69th SWCS International Annual Conference “Making Waves in Conservation: Our Life on Land and Its Impact on Water” July 27-30, 2014 Lombard, IL

1. Adaptive Management of
Urban Green Infrastructure
Ahjond S. Garmestani, William D. Shuster
and Olivia Odom Green
•The views expressed in this presentation are those of the authors and do not
represent the views or policies of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

2. • - Violation of CWA
–- combined sewer
overflows (CSO)
- “Combined” sewers
Stormwater &
wastewater
–- wet weather = CSOs
–- public health and
–environmental issue
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Cleveland, Ohio

3. Green Infrastructure (GI)
• - Engineered plant-soil systems
–* Rain gardens

5. Cleveland
•Question:
–- Where do we infiltrate stormwater
runoff to “dry-up” CSOs?
- Vacant lots
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6. Soil surveys
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7. •- Adaptive Management (AM)
Framework
•- AM = Iterative process
- incorporates citizen and
stakeholder input
•- AM: critical aspect of
Adaptive Governance

8. Green Infrastructure (GI)
• Direct GI benefits:
–- Reduction in runoff volume
–- Increased detention capacity
–- Restoration of natural hydrologic cycle
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9. Green Infrastructure (GI)
• Co-benefits from GI:
- Aesthetics
–- Recreation
–- Ecosystem services (e.g., pollination)
–- Socio-economic benefits (long-term)
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10. Integrating Adaptive Management into
governance
*Case Study: Cleveland - Slavic Village
Project
What is Adaptive Governance?

11. • Resilience
–- Capacity of a system to withstand change
–- If resilience is “eroded”
• System becomes vulnerable to regime shifts
• Alternate regime: different set of processes and
structures (e.g., coral to algae dominated reef)

12. Multiple regimes
• - For our purposes, urban watershed is in a degraded
regime
• - Resilience isn’t a “good” thing here
• - Must erode the resilience of the degraded regime
–- transform watershed to a different, “improved”
regime that mimics the natural system

13. • Adaptive Management
–- Integration of resilience theory into natural
resources management
–- Alter management in response to
monitoring
–

14. Adaptive Governance
–1) Legislation and Accountability
• *Adaptive Management
2) “Intermediaries”
*Bridging organizations (SVDC) and
networks
–3) Matching organizations to the appropriate
scale
• *Panarchy

19. Cleveland: Slavic Village Project
• - Phase 1: Collecting baseline data
• - Gathering hydrologic and ecosystem services
data
- Phase 2: Control sites and treatment sites (i.e.,
implement GI in vacant lots)

20. –- Goal: GI contain stormwater
–- Hydrologic and ecosystem services
data
•- Information feeds back into the AM
process

21. Slavic Village Project
• - Cleveland Botanical Garden is a key player in project
–* 12 rain gardens into vacant lots
- Plants have been selected for provisioning of
ecosystem services (e.g., pollination)
- Ohio State University will plant 20-30 vacant lots
(“minimalist” GI)

22. Pollinators
• - Trade-off between citizen preferences and best
plants for pollinators
• - Why? If citizens don’t like what they see they will be
less likely to stay engaged in work
• - Worse………might chop plants down