CAREER: Modeling Watershed Flooding and Adaptive Flood Management: An Integrative Plan for Research, Teaching, and Learning

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As population growth and urban development continue to expand in the coastal margin, flooding poses amajor threat to human safety and the integrity of the natural environment. To mitigate the adverseimpacts of coastal flooding, decision makers are increasingly advocating watershed or ecosystemapproaches to management. While it is argued that some of the most serious flood hazards are the resultof a failure to understand the regional ecological context, little empirical research has been done on howgrowth and development patterns increase the threat of floods at the watershed level and howcommunities respond over time to repetitive flooding events.My career plan will address this need by implementing an interactive research and educational programon flood mitigation, sustainable watershed management, and policy learning. It will develop a frameworkfor adaptive decision making for coastal flood hazards by integrating research, education, and informationdissemination. The research component will focus on the impacts of wetland development on coastalwatershed flooding and policy learning at the community level to mitigate the adverse impacts of flooddamage to the human and natural environment. A two-phase longitudinal research design will employboth quantitative and qualitative analyses to investigate flooding problems in Texas and Florida. Phaseone will use Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to examine the spatial pattern of wetlanddevelopment over a ten-year period and correlate this development with coastal watershed flooding.Phase two will identify thresholds of policy learning by examining how communities adjust and adapt torepetitive flooding. Both research phases will use multivariate analysis to measure the effects of wetlanddevelopment on flooding and the effects of flooding on policy adjustment while controlling forsocioeconomic, biophysical, and other contextual factors. The education component of the career planwill develop place-based learning modules on coastal watershed management and flood mitigation. Aseries of interdisciplinary, problem-based seminars will provide an authentic learning experience toprepare future scientists, teachers, and policy makers to address ecosystem-level hazards issues.Intellectual Merit of Proposed Plan The intellectual merit of the research is based on advancing knowledge of the causes of coastal watershedflooding and showing how to adapt policy mechanisms to mitigate floods. Results will contribute to adecision-making framework for flood mitigation by increasing understanding of the specific type, size,and location of wetlands that mitigate flooding and provide guidance to watershed planners for managingadaptively over time. This understanding is critical given the continued development of coastal areas andthe increasing vulnerability of human populations to coastal flooding. One of the unique features of theproposed research will be the utilization of data sources that have been underutilized in the analysis ofwetland loss. The national wetland permit and USGS flood gauge databases offer important opportunitiesto conduct an empirical study on watershed flooding.Broader Impacts of Proposed Plan While the project will contribute to scientific understanding and management capabilities, it will alsopromote teaching and learning on system-wide ecological problems. By building on participation in theUniversity.s NSF sponsored Informational Technology and Science Program and Sustainable CoastalMargins Program, the project will integrate research on watershed management and flood mitigation witheducation and training to solve these issues. Interdisciplinary, place-based learning modules will trainstudents and teachers to understand and act upon complex ecosystem management problems throughproblem solving, field experience, and the development of watershed case studies and associatedwebsites. Courses during the academic year will target graduate students, while summer sessions willalso include K-12 teachers. Another positive impact of the project will be recruitment and training ofstudents from underrepresented groups. These individuals will play a vital role in both the research andeducational components of the project. Finally, the dissemination of results will benefit the academic andpolicy making community. In addition to presenting research results at conferences and workshops, theinformation will be shared with public decision makers.