Overview
Our research group has interviewed over two hundred river and watershed related organizations throughout the intermountain west. This website is designed to share some of our findings to date on the following themes:
- Where organizations work
- What organizations do
- Types of knowledge organizations use
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Factors enabling and constraining organization success
Scroll to explore these topics in depth.
We will continue to update this page. Be sure to check back for more!
Professor of Environment and Society
Phone: 435-797-8635
Email: courtney.flint@usu.edu
Bailey Holdaway, Research Technician
Caitlyn Rogers, Research Assistant
Madison Fjeldsted Thompson, Research Assistant
Shayna Pugh, Research Assistant
Casey Trout, Data Analyst
Managing water is all about managing people.
Background
Funding
Funding provided by NSF through the Intermountain West Transformation Network (Award# 2115169) and the Institute for Geospatial Understanding through an Integrative Discovery Environment (I-GUIDE) (Award# 2118329).
In 2020, we set out to explore the social ecology of river and watershed organizations in the Intermountain West. We conducted interviews for the next 2+ years. These organizations varied in scope, spatial and temporal scales, and mission. We hoped to capture the contributions made by as many of these organizations as possible.
The Intermountain West
There are 476 HUC-8 watersheds in the Intermountain West region covering all or parts of 11 US states.
Building on the efforts of River Network, we have identified over 450 watershed organizations throughout the Intermountain West. This map shows the headquarters for these organizations based on our initial list.
Participation Rate
We conducted structured interviews with 237 organizations out of 440 organizational contact attempts. That’s a 54% participation rate in our study. We record and transcribe these interviews and process them using Otter.ai and Atlas.ti software. For organizations that we could not interview, select information was gathered by using organization's websites.
| Number of Interviewed Organizations | Participation Rate | |
|---|---|---|
| Arizona | 15 | 83% |
| Nevada | 8 | 73% |
| Washington | 21 | 64% |
| New Mexico | 22 | 58% |
| Idaho | 17 | 55% |
| Oregon | 17 | 55% |
| Colorado | 59 | 54% |
| Montana | 42 | 49% |
| Utah | 15 | 44% |
| California | 13 | 37% |
| Wyoming | 8 | 35% |
But where do these organizations really work?
While we mapped organizational headquarters (above), we wanted to know more exactly where organizations are working in the HUC8's around the Intermountain West. To do that, in interviews, we asked organizational representatives to tell us which watersheds their organization worked in. In early interviews this was a verbal description (i.e naming a river, a basin, a region). Because there could be ambiguity with this (do to interviewer knowledge of the area, discrepensies of different names, etc), we wanted to get more accurate details of the geographic coverage and added a map element where interviewees could point on a map exactly which watersheds their organization worked within. Because of the change in methodology over time, we have created two maps to help compensate for the disparity. The map on the left is for interviews and information gathered from interviewees explicitly stating which watersheds that they were working within. While the map on the right is information taken from more broad responses with assumptions on our part being made. These maps also do include some information from website research, but often times organizations wouldn't have a clear map of where the work was going on or no map at all.
Please note, an absense in coverage on a map does not mean there are no organizations working there. This just means in the lengthy, but not exhaustive, list of organizations we interviewed, organizations did not explicilty described working in specific HUC8 watersheds. This could mean organizations we interviewed mentioned they worked on a larger scale and we didn't want to make assumptions on their scale of geographic work. Or that we just didn't get the opportunity to interview an organization at this time.
Explicit Coverage Identified to Date
This map shows coverage of organizations in the Intermountain West that explicitly mentioned which HUC8 watersheds they worked in. Areas not showing coverage may be covered by river and watershed organizations - we just didn't receive that explicit information.
Generalized Coverage Identified to Date
This map shows coverage of organizations in the Intermountain West based on general areal descriptions of focal geography (e.g., area, region, state). We used that information and extracted the HUC8 watersheds that would roughly be in those general areas. This interpretation provides a more holistic coverage of the efforts of river and watershed organizations in the Intermountain West.
What do these organizations do?
We quickly learned that these river and watershed organizations work on a wide range of topics. To find out what exactly these organizations worked on we asked some key questions like "What is the organization's mission and vision statement?" and "What are the organization's current goals and objectives?". We also used indirect information to better understand the various scales of organizational focus.
