Eureka, California
The NCER conference is ongoing, but I was only able to stay through Wednesday afternoon. That day I concentrated on California and PNW papers, and heard about watershed restoration in Oregon, an overview of the Trinity River restoration activities, some Klamath River activities including a large TNC wetland restoration in the upper watershed, CALFED restoration in various Sacramento River tributaries, and levee setbacks at the Bear-Feather River confluence. None of it was quite as exciting as the previous day, in fact at least two of the papers struck me as rather unimaginative attempts to slightly change the course of vast bureaucracies; although the new approach is an improvement on the status quo, it's still a command and control mentality, and one must wonder what might be possible with some truly original thinking.
After catching up on things with an old IDNR friend who is now working on an upper Mississippi River partnership, I left about 4:00 pm, arriving at the airport for my rain-delayed flight. general inefficiency contributed to a departure more than an hour behind schedule, and a missed connection in Denver. It all worked out, with a re-route through Las Vegas to San Francisco, where I caught up with my checked bag. The parking garage shuttle was just pulling up as I walked outside, a nice touch at 2:00 am. Yesterday was spent in the Santa Rosa office, and I made it home by 10:00 pm.
I'll attempt to pull together some concepts from the overall event after I've had time to get fully unpacked and caught up on office things. Time permitting, this blog may persist as a place for general restoration-related thoughts and ideas.
Friday, April 27, 2007
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
posters
Kansas City, Missouri: National Ecosystem Restoration Conference
They gave us very little free time today, no break between the paper sessions and the evening social and poster session. I left the last paper session a few minutes early to be able to grab a snack, as always at this conference there was plenty of food near the posters. Then, a two-and-a-half hour period standing in front of my poster.
Traffic was pretty good as these things go, with more people than usual actually reading all the text and then answering questions. A PhD from Florida, a person from the USACE Omaha District, and a graduate student asked the most detailed and extensive questions.
The highlight though, was when I did my quick five-minute dash to skim all the other posters. A few rows down from mine was an unattended poster by someone from California Dept. of Fish and Game, on a wetland restoration near Suisun Slough... contiguous with my 14-acre restoration from 1993, which was identified on the air photos. At that time we'd been unable to convince DFG to allow restoration of the entire tract, they'd actually insisted that we construct a berm to prevent extreme high tide flooding of anything south of the relatively small area of their land where they'd allowed restoration. Apparently a new generation is in charge, because now breaching levees at the south end of a several hundred acre area will return tidal influence to much of the site, leaving a small area of mixed seasonal wetland and upland between their restoration and mine, which includes a freshwater stream (Laurel Creek) running into a tidal slough located where a straight-sided ditch had been when we'd started. So instead of a narrow connection along the slough, the entire site will now function together. This makes me very happy. Apparently it's up to preliminary design and permitting, with final design and construction not far off. Unfortunately, no one ever did attend the poster, so I'll need to fire off an e-mail to learn more.
There was also a poster which included Chilton Creek Preserve in the Missouri Ozarks as one of the study sites. This was the location of a three-year research project I worked on with Missouri TNC in 1998-2000, to monitor the response of amphibians and reptiles to fire management. I didn't bother to seek out the author, it was one of those grad student posters that provoked a response of.... and, this study tells us what? I really don't see the application, and didn't feel like faking any interest beyond geography.
There was another one of those too, in a different and less benign way; a poster by someone from a large consulting firm which allegedly was about choosing ridge and swale restoration sites in northwest Indiana. Again, this is an area I know well, having helped assure the acquisition of a 220-acre nature preserve in the early 1990s as natural resource damage mitigation, and having worked on several other high-quality remnants of this globally endangered (G1) ecosystem on various projects. So it puzzles me when they put white boxes around several sites which are already fully protected and owned by state or county agencies, including a dedicated nature preserve. This seems like sloppy work (best case) or misleading (worst case). It's not like this data doesn't exist, because we mapped every remnant ridge and swale site in that area, and tied it to a full database, for TNC's Great Lakes Project in 1991. That means it's already in Indiana's Natural Heritage Database, and available upon request. They charged someone to do redundant work. One more firm I will never, ever team with on a project.
