Session Lead: Lisa Wainger (University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science)
Co-Lead(s): Caitlin Grady
Session Format: Oral presentations
Session Description:
The goals and implementation strategies of Chesapeake Bay restoration are being adjusted as partner agreements evolve and incentive structures are reconsidered. This shifting landscape presents a timely opportunity to evaluate the benefits of alternative restoration approaches. Notably, agricultural community goals have not been fully integrated into restoration planning, offering a chance to broaden the vision of desirable futures.
This session will highlight research that explores synergies and tradeoffs among agricultural and environmental goals in the Chesapeake Bay watershed and similar contexts. Due to the nature of these concerns, we welcome insights from team science where investigators are examining alternative management approaches. Presentations are invited from interdisciplinary teams, including agricultural and environmental economists, watershed and nutrient mass balance modelers, and soil and agronomy researchers.
Contributions will include findings from stakeholder-driven scenario development and model-based analysis. Modeling tools offer a policy sandbox to test ideas and behavioral incentives under changing climate and land use conditions. While methods will vary across researchers, scenario thinking is a common approach used to explore policy and incentive options. Scenarios may be co-developed with stakeholders including farmers, agribusinesses, developers, government agencies, and NGOs concerned with food systems and environmental outcomes. These scenarios may be informed by empirical models of human responses to incentives and translated into inputs for simulation models to test performance.
Scenarios may compare business-as-usual (BAU) to future visions that explore changing system drivers and introduce innovations to address persistent challenges. Topics of interest include ongoing shifts in agricultural production, nutrient use efficiency, and farm types that reflect global market forces and technological change and will shape future conditions in the watershed. Climate and land use change also influence agricultural decisions and the effectiveness of conservation practices in reducing nutrient and sediment runoff.
We expect speakers to cover any aspect of scenario development to modeling results. Some scenario modeling results suggest that substantial departures from current trends are needed to meet water quality goals. These needs are driven by findings that agricultural intensification poses greater nutrient runoff risks than urbanization or climate change. Stakeholder engagement is an important element as it provides a critical “reality check” on farm and market behaviors. Further, we welcome empirical models that may be used to test human behavior in response to change, such as consumer willingness to pay a premium for local food, thereby helping to define realistic bounds for future scenarios.