Statement of Issues and Justification

Need as indicated by stakeholders

Individual and collective actions, intended and unintended, have consequences that put the quality of our water resources at risk. Non-point source (NPS) pollutants delivered across the landscape are a primary source of impairment of US waters (National Water Quality Inventory Report to Congress http:www.epa.gov/305b; USEPA 2013). Although NPS pollution is diffuse, its ultimate source is readily understood as rooted in the day-to-day actions and management decisions of all citizens, urban and rural (Morton and Brown, 2011).

The US Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) reports that siltation, nutrients, bacteria, metals, and oxygen-depleting substances are among the top contributors to water impairment in the nation (http:www.epa.gov/305b). USEPA estimates that the agricultural sector is the largest source of impairment affecting nearly half of all streams and rivers that have water quality problems and the source of more than 45% of damage to lakes and 18% of damage to estuaries (Ribaudo and Johansson 2006). In the Mississippi River watershed, agriculture contributes 71% of nitrogen and 80% of phosphorus to the Gulf of Mexico (Porter et al. 2015). Further, agriculture accounts for most of the drained wetlands in the contiguous 48 states (Hansen 2006) and a majority of threatened or endangered species listed (Cox 2007; Batie 2009). When an excess of pollutants such as phosphorus, nitrogen, and sediment from human activities in agriculture, industries and urban areas leak into water bodies the result is often downstream eutrophication and hypoxia (insufficient oxygen to support aquatic life) (Gulf Hypoxia 2008 Action Plan).

The incidence of hypoxia in coastal waters has increased 30-fold since 1960 (Committee on Environment and Natural Resources, 2010.), and is becoming a fixture in many freshwater systems including the Great Lakes. Two water bodies with significant hypoxic zones are the Gulf of Mexico and the Chesapeake Bay. The Gulf of Mexico is fed by the Mississippi and Atchafalaya Rivers, which drain a land mass comprising 41 percent of the contiguous United States. The Chesapeake Bay is the largest estuary in the United States, and the third largest in the world. The watershed covers approximately 64,000 square miles of the northeast and mid-Atlantic states (New York, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Maryland, Virginia, and Delaware, and Washington DC). A third area of significant concern is the freshwater hypoxic zone that has developed in Lake Erie -- geographically, the lowest and most shallow of the North American Great Lakes, bordered by Ontario, Canada, and the U.S. states of Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York.  While the lake is surrounded by dense population and industry, as well as intensive agricultural production.  Of particular concern in the Mississippi River Basin, the Chesapeake Bay region, and the Great Lakes are the sediments, nitrogen, and phosphorous that derive from a combination of nonpoint sources (agriculture, development, and urban runoff) and point sources (wastewater treatment plants).All these problems will be exacerbated by climate change, which is expected to lead to increased degradation of soil and water resources (Rossi et al., 2009; Collins et al., 2011, Reuter 2018).

Central to solving the problem of impaired waters is recognition of the role of humans, individually and collectively. Current land use decisions, identification of water resource problems, beliefs that the environment is at risk, perceptions of the need to act and willingness to engage in finding solutions are all factors that influence how water resources are managed. While agriculture is the largest contributor to water quality impairment in the U.S., other sources continue to pose problems, including runoff from urban development (Ribaudo and Johansson 2006). The importance of wide public involvement in solving the complex problems of water quality and NPS was a common theme in 2000 reports to USEPA by 39 states, tribes and territories submitting drinking water use data and reporting on the condition of their water bodies. A multi-state random sample water issue survey completed in 36 of the U.S. states (2002 through 2009) conducted by Dr. Robert Mahler, University of Idaho under a USDA Integrated Water Quality project reveals that the overall average perception for surface water quality is fair (Mahler et al. 2013). The overall average perception of ground water quality is midway between fair and good/excellent, although higher than that of surface water (Hu and Morton 2012). More recent public opinion surveys have sought to understand the opinions of water resources at the intersection of other resources, such as the Food-Energy-Water nexus. Interestingly, analysis of a 2015 national general population survey found that people exhibit greater understanding of the water-energy nexus than the water-food nexus (Portney et al. 2017). Although these findings suggest modest public awareness of water resources issues, key social, economic and ecological events and the mechanisms by which these conditions are translated into individual and collective actions and lead to changes in behaviors are not well understood. Similarly, the draft strategies on the Chesapeake Bay and the Mississippi River Basin Task Force, and action plans to meet the goals of the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement include many efforts to assist with land management at the local level through technical assistance, education, and financial resources to help land owners, local governments, and watershed-based organizations to make better decisions about land use and management. Public education campaigns can provide information to residents about the impacts of the land management activities on their nearby waterways. What is lacking, however, is an understanding of the decision-making process between awareness and action, or how other non-educational events might trigger awareness and action. A recent meta-analysis of factors associated with the adoption of agriculture conservation practices (a primary strategy for controlling NPS pollution) led by group member Prokopy (2019) found few variables that consistently predicted adoption.  Furthermore, a recent special issue in the Journal of Contemporary Water Research and Education, including contributions from several members of this team, suggests directions for future work in this realm, including: the role of watershed leaders in spurring water resources action (Bonnell et al. 2019; Burbach and Reimers-Hild 2019); the use of serious games for effective water resources outreach (Bathke et al. 2019); and the role of good governance principles in watershed management (Floress et al. 2019).