The rain the forecasters have been threatening all week finally moved through late this afternoon, at least I saw it out the window. I haven't been out of the building since sometime Sunday night, odd for a restoration conference, but things are pretty self-contained here. The storm didn't look serious despite the tornado watch someone mentioned. Thunderstorms can get pretty severe here, but not this one.
It's time to get the poster back in the shipping tube, pack away all the accumulated paper, and be ready to check out in the morning. The conference continues through Friday, but I'm going to catch the Wednesday morning and early afternoon sessions, and then grab the shuttle to the airport for a 5:00 pm flight and a late return to San Francisco.
They gave us very little free time today, no break between the paper sessions and the evening social and poster session. I left the last paper session a few minutes early to be able to grab a snack, as always at this conference there was plenty of food near the posters. Then, a two-and-a-half hour period standing in front of my poster.
Traffic was pretty good as these things go, with more people than usual actually reading all the text and then answering questions. A PhD from Florida, a person from the USACE Omaha District, and a graduate student asked the most detailed and extensive questions.
The highlight though, was when I did my quick five-minute dash to skim all the other posters. A few rows down from mine was an unattended poster by someone from California Dept. of Fish and Game, on a wetland restoration near Suisun Slough... contiguous with my 14-acre restoration from 1993, which was identified on the air photos. At that time we'd been unable to convince DFG to allow restoration of the entire tract, they'd actually insisted that we construct a berm to prevent extreme high tide flooding of anything south of the relatively small area of their land where they'd allowed restoration. Apparently a new generation is in charge, because now breaching levees at the south end of a several hundred acre area will return tidal influence to much of the site, leaving a small area of mixed seasonal wetland and upland between their restoration and mine, which includes a freshwater stream (Laurel Creek) running into a tidal slough located where a straight-sided ditch had been when we'd started. So instead of a narrow connection along the slough, the entire site will now function together. This makes me very happy. Apparently it's up to preliminary design and permitting, with final design and construction not far off. Unfortunately, no one ever did attend the poster, so I'll need to fire off an e-mail to learn more.
There was also a poster which included Chilton Creek Preserve in the Missouri Ozarks as one of the study sites. This was the location of a three-year research project I worked on with Missouri TNC in 1998-2000, to monitor the response of amphibians and reptiles to fire management. I didn't bother to seek out the author, it was one of those grad student posters that provoked a response of.... and, this study tells us what? I really don't see the application, and didn't feel like faking any interest beyond geography.
There was another one of those too, in a different and less benign way; a poster by someone from a large consulting firm which allegedly was about choosing ridge and swale restoration sites in northwest Indiana. Again, this is an area I know well, having helped assure the acquisition of a 220-acre nature preserve in the early 1990s as natural resource damage mitigation, and having worked on several other high-quality remnants of this globally endangered (G1) ecosystem on various projects. So it puzzles me when they put white boxes around several sites which are already fully protected and owned by state or county agencies, including a dedicated nature preserve. This seems like sloppy work (best case) or misleading (worst case). It's not like this data doesn't exist, because we mapped every remnant ridge and swale site in that area, and tied it to a full database, for TNC's Great Lakes Project in 1991. That means it's already in Indiana's Natural Heritage Database, and available upon request. They charged someone to do redundant work. One more firm I will never, ever team with on a project.
The rain the forecasters have been threatening all week finally moved through late this afternoon, at least I saw it out the window. I haven't been out of the building since sometime Sunday night, odd for a restoration conference, but things are pretty self-contained here. The storm didn't look serious despite the tornado watch someone mentioned. Thunderstorms can get pretty severe here, but not this one.
