government (policy, regulation, management), end users (farmers, ranchers, landowners, industry), agency/public science (research, university, extension), and NGOs (environmental, citizen, social justice) in four North American watersheds, to assess social-ecological resilience through surveys. Conceptually, social-ecological systems are comprised of components ranging from strictly human to strictly ecological, but that relate directly or indirectly to one another. They have soft boundaries and several important dimensions or axes that together describe the nature of social-ecological interactions, e.g., variability, diversity, modularity, slow variables, feedbacks, capital, innovation, redundancy, and ecosystem services. There is no absolute measure of resilience, so our design takes advantage of cross-watershed comparisons and therefore focuses on relative resilience. Our approach quantifies and compares the relative resilience across watershed systems and potential trade-offs among different aspects of the social-ecological system, e.g., between social, economic, and ecological contributions. This approach permits explicit assessment of several types of uncertainty (e.g., self-assigned uncertainty for stakeholders; uncertainty across respondents, watersheds, and subsystems), and subjectivity in perceptions of resilience among key actors and decision makers and provides an efficient way to develop the mental models that inform our stakeholders and stakeholder categories

Balancing stability and flexibility in adaptive governance: an analysis of tools available in U.S. environmental law

Adaptive governance must work “on the ground,” that is, it must operate through structures and procedures that the people it governs perceive to be legitimate and fair, as well as incorporating processes and substantive goals that are effective in allowing social-ecological systems (SESs) to adapt to climate change and other impacts. To address the continuing and accelerating alterations that climate change is bringing to SESs, adaptive governance generally will require more flexibility than prior governance institutions have often allowed. However, to function as good governance, adaptive governance must pay real attention to the problem of how to balance this increased need for flexibility with continuing governance stability so that it can foster adaptation to change without being perceived or experienced as perpetually destabilizing, disruptive, and unfair. Flexibility and stability serve different purposes in governance, and a variety of tools exist to strike different balances between them while still preserving the governance institution’s legitimacy among the people governed. After reviewing those purposes and the implications of climate change for environmental governance, we examine psychological insights into the structuring of adaptive governance and the variety of legal tools available to incorporate those insights into adaptive governance regimes. Because the substantive goals of governance systems will differ among specific systems, we do not purport to comment on what the normative or substantive goals of law should be. Instead, we conclude that attention to process and procedure (including participation), as well as increased use of substantive standards (instead of rules), may allow an increased level of substantive flexibility to operate with legitimacy and fairness, providing the requisite levels of psychological, social, and economic stability needed for communities to adapt successfully to the Anthropocene

Amorphous Systems in Athermal, Quasistatic Shear

We present results on a series of 2D atomistic computer simulations of amorphous systems subjected to simple shear in the athermal, quasistatic limit. The athermal quasistatic trajectories are shown to separate into smooth, reversible elastic branches which are intermittently broken by discrete catastrophic plastic events. The onset of a typical plastic event is studied with precision, and it is shown that the mode of the system which is responsible for the loss of stability has structure in real space which is consistent with a quadrupolar source acting on an elastic matrix. The plastic events themselves are shown to be composed of localized shear transformations which organize into lines of slip which span the length of the simulation cell, and a mechanism for the organization is discussed. Although within a single event there are strong spatial correlations in the deformation, we find little correlation from one event to the next, and these transient lines of slip are not to be confounded with the persistent regions of localized shear -- so-called "shear bands" -- found in related studies. The slip lines gives rise to particular scalings with system length of various measures of event size. Strikingly, data obtained using three differing interaction potentials can be brought into quantitative agreement after a simple rescaling, emphasizing the insensitivity of the emergent plastic behavior in these disordered systems to the precise details of the underlying interactions. The results should be relevant to understanding plastic deformation in systems such as metallic glasses well below their glass temperature, soft glassy systems (such as dense emulsions), or compressed granular materials.Comment: 21 pages, 18 figure