Local integration of ecological research, community values, and management goals: the case of a New York Finger Lake

Background/Question/Methods

The incorporation of ecological knowledge into the policy process has important implications for sustaining ecosystems and the services they provide. Yet scientific data represent one of many components of decision-making and must be balanced with community values and the goals of natural resource managers and government agencies. To understand how these factors complement and contradict each other, we initiated a transdisciplinary working group (including scholars from six academic departments and a non-profit organization called the Cayuga Lake Watershed Network, CLWN) to assess the socio-ecological health of the Cayuga Lake watershed, an important natural resource in the Finger Lakes region of New York State. Based on our scientific understanding of the system and informed by interviews with diverse stakeholders, we developed socio-ecological indicators for the lake and watershed. Then we synthesized existing physical and ecological datasets and community input to create a visual relative assessment (i.e., “dashboard”) of the state of the lake and watershed.

Results/Conclusions

In consultation with the CLWN, we co-developed indicators relating to people (population growth rate, poverty rate), the lake (water quality, monitoring efforts, status of the fishery), and the watershed (status of the tributaries, land cover, land conversion). We detected strong community awareness of, and economic development around, the lake, especially along the more densely populated south shore. We also found that numerous physical and ecological datasets are currently available, but limited access and integration reduces their utility. For example, there were inconsistencies in the monitoring sites and methods of the Department of Environmental Conservation, Cornell University, and citizen science groups. Moreover, the concerns of stakeholders (e.g., aesthetics, boating amenities, real estate prices) were in contrast to the concerns of scientists and managers (e.g., food web structure, dissolved oxygen concentration, nutrient run-off from agricultural zones). We will evaluate financial and political reasons why the CLWN has been able to only partially implement our assessment, and conclude by discussing the potential for engagement with non-scientists to deepen our understanding of the utility and implications of ecological research.