Importance of the work and what consequences are if it is not done

Policy tools designed to provide financial incentives and technical support for voluntary and cost effective actions by citizens and communities have been the dominant framework applied by agencies with NPS oversight. Voluntary approaches dominate largely because of the Clean Water Act’s exemption of nonpoint pollution (generally) from regulatory permit programs. This has meant using existing conservation programs and at times encouraging adaptive management. This approach has had limited success. The social sciences have not been systematically applied to discover which policy tools are most effective in changing behaviors and practices and to build a body of knowledge as to why they are effective, and how they might be modeled to guide future interventions. Yet programs are being created and implemented at multiple levels of government as well as by nonprofit organizations that attempt to change land management behavior without a clear social science knowledge base from which to create those interventions.

Although much of the biological science and technological solutions have been tested, the social and human dimensions implementing (or not) actions that reduce water resource impairments are not well understood. If we do not develop a clear, scientifically-sound understanding of human behaviors related to water management, we will continue to spend public money ineffectively on educational and voluntary programs without significant impact on water quality (see Wardropper et al. in review). Lack of adequate progress on water quality triggered regulatory actions in the Chesapeake Bay and could do so in the Mississippi River Basin or elsewhere. This move towards tighter regulations and punitive sanctions could put increasing pressure on both social and natural scientists to ensure that the science behind programs and policies is sound; currently, we do not have the social science knowledge we need to undergird such policy directions. This lack of social science knowledge ultimately results in an increased tension over the rights between the public and private ownership and use of water. The importance of understanding socioeconomic dimensions to increase voluntary adoption of practices is recognized by federal agencies working in partnership on Gulf Hypoxia (USEPA 2013) and more broadly on Coastal Waters Hypoxia (Committee on Environmental and Natural Resources 2010).

We propose continuing this multistate research technical committee to begin to fill the gap in the knowledge base of social-human interactions with water resource management.

Overarching Research Questions:

• How do catalysts interact with social and ecological conditions to create or prevent change in conservation behaviors, resource management, and governance within a water context?


• What facilitates change in conservation behaviors, resource management, governance, and social justice within a water context?

Specific questions

• How are key catalysts for change in conservation behavior, resource management, and governance translated into individual, collective, and institutional action?


• How are catalysts influenced by socio-economic, institutional, and ecological conditions?


• What types of outcomes emerge from various types of catalysts?


• What are the various institutional roles in addressing these processes?


• How do efforts to address water resource problems impact social equity? 

Our lack of understanding of the decision-making process is not limited to the area of water resource management. Research is also needed in the broader area of environmentally significant behavior (e.g. Stern 2000). A report from the National Research Council on environmental research priorities for the social and behavioral sciences identified understanding and better informing individuals’ environmentally significant behavior as one of the five top priority research areas (Brewer & Stern, 2005). Research in environmentally significant behavior may inform and guide water resource management.

Technical feasibility of the research

This group of scientists has been working together for over ten years. We have made significant progress in identifying catalysts of change and have developed a preliminary typology that examines catalysts for change within an individual watershed (Prokopy et al. 2014). We are making progress on a second typology; a preliminary version is included in the next section. This team has documented its ability to work together with numerous publications, conference sessions and grant proposals written jointly – see annual reports for further information.

Advantages of doing the work as a multistate effort

Current team members represent several key basins - Mississippi River, Chesapeake Bay, Great Lakes, and the Columbia River - that contribute to the development of significant algal blooms and hypoxic zones in major national water bodies. These      areas are also currently the focus of major federal and state efforts to remediate and prevent pollution. Multi- state efforts create openings for quasi-experimental designs and comparative analysis. Working through a multistate team will enable the researchers to develop and test knowledge about the individual and collective actions to improve water quality across multiple ecological, cultural, political, and social contexts. In other words, working across regions will allow the researchers to more accurately identify triggers of behavioral change and under what conditions those triggers effect change. Further, many of the social scientists participating in this research have excellent case study data that are specific to their states or regions. Working across multiple states will allow for comparisons of these cases to identify key variables. To date, the opportunities and funding for across state collaboration have been limited.

Likely impacts from successfully completing the work

We see two broad types of impacts of this work, enhanced knowledge for academics and improved programs and decision- making for policy-makers. First, we envision enhanced knowledge about the triggers of behavioral change related to water resources. To do this, we will continue to synthesize past and current case studies across states to identify common and unique social patterns that influence individual and collective actions. We will develop models of the mechanisms by which these events/conditions lead to both individual and collective actions related to local water resource management. Using this research, we will develop formal individual, collective and multi-level models of behavior related to water resource management that can then be tested across multiple scales and regions.

The second major area of impact of this research will be to provide information and guidance for resource management agencies (such as EPA and state level agencies) so that they have an enhanced understanding of the contribution of the social sciences to solving impaired water issues. These agencies will be better poised to develop tools for encouraging conservation behaviors that supplement and enhance current educational efforts. We also expect to develop adaptive management strategy guidelines that can be used to guide community development interventions, such as those used by nonprofit natural resource organizations (e.g., local watershed groups) and local government agencies to effectively mobilize resources for consistent water quality outcomes.