To provide hindsight on the process applied and the information and tools developed under the ESRP, eight of the 13 Leads were asked: looking back at what you have done to date, is there anything you would do differently if doing it again – what has worked well and what hasn't? The Leads asked this question included the Director, the
coordinator of all place-based studies, as well, Leads developing information and tools relating to the classification of ecosystem services, mapping, modelling, health, well- being and one Lead working on a place-based study.
A few respondents commented on the process they had applied to extract and synthesis information and develop tools. One respondent leading a highly collaborative area of the ESRP said "what I would do exactly the same ... engaging other agencies. I think that's really, really, really important". Another respondent expressed "getting
Memorandums of Understanding in place" was difficult and a deterrent to engaging more stakeholders up front and conducting a more collaborative approach, so this is something they would want addressed. Other Leads mentioned the need for more community and (other) stakeholder outreach. Another discussed the need for
centralising some of the program design so to ensure scalability and transferability of outcomes:
... you would try and guide it more rather than everyone going off and doing their own thing – to some degree you would try and centralise some of the problems and issues so that everybody was working on common problems and issues – because, what are the most important communities, ecosystems, problems so we can be focused on those and get answers to those - we broke it up to teach and learn to the point where there is some overlap but we are not getting an answer to the questions we need (i.e. what is the value of ecosystem services), so we can plug them in and to all these different places – it depends on where you are, and we should have accounted for that, what kind of design do you develop up front to account for that – it is an issue of representativeness, ... the scalability and extrapolation potential is something we should have thought more about.
172
Regarding the structure of the program, Nitrogen as a Cross Program Theme was considered an appropriate stressor to assess and “this would be chosen again”. Conducting Demonstration Projects and assessing other ecosystems other than just wetlands and coral reefs was mentioned. One respondent felt the wetlands project was an area that could have been done better – researchers “getting bogged down in the finer details was presenting a problem”.
In regards to the place-based projects, “as the places have been busy doing their own internal program they have been limited in their time/resources/capacity to do the ‘cross place’ types of stuff ... so I would want to change that". The Tampa Bay Project was referred to a number of times in interviews as a well-designed and run place-based study. Supporting a previous Lead’s comments on the need for centralising some of the program design so to ensure scalability and transferability of outcomes, one respondent stated:
… [what] we could have done better would be to design more specific parallel design components in our place-based efforts. That is, we should have had very similar and specific objectives but allowed different tools and approaches to be used ... this should have been done explicitly and
performed as an experiment ... ideally, the FEGS approach would have been completed before we moved ahead with the place-based studies.
One respondent specifically referring to, but not directly involved in the development of the National Atlas of Ecosystem Services, said there was nothing they would do
differently in the mapping section of ESRP. One approach that worked well with the maps and dynamic models was the ability for stakeholders to be involved in the development of data layers up front (where possible) due to the frustration of trying to standardise data later.
One respondent said "the modelling was wrong – we needed a modelling plan up front ... because if you don’t you are never going to pull it back together and if you do it is going to be a very painful and expensive process". “Criteria for appropriate models should be developed early on and the best models to meet this criterion should be used”. The lack of consistency in models used across the ESRP was said to bring innovation however. “Some of the new models the program has come up with (such as temporally
dynamic water quality models) were considered "one of the best products we [ESRP] have ... because it is performing so much better than any existing model right now".
Eight of the 13 Leads were asked: do you have a ‘wish list’ for future resources for your research? The most common response was more ESRP internal, inter-divisional, face- to-face collaborations “so as to better share and coordinate information and learn across the program”. Also having the capacity (time, money, ability) for stakeholder outreach was mentioned many times during interviews. At the time of these interviews the ESRP was morphing into the Sustainable and Health Communities Research Program - still having the time and money to deliver the tools they set out to under the ESRP was important to one respondent. Two others mentioned the need for more scalable health data.
Further thinking about synthesising, integrating and scaling information across the ESRP, led me to ask one of the Leads: how are you planning to synthesise information across the program? “There was no upfront synthesis plan - originally it was considered the National Centre for Environmental Assessment would become involved in the ESRP and track the program through periodic summaries and assessments”. Much of the information developed will transition also into the new Sustainable and Healthy Communities Research Program. But as far as synthesising information developed in the ESRP, the resources (time and funding) are not available for such research. "So I am thinking like in many of our big programs that we will walk away without ever really having put the big picture together and leaving behind all we learned and all the value associated with the research other than what has been gathered in the literature".
To complete the analysis of the ESRP methodology and determine how Leads would determine the success of their program, six Leads were asked: how will you measure the success of your research section of the ESRP? All respondents stated a determinant of success is the use of the information and tools by stakeholders (at all scales and levels) of decision making. Increased awareness of ecosystem services and publication in scientific literature was also mentioned. Similar to Chapter 4 on the SEQ program the final and following section concludes this chapter; it provides a synopsis of the outcomes of the analysis into the US methodology as discussed in previous sections.
174