It's time to get the poster back in the shipping tube, pack away all the accumulated paper, and be ready to check out in the morning. The conference continues through Friday, but I'm going to catch the Wednesday morning and early afternoon sessions, and then grab the shuttle to the airport for a 5:00 pm flight and a late return to San Francisco.
details
Kansas City, Missouri: National Ecosystem Restoration Conference
After a brief plenary session on the proposed 2007 farm bill, we broke out into concurrent paper sessions. There's been some good stuff today.
The first one that inspired me to take notes was a discussion on long-term dynamics. I remember, barely 15 years ago, when everyone thought that thinking 150 years back and 100 years ahead was "visionary." Today, I heard a guy talk about long term climate cycles , about how ecosystems have histories, so to what state do we restore them? He notes that some relevant ecological processes are not observable on human time scales, that past and future must be inferred, and he advocates utilizing the fossil record (foraminifera, diatoms, pollen) to get at this.
Then, a breath of fresh air. I mentioned earlier the buzzword status of adaptive management and collaboration at this conference, something that's been around for a long time but seems to have acquired cliche status now. Judith Layzer of MIT challenged this, and looked at case studies. No surprise, it doesn't always work, sometime it results in lowest-common-denominator consensus. She notes that when it does work, it's because restoration is the primary goal, and it's essential to stay above a certain minimum standard. "Balance" will usually work out in favor of economic interests, unless political will and leadership is asserted. This is coming out through MIT Press in book form eventually, it's in manuscript form now.
Then Lee Skabelund ran through a landscape architects approach to successful restoration, citing some names and projects I'm familiar with. His slides were full of citations that I need to look up, but he talks about an ecosystem approach, involving the community, sacred-place making, doing as little as necessary to achieve goals, and longterm monitoring. He mentioned understanding a project site in terms of past, present, and possible futures. Some overlap with what others are saying, plus a couple of unique things. Simplicity and complexity all at once; it sounds contradictory, and he never quite put it like this, he's a classic western thinker; but in a zen-landscape sort of way he's right.
Earlier a guy from the Corps gave a baffling talk on modeling restoration, and what he really did was illustrate graphically (with tangled and overcomplex slides) why the 206 program is mired in inefficiency. We really should get the shovels out and just dig a new wetland by hand faster than these guys can plan one, just to make the point.
There's been some good networking, too. Had particularly effective discussions with the guys from Booz Allen Hamilton, SAIC, and Applied Ecological Services. The guy from AES turns out to be another former Earth Tech guy, from Sheboygan, and although he left 10 years ago it was for many of the same reasons that I did.
More talks soon, they have today very, very full. Time to get back downstairs.
After a brief plenary session on the proposed 2007 farm bill, we broke out into concurrent paper sessions. There's been some good stuff today.
The first one that inspired me to take notes was a discussion on long-term dynamics. I remember, barely 15 years ago, when everyone thought that thinking 150 years back and 100 years ahead was "visionary." Today, I heard a guy talk about long term climate cycles , about how ecosystems have histories, so to what state do we restore them? He notes that some relevant ecological processes are not observable on human time scales, that past and future must be inferred, and he advocates utilizing the fossil record (foraminifera, diatoms, pollen) to get at this.
Then, a breath of fresh air. I mentioned earlier the buzzword status of adaptive management and collaboration at this conference, something that's been around for a long time but seems to have acquired cliche status now. Judith Layzer of MIT challenged this, and looked at case studies. No surprise, it doesn't always work, sometime it results in lowest-common-denominator consensus. She notes that when it does work, it's because restoration is the primary goal, and it's essential to stay above a certain minimum standard. "Balance" will usually work out in favor of economic interests, unless political will and leadership is asserted. This is coming out through MIT Press in book form eventually, it's in manuscript form now.
Then Lee Skabelund ran through a landscape architects approach to successful restoration, citing some names and projects I'm familiar with. His slides were full of citations that I need to look up, but he talks about an ecosystem approach, involving the community, sacred-place making, doing as little as necessary to achieve goals, and longterm monitoring. He mentioned understanding a project site in terms of past, present, and possible futures. Some overlap with what others are saying, plus a couple of unique things. Simplicity and complexity all at once; it sounds contradictory, and he never quite put it like this, he's a classic western thinker; but in a zen-landscape sort of way he's right.
