Governing Water Quality Limits In Agricultural Watersheds

The diffuse runoff of agricultural nutrients, also called agricultural nonpoint source pollution (NPS), is a widespread threat to freshwater resources. Despite decades of research into the processes of eutrophication and agricultural nutrient management, social, economic, and political barriers have slowed progress towards improving water quality. A critical challenge to managing agricultural NPS pollution is motivating landowners to act against their individual farm production incentives in response to distant ecological impacts. The complexity of governing the social-ecological system requires improved understanding of how policy shapes farmer behavior to improve the state of water quality. This dissertation contributes both theoretically and empirically to NPS pollution governance by examining the impacts of water quality policy design on farmer nutrient management decision making and behavior. In the first study, I theoretically contextualize the issue of agricultural NPS pollution in the broader discussion of environmental public goods dilemmas to suggest that an increased focus on the link between policy and behavior can improve sustainable resource management. I propose two empirical approaches to study the policy-behavior link in environmental public goods dilemmas: 1) explicit incorporation of social psychological and behavioral variables and 2) utilization of actor mental models, or perceptions of the world that guide decision making, to identify behavioral drivers and outcomes. In the second and third studies, I then use these approaches to examine how water quality policies for agricultural NPS collectively change farmer behavior to reduce nutrient emissions. The second chapter uses a quantitative, survey-based approach to examine the relationship between mandatory policy design and behavior change in New Zealand. I find that a shift to mandatory policy is not immediately associated with increased adoption of nutrient management practices, but the mandatory policy design is important for potential future behavior change and long-term policy support. In the third study, I combine qualitative methodology with network analysis of qualitative data to examine a spectrum of agricultural NPS pollution policies in Vermont, USA and Taupo and Rotorua, New Zealand. I use farmer mental models to examine behavior change within each of the regions, the perceived drivers of behavior change and perceived outcomes of the policy. In this study, farmers across all three regions cite mandatory water policy as a key behavioral driver, but in each region, policy design interacts with the social-ecological context to produce distinct patterns of behaviors and perceived outcomes. Taken together, this dissertation demonstrates that agricultural NPS pollution policy design must consider the interactions between policy and other social-ecological behavioral drivers in order to achieve long term water quality improvements

Mainstreaming Early Warning Systems in Development and Planning Processes: Multilevel Implementation of Sendai Framework in Indus and Sahel

The third UN World Congress on Disaster Risk Reduction, held in Sendai, Japan in March 2015, agreed on a new framework to guide disaster risk reduction policy and practice for the next 15 years. The Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030 (SFDRR) leaves important implementation issues unspecified and potentially creates both problems and opportunities for complex, multilevel governance systems in coping with hazards and disastrous events. Early warning systems (EWS), if built into the mainstream of planning for development and disaster relief and recovery, could present a significant opportunity to realize many SFDRR goals. We explore the complexities of using hydrometeorological EWS to prepare for drought and flood disasters in the densely populated communities of Pakistan’s Indus River Basin in contrast to the African Sahel’s less densely settled grasslands. Multilevel governance systems are often dominated by a top-down, technocentric, centralized management bias and have great difficulty responding to the needs of peripheral and vulnerable populations. People-centered, bottom-up approaches that incorporate disaggregated communities with local knowledge into a balanced, multilevel disaster risk management and governance structure have a dramatically better chance of realizing the SFDRR goals for disaster risk reduction

Farmers share their perspectives on California water management and the sustainable groundwater management act

Agriculture is the largest human use of water in California, which gives farmers a critical role in managing water to meet the goals of the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA). To explore farmers’ perspectives on SGMA, we held focus groups with 20 farmers in Yolo County, where the groundwater basin has been given a high/medium priority under SGMA. The farmers had varying perspectives about the factors that led to SGMA and varying responses to the regulation. They suggested that drought, competing agricultural and urban uses, and an increase in perennial crops were factors in recent water use, resulting in changes to water quality and quantity. Impacts of those changes included variable well levels, increased infrastructure costs, and ecosystem impacts, which farmers had responded to by implementing multiple management strategies. Additional research in other regions is imperative to provide farmers’ viewpoints and strategies to policymakers, irrigation districts, farmer cooperatives, and the agricultural industry and give farmers a voice at the table

US county-level agricultural crop production typology

Objectives: Crop production is an important variable in social, economic and environmental analyses. There is an abundance of crop data available for the United States, but we lack a typology of county-level crop production that accounts for production similarities in counties across the country. We fill this gap with a county-level classification of crop production with ten mutually exclusive categories across the contiguous United States. Data description: To create the typology we ran a cluster analysis on acreage data for 21 key crops from the United States Department of Agriculture\u27s 2012 Agricultural Census. Prior to clustering, we estimated undisclosed county acreage values, controlled for acreage in other crop types, and removed counties with low agricultural production to produce proportional scores for each crop type in each county. We used proportional scores to control for the influence of county size in the cluster analysis and used internal and stability measures to validate the analysis. The final dataset features 2922 counties. Future research can leverage this typology as an input for county- or regional-level analysis

