DISES: RUI: Understanding the Use of Discretion and its Socio-Environmental Consequences for Reservoir Systems

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As one of the most heavily impounded large rivers in the world, the Columbia River system provides an outstanding model in which to investigate integrated biophysical and socioeconomic dynamics of river impoundment. This project focuses on the dynamic, reciprocal relationship between environmental and social systems by examining dam operations, the decision-making process governing those operations, and feedbacks between this decision-making process and the environment. As a well-characterized system with quantifiable outcomes (e.g. water levels, volumes, flows, fates) and a well-established but diverse and evolving regulatory environment, dam and reservoir management offers an opportunity to test fundamental hypotheses about tradeoffs between rules-based and discretion-based management approaches to gain deeper understanding of adaptive management of reservoirs specifically, and of the nature of socio-environmental integration generally. In pursuing this goal, the investigators will generate fundamental knowledge about how environmental conditions affect resource management and vice versa. The project will also involve training for undergraduate and graduate students; education of K-12 teachers; and engagement of reservoir managers, stakeholders, and the public. Using the Columbia River system as a model, this project will advance understanding of: 1) how, and to what extent, the degree of discretion in management affects biophysical outcomes; 2) how, and to what extent, management-dependent natural system outcomes affect rule setting, exercise of discretion, and decision outcomes, and 3) how social and environmental factors shape the dynamic reciprocal relationship between the biophysical outcomes from management decisions and the structure of rules governing them. The research will integrate fundamental understanding of river biogeochemistry and ecology, how to match the appropriate level of flexibility to environmental management challenges, and how costs and benefits of discretion in environmental management influences economics while providing actionable insight. It employs economic contract and mechanism design theory to an adaptive management paradigm for dam and reservoir operations, a setting that is both specific and ubiquitous enough to allow for novel empirical testing of fundamental hypotheses.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.