Journal Article

Public–Private Partnerships Working Beyond Scale Challenges toward Water Quality Improvements from Private Lands

Enloe, Stephanie K., Tyndall, John C., Schulte, Lisa A.

2017

Overview

In recognition that Iowa agriculture must maintain long-term production of food, fiber, clean water, healthy soil, and robust rural economies, Iowa recently devised a nutrient reduction strategy to set objectives for water quality improvements. To demonstrate how watershed programs and farmers can reduce nutrient and sediment pollution in Iowa waters, the Iowa Water Quality Initiative selected the Boone River Watershed Nutrient Management Initiative as one of eight demonstration projects. For over a decade, diverse public, private, and non-profit partner organizations have worked in the Boone River Watershed to engage farmers in water quality management efforts. To evaluate social dynamics in the Boone River Watershed and provide partners with actionable recommendations, we conducted and analyzed semi-structured interviews with 33 program leaders, farmers, and local agronomists. We triangulated primary interview data with formal analysis of Boone River Watershed documents such as grant applications, progress reports, and outreach materials. Our evaluation suggests that while multi-stakeholder collaboration has enabled partners to overcome many of the traditional barriers to watershed programming, scale mismatches caused by external socio-economic and ecological forces still present substantial obstacles to programmatic resilience. Public funding restrictions and timeframes, for example, often cause interruptions to adaptive management of water quality monitoring and farmer engagement. We present our findings within a resilience framework to demonstrate how multi-stakeholder collaboration can help sustain adaptive watershed programs to improve socio-ecological function in agricultural watersheds such as the Boone River Watershed.

• Publisher: Springer US,Springer Nature B.V
• Subject: Adaptive management / Agricultural land / Agricultural management / Agricultural watersheds / Agriculture - economics / Agriculture - methods / agronomists / Agronomy / Aquatic Pollution / Atmospheric Protection/Air Quality Control/Air Pollution / Collaboration / Conservation of Natural Resources - economics / Data processing / Earth and Environmental Science / Ecological effects / Ecological function / Ecology / Environment / Environmental Management / Environmental monitoring / Environmental Pollution - prevention & control / Farmers / Food / Forestry Management / funding / interviews / Iowa / monitoring / Nature Conservation / nutrient management / Nutrients / outreach / Partnerships / Pollution monitoring / Private lands / Public private partnerships / Public-Private Sector Partnerships / Quality control / Quality Improvement / Quality management / Resilience / Rivers / Rivers - chemistry / sediment contamination / Sediment pollution / socioeconomics / soil / Soil - chemistry / Soil water / Waste Water Technology / Water Management / Water monitoring / Water pollution / Water Pollution Control / Water Quality / Water quality management / Watershed management / Watersheds