Does Household Capital Mediate the Uptake of Agricultural Land, Crop, and Livestock Adaptations? Evidence From the Indo-Gangetic Plains (India)

Farmers in the Indo-Gangetic Plains produce much of the wheat and rice grown in India. However, food production and millions of farm-based livelihoods in this region will continue to be adversely affected by hydro-climatic change and variation, reduced land productivity, and declining groundwater levels. Thus, agricultural adaptations are essential for protecting and improving upon intersecting goals of food security, poverty alleviation, and wellbeing. Household “capital” (e.g., natural, human, financial, physical, and social) is commonly cited as an indicator of livelihood adaptability and innovation. We develop a series of mediated structural equation models to empirically evaluate the validity of capital as a suitable indicator for adaptation and adaptive capacity. These models assess the extent to which household capital mediates the relationship between over 1,000 socio-economically differentiated and randomly selected farm households, and their crop, livestock, and land management adaptations in the states of Haryana and Bihar. Central to our models is a single household capital variable, constructed by aggregating nearly 80 different measurements of households\u27 (i) physical/infrastructural capital, (ii) owned or accessed assets, (iii) livelihood diversity, (iv) ability to reach market or commercialize, (v) access to weather information, and (vi) social capital. We find household capital is a significant predictor in adopting crop, land management, and livestock-related adaptation strategies across both states. Second, and in certain cases, lower castes and less educated households engaged in fewer agricultural adaptations—an outcome mediated by their lower composition of capital. Further, and across almost all contexts, household capital mediated the effect of owning a greater proportion of land, and the higher uptake of agricultural adaptation activities. While improvements in any capital category can improve adoption, we recommend programs that improve (i) access to public and private agricultural infrastructure for lower castes; (ii) education and shared knowledge spaces for less-educated households; and (iii) the availability of low-interest loans and the more efficient legal transfer of land for agriculturalists owning a smaller proportion of their land. Through this novel and large-scale analysis of household data, we provide short-term and immediate recommendations for more equitable agricultural adaptation in this breadbasket region of northern India

Nudging pro-environmental behavior: evidence and opportunities

Human actions are responsible for many of our greatest environmental challenges. Studies from the human behavioral sciences show that minor features of decision settings can have major effects on people’s choices. While such behavioral insights have positively influenced individual health and financial decisions, less is known about whether and how these insights can encourage choices that are better for the environment. We review 160 experimental interventions that attempt to alter behavior in six domains where decisions have large environmental impacts: family planning, land management, meat consumption, transportation choices, waste production, and water use. Claims that social influence (norms) and simple adjustments to automatic settings (defaults) can influence pro-environmental decisions are supported by the evidence. Yet for other interventions, knowledge gaps preclude clear conclusions and policy applications. To address these gaps, we identify four opportunities for future research and encourage collaboration between scholars and practitioners to embed tests of behavioral interventions within environmental programs.We thank the Gund Institute for Environment for their Collaboration Grant to BF which made this work possible. Thanks to the University of Vermont’s James Marsh Professor-at-Large and Burack Distinguished Lecture Series for supporting SP and AB respectively

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead

Strengthening the institution-behavior link in the SES Framework to facilitate comparative analysis of environmental public goods dilemmas

Many great environmental challenges take the form of environmental public goods dilemmas, including climate change, water quality deterioration and biodiversity loss. There is a great need for comparative analysis of these challenges to inform the design of governance institutions for sustainable resource management. The Social-ecological Systems (SES) framework provides a foundational structure for analyzing the sustainability of complex, multi-scale SES. However, in application, the SES framework has struggled to facilitate analysis of SES beyond common-pool resource regimes and the emergence of community-based collective action governance institutions. In this paper, I propose to expand the focus of the SES framework on the link between institution and behavior in order to facilitate the application of the SES Framework to environmental public goods dilemmas and the study of diverse institutional arrangements. First, I examine attributes of environmental public goods dilemmas that differentiate them from CPR regimes: the lack of a behavior-reinforcing link, multi-actor and multi-resource system dynamics, higher levels of uncertainty and complexity, and lack of built-in social capital. Then I suggest that these same attributes increase the need to study a broader suite of governance institutions in these systems. I propose that one way to address both of these challenges to the application of the SES framework is to increase the focus on the institution-behavior link within the framework by incorporating variables to investigate the psychological drivers of individual behavior and decision-making. I link the attributes of environmental public goods with the need for an increased focus on actor decision making and behavior. Then I explore psychological and behavioral concepts that show potential to improve our understanding of system dynamics within environmental public goods dilemmas. Finally, I propose revisions to the SES Framework to facilitate this increased focus on the institution-behavior link. Incorporating psychological and behavioral theory into the SES framework to strengthen the institution-behavior link is a promising approach to allow for comparative study of institutional interventions for environmental public goods. Ultimately, a better understanding of which institutions promote behavior change within and across environmental public goods regimes can improve the sustainability of these systems.s