More Than a Service: Values of Rivers, Wetlands and Floodplains Are Informed by Both Function and Feeling.

How people value rivers, wetlands and floodplains influences their attitudes, beliefs and behaviours towards these ecosystems, and can shape policy and management interventions. Better understanding why people value rivers, wetlands and floodplains and their key ecosystem components, such as vegetation, helps to determine what factors underpin the social legitimacy required for effective management of these systems. This study sought to ascertain perspectives on the value of non-woody vegetation in river-floodplain systems via an online survey. The survey found that participants valued non-woody vegetation for their provision of a range of ecosystem functions and services, with strong emphasis on ecological aspects such as regulation functions, habitat provision and biodiversity. However, the inclusion of a question framed to focus on stories or narratives resulted in a different emphasis. Responses indicated that non-woody vegetation, and rivers, wetlands and floodplains were valued for the way they made people feel through lived experiences such as recreational activities, personal interactions with nature, educational and research experiences. This highlights the important role of storytelling in navigating complex natural resource management challenges and ascertaining a deeper understanding of values that moves beyond provision of function to feeling. Improved understanding of the diverse ways people value and interact with river-floodplain systems will help develop narratives and forms of engagement that foster shared understanding, empathy and collaboration. Appreciation of plural values such as the provision of functions and services along with the role of emotional connections and lived experience will likely increase lasting engagement of the general public with management to protect and restore river-floodplain systems.

Beyond a 'just add water' perspective: environmental water management for vegetation outcomes.

Practitioners of environmental water management (EWM) operate within complex social-ecological systems. We sought to better understand this complexity by investigating the management of environmental water for vegetation outcomes. We conducted an online survey to determine practitioners' perspectives on EWM for non-woody vegetation (NWV) in the Murray-Darling Basin, Australia with regards to: i) desirable outcomes and benefits; ii) influencing factors and risks; iii) challenges of monitoring and evaluation, and iv) improving outcomes. Survey participants indicated that EWM aims to achieve outcomes by improving or maintaining vegetation attributes and the functions and values these provide. Our study reveals that EWM practitioners perceive NWV management in a holistic and highly interconnected way. Numerous influencing factors as well as risks and challenges to achieving outcomes were identified by participants, including many unrelated to water. Survey responses highlighted six areas to improve EWM for NWV outcomes: (1) flow regimes, (2) vegetation attributes, (3) non-flow drivers, (4) management-governance considerations, (5) functions and values, and (6) monitoring, evaluation and research. These suggest a need for more than 'just water' when it comes to the restoration and management of NWV. Our findings indicate more integrated land-water governance and management is urgently required to address the impacts of non-flow drivers such as pest species, land-use change and climate change. The results also indicate that inherent complexity in EWM for ecological outcomes has been poorly addressed, with a need to tackle social-ecological constraints to improve EWM outcomes.