Earlier a guy from the Corps gave a baffling talk on modeling restoration, and what he really did was illustrate graphically (with tangled and overcomplex slides) why the 206 program is mired in inefficiency. We really should get the shovels out and just dig a new wetland by hand faster than these guys can plan one, just to make the point.
There's been some good networking, too. Had particularly effective discussions with the guys from Booz Allen Hamilton, SAIC, and Applied Ecological Services. The guy from AES turns out to be another former Earth Tech guy, from Sheboygan, and although he left 10 years ago it was for many of the same reasons that I did.
More talks soon, they have today very, very full. Time to get back downstairs.
Monday, April 23, 2007
P3
Collaboration is a big buzzword here. Public-private partnerships, or "P3" as one fellow dubbed it. These words are all over the program, and were mentioned many times today.
Quite a few of us have been doing this for years, I'm not sure how certain kinds of projects could succeed without it. It's just that the jargon is finally catching up with the practice. Those who study and describe things are finally catching up with those who do things.
Another topic was perhaps a little fresher. David Vigh of the Corps talked about retaining corporate knowledge. His point is that as baby boomers retire, a lot of information will go with them (us). The issue has always existed, but because of demographics, and because so much of current restoration knowledge developed just in the past 30 or 40 years, it's now becoming a more serious concern. So Mr. Vigh is encouraging us to develop mechanisms for intellectual succession, and also to maintain connections to those we learned from.
I think he's right. Of the group I was with in the 1990s, the TAMS Consultants group that designed a 200-acre bottomland hardwood forest restoration in southern Illinois, and learned a lot in the process... only two of those people are still with the now vastly larger entity which acquired that firm. Everyone else is scattered from Virginia to Hawaii. We still talk to each other, and we're all still working, and will be for a while yet. Then, in 10 or 15 years, a few of those people will reach retirement age. Within a relative handful of years after that, the rest will follow.
I've published two articles on that project, on relatively specialized aspects, and presented on it a couple of additional times. Others have done similar things. But there hasn't been a plan, there's no coordinated mechanism to pass that information along, or any of the other things we've learned since then. other, smaller projects are still locked up in one or two heads.
Winzler & Kelly is the first place I've worked that has a formal mentoring program, so perhaps this will address the issue in part. Most other companies aren't dealing with the issue at all though.
Quite a few of us have been doing this for years, I'm not sure how certain kinds of projects could succeed without it. It's just that the jargon is finally catching up with the practice. Those who study and describe things are finally catching up with those who do things.
Another topic was perhaps a little fresher. David Vigh of the Corps talked about retaining corporate knowledge. His point is that as baby boomers retire, a lot of information will go with them (us). The issue has always existed, but because of demographics, and because so much of current restoration knowledge developed just in the past 30 or 40 years, it's now becoming a more serious concern. So Mr. Vigh is encouraging us to develop mechanisms for intellectual succession, and also to maintain connections to those we learned from.
I think he's right. Of the group I was with in the 1990s, the TAMS Consultants group that designed a 200-acre bottomland hardwood forest restoration in southern Illinois, and learned a lot in the process... only two of those people are still with the now vastly larger entity which acquired that firm. Everyone else is scattered from Virginia to Hawaii. We still talk to each other, and we're all still working, and will be for a while yet. Then, in 10 or 15 years, a few of those people will reach retirement age. Within a relative handful of years after that, the rest will follow.
I've published two articles on that project, on relatively specialized aspects, and presented on it a couple of additional times. Others have done similar things. But there hasn't been a plan, there's no coordinated mechanism to pass that information along, or any of the other things we've learned since then. other, smaller projects are still locked up in one or two heads.
