BES Integrated Theory Planning Meeting
Planning Meeting #4 for BES 3
“New Hydro-Ecological-Social Theory”
8:30 AM – 5:00 PM June 23rd, 2009
Preliminary Agenda
Meeting Goals
• Develop an intellectual framework for understanding the interaction between human communities, terrestrial landscapes, and the hydrologic system.
• Brainstorm new approaches for characterizing the state and condition of watersheds and streams and how future ecosystem functions and services may be altered in response to scenarios of watershed restoration, stormwater management, and sustainability initiatives
• Brainstorm new approaches for linking watershed land-use with processing of materials and energy along the urban Gwynns Falls river continuum
• Generate new research questions linking landscapes to streams and streams to receiving waters that are critical in developing and testing these frameworks
Organizing Questions
1. What are the ecosystem functions and services provided by a healthy hydrologic system?
2. What macro-scale land use factors have been found to be associated with impairment of watershed and stream functions and how do these vary across the urban-rural gradient? How might these change under climate change, sustainability initiatives, and watershed restoration practices?
3. What site-level factors drive and mediate both the physical and chemical processes that impair watersheds? What is the role of landscape design and restoration factors in facilitating or inhibiting impairment and influencing stream ecosystem functions and services?
4. What is the role of the urban river continuum in transporting and transforming ecological fluxes of energy and matter delivered from landscapes? Where are “hot spots” located along urban stream networks?
5. What are the social, economic, policy and planning factors that drive macro-scale land use patterns? How do these factors and the resulting land use pattern mediate the ability of the urban river continuum to process biogeochemicals at this scale?
6. What are the social, economic, policy and planning factors that drive site-scale land use and design? How do these factors and the resulting land use pattern mediate the ability of the urban river continuum to process biogeochemicals at this scale?
7. How can we develop a system to spatially characterize sites or parcels in terms of their contribution to hydrologic impairment, and watersheds and stream networks in terms of their expected level of impairment? What data and models are needed to generate scenarios of watershed change and corresponding changes in processing of materials and energy transported downstream?
Agenda
8:30 Breakfast
9:00 Introduction and overview (Sujay and Austin)
9:10 Overview of renewal process (Steward Pickett)
9:20 Panelist presentations (15 minutes each; 10 minutes for talk, 5 minutes for questions):
Sujay Kaushal: Urban river continuum
Austin Troy: Integrating spatial methods and social research to address watershed processes
Larry Band: Headwater alterations in watersheds and links to downstream transport
Bill Stack: Managing materials and energy in urban streams: Emerging Questions
10:25 Large-group feedback on question 1.
10:45 Break
11:00 Break-out session 1: Groups 1 &2 address question 2; Groups 3 & 4 address question 3.
11:45 Present results and large-group feedback
12:15 Lunch
1:30 Kenneth Belt: Urban river continuum: Hydrology walk and talk
2:00 Break-out session 2: Groups 1&2 address question 4&5; Groups 3&4 address question 5&6
3:00 Present results and large-group feedback
3:30 Large group discussion of Question 7
4:30 Wrap up and synthesis of questions (Steward, Sujay, Austin)
5:00 Adjourn to picnic on BES lawn
