PS 22-45
Is information enough? The effects of watershed approaches and planning on targeting ecosystem restoration sites
Markets for ecosystem services, or the beneficial functions of ecosystems, continue to grow and cover new systems such as carbon sequestration and habitat of endangered species. While markets are intended to produce the greatest ecological benefit for the lowest cost, ecological markets encounter many challenges including the geographic reallocation of ecosystem services. Lessons from wetland markets, the oldest and most prominent ecosystem service market, can help provide insight into these challenges and their policy solutions. In an attempt to reduce impact hotspots with distant restoration sites the EPA and National Research Council have promoted the watershed approach, which incorporates watershed level information into siting restoration projects. The watershed approach falls just short of full-scale watershed planning. The North Carolina Ecosystem Enhancement Program (EEP), the agency that manages the states wetland and stream restoration market, has implemented both the watershed approach and watershed planning since its inception two decades ago. How effective have EEP’s policies been in locating mitigation projects? We tested the effect of targeting specific areas for restoration (the watershed approach) and local watershed planning on the number of mitigation projects in each 12-digit HUC watershed. Our analysis evaluates the effect of these policies across watersheds and time.
Results/Conclusions
Using a cross-sectional analysis and controlling for socio-demographic characteristics that may influence project location, we find that watersheds targeted for restoration are significantly more likely to have a mitigation project and have more mitigation projects than other watersheds. Local watershed planning has no significant effect on the presence and number of mitigation projects. Across time, both TLWs and LWPs significantly increase the probability for a project to be located in a watershed in a given year. The odds of a project being located in a watershed increase 89% when it is a TLW, and by 71% when it has an LWP. The rate of project establishment is significantly different between watersheds with no treatment and watersheds that have undergone local planning, however, it is difficult to distinguish the influence of TLW and LWP. The NC EEP planning framework demonstrates that institutional systems can be created to overcome challenges of geographic shifts in ecosystem services resulting from markets. The EEP’s approach of targeting specific watersheds that have high need and mitigation potential appears to be effective at clustering mitigation in desired locations. However, the role of watershed planning was not consistently found to be as statistically motivating for mitigation site location.