Winzler & Kelly is the first place I've worked that has a formal mentoring program, so perhaps this will address the issue in part. Most other companies aren't dealing with the issue at all though.
the event
Kansas City, Missouri: National Ecosystem Restoration Conference
This isn't a typical restoration conference. Most that I've attended in the past were populated largely by grad students in jeans and tee-shirts. Jackets and ties were limited to those giving a talk, and often had a sort of weathered academic appearance.
Apparently the restoration business has crossed an economic watershed. Tee-shirts are scarcer than Black-footed Ferrets. Expensive business suits are common, and at break every fifth person seems to be checking messages on their Blackberry. Many of the big players are here: URS, CH2M Hill, Booz Allen Hamilton, SAIC, Brown and Caldwell, HDR Inc., PBS&J, and of course all of the federal agencies. With a difference: The agency heads who were invited actually made an appearance this time. Most did not send a mid-level subordinate to give their talk.
We heard from Lt. General Carl A. Strock, Chief of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. He's not the first I've heard take agency responsibility for the Corps past contributions to habitat degradation, but he did it a lot more succinctly, and he offered some specific ideas on how to contribute in a much more positive way in the future. I had a chance to talk with him at length later, and it's a shame he's retiring in a few weeks. He's a paratrooper, former 82nd Airborne, still wears his wings, and carries himself in a no-nonsense dynamic way. He's a results oriented guy, for obvious reasons. There are few second chances in what he was originally trained for. If only we could get the folks in the Corps Planning Branch in San Francisco to be half that dynamic... the Salt River would already be restored.
We also heard from Mark Myers, Director of the U.S. Geological Survey, from a few other high-level agency folks, and finally from author John Barry, who had some very interesting ideas on how to reorganize things to get some results: He likes the BRAC system, which puts base closure recommendations in front of Congress for a straight yes-or-no vote, and he suggests that a similar system for prioritizing water-related issues has merit. Sure hope someone is listening.
I'm already loaded up with promotional goodies from the exhibit booths. I have many more pens than I need, passed on a red frisbee though because I'd rather not try to figure out where to fit it in my bags, and of course have a ton of paper. There may be a few books going home with me. There have been several offers to "collaborate on something" although of course most of these never amount to more than talk.
My award for best exhibit booth goes to Booz Allen Hamilton; they have three 16x20 inch boards mounted on a plain background, with exactly 29 words (including the name of the company) over a simple full-bleed image. It doesn't get much more concise, simple, and elegant than this. The message is that we should already know what they do... and with my business school background, of, course, I do.
The conference has perhaps already achieved "worthwhile" status, because of a chance encounter with someone from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Sacramento office. She took a few minutes to give me an overview of the organizational structure there, and some suggestions (with phone numbers attached) on who to talk with to learn more specific things. This could save immense quantities of time later.
It's time for the welcome social, so I'd better grab a stack of business cards and get downstairs. More in a bit.
This isn't a typical restoration conference. Most that I've attended in the past were populated largely by grad students in jeans and tee-shirts. Jackets and ties were limited to those giving a talk, and often had a sort of weathered academic appearance.
Apparently the restoration business has crossed an economic watershed. Tee-shirts are scarcer than Black-footed Ferrets. Expensive business suits are common, and at break every fifth person seems to be checking messages on their Blackberry. Many of the big players are here: URS, CH2M Hill, Booz Allen Hamilton, SAIC, Brown and Caldwell, HDR Inc., PBS&J, and of course all of the federal agencies. With a difference: The agency heads who were invited actually made an appearance this time. Most did not send a mid-level subordinate to give their talk.
We heard from Lt. General Carl A. Strock, Chief of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. He's not the first I've heard take agency responsibility for the Corps past contributions to habitat degradation, but he did it a lot more succinctly, and he offered some specific ideas on how to contribute in a much more positive way in the future. I had a chance to talk with him at length later, and it's a shame he's retiring in a few weeks. He's a paratrooper, former 82nd Airborne, still wears his wings, and carries himself in a no-nonsense dynamic way. He's a results oriented guy, for obvious reasons. There are few second chances in what he was originally trained for. If only we could get the folks in the Corps Planning Branch in San Francisco to be half that dynamic... the Salt River would already be restored.
