Communities, Collaboration, and Climate Change Adaptation : Case Studies from Coastal Maine and Oregon

Twenty five years' worth of science indicates that the world can expect a number of climate change impacts. Increasingly, local municipalities, businesses and communities of people are becoming more concerned about what to do, yet they are looking for ways to best work together under these conditions. Communities must adapt to environmental change if they are going to survive and thrive in the future. In order to adapt communities are learning how to work together and collaborate around complex scientific issues. The research presented here explores the nature of community-based groups working to adapt to climate change and investigates the extent to which they are doing so collaboratively. It presents four case studies (two in Maine and two in Oregon) of local or regional community groups working to adapt to climate change. The inquiry is framed around four areas of interest developed through a review of climate adaptation and collaboration literature. The areas of evaluation include: Purpose and Participation, Roles and Leadership, Knowledge and Learning, and Climate Change. Analysis of findings in these four areas describes how local and regional community groups are working together, and to what extent they are doing so collaboratively. It also identifies key points of analysis that are important considerations for future community groups working in the realm of climate change adaptation

Living Shoreline Design Charette: A New Twist on the Charette Technique

Design charettes are a common outreach technique that planners and landscape architects use to obtain input on planning issues. The desired outcome is a design solution that takes into account participant feedback. Because design charettes bring people of diverse backgrounds together to work toward a goal, exploring uses of this technique for purposes beyond the traditional is valuable. At a living shoreline design charette, we used the technique not to devise design solutions but to engage interested parties in an activity that provided them with improved awareness and understanding of what regulators permit regarding living shoreline designs. Here we describe our process and its results

Using Online Panels to Inform Extension Programming

Extension personnel are faced with measuring public stakeholder behavior, perceptions, and preferences so as to inform program development. At the same time, many are faced with a lack of the financial resources necessary for acquiring generalizable and statistically representative samples. To reconcile these challenges, our team purchased an online survey panel from Qualtrics. Throughout the process of gathering and analyzing data, our team gained insights that may be of interest to others considering the use of online survey panels to sample broad stakeholder populations. Additional findings related to survey design and implementation also provide guidance for those interested in using this sampling methodology

The Partnership for Coastal Watersheds: A progress report

Prepared for the South Slough National Estuarine Research Reserve, the Coos Watershed Association (CWA), and the Partnership for Coastal WatershedsThis report assesses the progress of the Partnership for Coastal Watersheds (PCW) Project from its inception through the summer of 2012. First, the PCW is described and PCW meeting activities are discussed. Following this foundation information, the report describes its assessment methods and presents the results of those methods. The report concludes with a presentation of observations and recommendations. During the Winter of 2009/2010 the South Slough National Estuarine Research Reserve (SSNERR) and the Coos Watershed Association (CWA) invited local landowners, technical advisors, and interested individuals and organizations to join them on a new approach to managing coastal watersheds. CWA and SSNERR leaders envisioned a partnership that would focus on the 35,155 acre area of the South Slough watershed and several small watersheds that drain to the Pacific Ocean between Cape Arago and Bullards Beach (the coastal frontal watersheds) in Southwestern Oregon. The PCW, the conveners hoped, could provide local communities (such as Charleston and Coos Bay) with a way to anticipate and respond to the local effects of climate and land use changes (Coos Watershed Association).Keywords: South Slough National Estuarine Research Reserve, Environmental action plan, Coos Bay, Watershed assessmen