How Engineers and Roadside Vegetation Managers Maintain Roadside Vegetation in Iowa, USA.

Recently the value of roadside vegetation as habitat for pollinators has gained increased attention, particularly in areas dominated by agriculture where there is little native vegetation available. However, many factors, including safety, cost, public perception, erosion control, and weedy plants must be considered when managing roadside vegetation. Although their decisions influence thousands of hectares of public rights-of-way, how engineers and roadside managers maintain roadside vegetation has been the subject of little research. In this study, we surveyed county engineers and roadside managers who manage vegetation along secondary roads in Iowa, USA to assess how they maintain roadside vegetation. Some counties employ roadside managers, who often have an environmental sciences background, to implement the on-the-ground management of roadside vegetation, while some counties use other staff. Compared to engineers, roadside managers more strongly agreed that using the ecological principles of integrated roadside vegetation management (IRVM) provided environmental benefits. Engineers in counties with a roadside manager more strongly agreed that IRVM practices reduce the spread of invasive species and provide attractive roadsides. Both engineers and roadside managers mentioned challenges to managing roadside vegetation, including interference with some native plantings by adjacent landowners, and ranked safety and soil erosion concerns as the highest priorities when making decisions. Four in ten roadside managers said their counties had protected native plant community remnants on secondary roadsides. Our findings can inform conservation outreach efforts to those responsible for managing roadside vegetation, and emphasize the importance of addressing safety and soil erosion concerns in roadside research and communications.

Local Decision-makers' Perspectives on Roadside Revegetation and Management in Iowa, USA.

Environmental practitioners must understand those they collaborate with to implement programs that are both socially and ecologically effective. Practitioners who understand decision-makers' perspectives are better able to collaborate to lower political, financial, and cultural obstacles. In this study, we surveyed decision-makers involved with a voluntary environmental program in Iowa, USA. Iowa counties can choose to manage their roadside vegetation using an ecological approach, called integrated roadside vegetation management. Key decision-makers who decide whether a county has a roadside program are the county board of supervisors and the county conservation board. We used a mixed-mode design to survey the conservation board directors and chairs of the board of supervisors in each county. Our main goals were to understand the decision-makers' perceived benefits and barriers to having a roadside program in their counties, as well as the key factors influencing their decisions about roadside vegetation management. Safety, maintenance cost savings, and erosion control were the main factors that influenced decision-making, while pollinators and other wildlife received the least consideration. However, decision-makers in counties with a roadside vegetation manager were more influenced by pollinators and other wildlife compared to their counterparts in counties without a roadside vegetation manager. The main barriers to having a program include a lack of resources or other concerns being a higher priority. Emphasizing safety, cost savings, and erosion control benefits of roadside programs, and identifying ways to lower startup costs may increase buy-in with county decision-makers.

Regime shifts and panarchies in regional scale social-ecological water systems.

In this article we summarize histories of nonlinear, complex interactions among societal, legal, and ecosystem dynamics in six North American water basins, as they respond to changing climate. These case studies were chosen to explore the conditions for emergence of adaptive governance in heavily regulated and developed social-ecological systems nested within a hierarchical governmental system. We summarize resilience assessments conducted in each system to provide a synthesis and reference by the other articles in this special feature. We also present a general framework used to evaluate the interactions between society and ecosystem regimes and the governance regimes chosen to mediate those interactions. The case studies show different ways that adaptive governance may be triggered, facilitated, or constrained by ecological and/or legal processes. The resilience assessments indicate that complex interactions among the governance and ecosystem components of these systems can produce different trajectories, which include patterns of (a) development and stabilization, (b) cycles of crisis and recovery, which includes lurches in adaptation and learning, and (3) periods of innovation, novelty, and transformation. Exploration of cross scale (Panarchy) interactions among levels and sectors of government and society illustrate that they may constrain development trajectories, but may also provide stability during crisis or innovation at smaller scales; create crises, but may also facilitate recovery; and constrain system transformation, but may also provide windows of opportunity in which transformation, and the resources to accomplish it, may occur. The framework is the starting point for our exploration of how law might play a role in enhancing the capacity of social-ecological systems to adapt to climate change.