We also heard from Mark Myers, Director of the U.S. Geological Survey, from a few other high-level agency folks, and finally from author John Barry, who had some very interesting ideas on how to reorganize things to get some results: He likes the BRAC system, which puts base closure recommendations in front of Congress for a straight yes-or-no vote, and he suggests that a similar system for prioritizing water-related issues has merit. Sure hope someone is listening.
I'm already loaded up with promotional goodies from the exhibit booths. I have many more pens than I need, passed on a red frisbee though because I'd rather not try to figure out where to fit it in my bags, and of course have a ton of paper. There may be a few books going home with me. There have been several offers to "collaborate on something" although of course most of these never amount to more than talk.
My award for best exhibit booth goes to Booz Allen Hamilton; they have three 16x20 inch boards mounted on a plain background, with exactly 29 words (including the name of the company) over a simple full-bleed image. It doesn't get much more concise, simple, and elegant than this. The message is that we should already know what they do... and with my business school background, of, course, I do.
The conference has perhaps already achieved "worthwhile" status, because of a chance encounter with someone from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Sacramento office. She took a few minutes to give me an overview of the organizational structure there, and some suggestions (with phone numbers attached) on who to talk with to learn more specific things. This could save immense quantities of time later.
It's time for the welcome social, so I'd better grab a stack of business cards and get downstairs. More in a bit.
the place
Kansas City, Missouri: National Ecosystem Restoration Conference.
I live and work in California. But I grew up in and near Chicago, in Illinois, known among other things as "the prairie state." It's an out of date descriptive term, because there really isn't much prairie left there. Most of it, in fact almost all of it, was gone by 1930. Plowed, ditched, drained, later paved in some places. They... those who came before me... took very nearly all of it. I may never forgive them.
I had to come to a place not too far from where I am today, only an hour or two west of here in Kansas, to really see prairie. In the flint hills, at Konza Prairie, I was finally able to stand atop a hill, use my hands to screen the power lines to left and right from my view, and see grassland all the way to the horizon. I was there in late summer, when the grass had taken on hues of rust and amber in addition to the usual shades of yellow and green.
Today I need to use my imagination to see that grassland, because I'm in the heart of the city and won't likely have time to go very far. Once though, this was prairie, the western edge of the tallgrass. Trees would have lined the riparian borders, but mostly it would have been open.
That temporal perspective is important, because the prairie itself has always been dynamic. In dry years, fires burned more often, carried into more places, and the trees fell back. In wet years, the woods encroached a little into the grassland. Later, just a short time ago in the long-term picture, humans changed everything.
Now, a few of us are trying to put some of it back. That's why we're here this week.
I live and work in California. But I grew up in and near Chicago, in Illinois, known among other things as "the prairie state." It's an out of date descriptive term, because there really isn't much prairie left there. Most of it, in fact almost all of it, was gone by 1930. Plowed, ditched, drained, later paved in some places. They... those who came before me... took very nearly all of it. I may never forgive them.
I had to come to a place not too far from where I am today, only an hour or two west of here in Kansas, to really see prairie. In the flint hills, at Konza Prairie, I was finally able to stand atop a hill, use my hands to screen the power lines to left and right from my view, and see grassland all the way to the horizon. I was there in late summer, when the grass had taken on hues of rust and amber in addition to the usual shades of yellow and green.
Today I need to use my imagination to see that grassland, because I'm in the heart of the city and won't likely have time to go very far. Once though, this was prairie, the western edge of the tallgrass. Trees would have lined the riparian borders, but mostly it would have been open.
That temporal perspective is important, because the prairie itself has always been dynamic. In dry years, fires burned more often, carried into more places, and the trees fell back. In wet years, the woods encroached a little into the grassland. Later, just a short time ago in the long-term picture, humans changed everything.
Now, a few of us are trying to put some of it back. That's why we're here this week.
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