Missions
Organization missions were classified into different focus areas and could fall into multiple mission focus areas. The average number of organizational missino areas was 3.
General River, Stream, Watershed Protection & Conservation was the most dominant focus area with 131 organizations. But, there were many other mission focus areas from Land and Agriculture to Water Quality and Policy and Legislation and beyond.
Typology
Looking beyond the mission statements of organizations, we broadly classified organizations across a few general areas of focus, specifying major, general, and minor focus. Organizations often fell into multiple types.
Scale of Work
River and watershed organizations work across both spatial and temporal scales. Most worked at watershed or multi-watershed scales. While a few of the organizations were relatively new, most had been around for quite a long time. For both of these classifications, organizations could only fall into one category; one spatial, one temporal.
Spatial Scale
Temporal Scale
What knowledges are these organizations drawing upon?
We asked interviewees what kind of knowledge organizations were drawing upon for their work - scientific, professional or local knowledge. We found that river and watershed organizations rely on integration of various types of knowledge for their work.
It’s definitely a combination. Yeah, so essentially … I’m our scientist on board and so we use science a lot to inform our decisions … and …we need the local residents and their knowledge and experience to sort of support us… And then also we’re working a lot with professionals who are advising us and giving us policy ideas as well as working with professionals that oppose us as well. I think it’s really important that the community supports you, and you listen to their local knowledge, we have a lot of tribes locally for example that give us a lot of support information, but you also need scientific. I don’t think one ever comes without the other in a well-rounded organization.
Since organizations could choose a combination of knowledge types, in this graphic, organizations were only counted in one of these categories, a combination category or single category. A combination of local, professional & scientific knowledge made up for 73% of responses, with other combinations and single knowledge types being much less. The table on the right shows a few examples we heard of the different types of knowledge.
| Scientific Knowledge | Professional Knowledge | Local Knowledge |
|---|---|---|
| Modeling | State and federal agencies | Residents, community perspectives |
| Analyzing and verifying data | Advising and management | Landowners and agricultural producers |
| Experts with technological and scientific background and degrees | Attorneys | Tribal perspectives |
| Ecological surveys and Data | Local contractors & consultants | Volunteers and board members |
| Consultants on hydrology, etc | Other organizations | Myths and legends |
| Monitoring and mapping | Local guides | Past experiences and observations |
What factors enable or constrain organizational progress or success?
Our work for the river is absolutely impacting, hopefully benefitting, the social ecology, because we are creating relationships across divides- urban-rural interests, old-school new-school. I believe we are helping this basin avoid conflict. As the West evolves, we are trying to model how we can address high-conflict issues lilke this in a more graceful way.
Success Factors
Organizational representatives, when asked what led to their organization's success, mentioned a variety of factors. Statements about factors of success could have multiple success factor categories.
The top three factors listed here are all related to 'human-human relationships': Collaboration/Partnerships/Relationships, Mutual Community Engagement, and Having Good Board/Members/Volunteers. Other factors include having sufficient funding and resources and having perserverence and trust, as well as other factors.
Recommendations
Organizational representatives also were asked what recommendation(s) they had for new river and watershed organizations that were just getting started. Organization recommendation statements could fall into multiple recommendation categories.
The top two recommendations were Collaboration and Work with/talk to community/stakeholders.
*Note that this question was not asked in all interviews, only interviews in CO, ID, MT, NM, UT, and WY
Obstacles
Organizational representatives were also asked the obstacles and barries to success that the organization faces/faced. Obstacles statements could fall into multiple obstacle categories.
Funding was the number 1 obstacle mentioned by organizational representatives, with 115 mentions. Other obstacles were also mentioned like Organization People, Government/Bureaucracy, and Contention with Water Users.
Other projects that we’re involved in are irrigation modernization, so making irrigation infrastructure more efficient with their water use. And then also, we've helped with a few real site-specific like bank stabilization projects. … And really, our key function is bringing open lines of communication and partners together.
We have certainly found great examples of how river and watershed organizations influence social-ecological resilience in the Intermountain West. Please be on the lookout for more information and resources to come!
We have certainly found great examples of how river and watershed organizations influence social-ecological resilience in the Intermountain West. Please be on the lookout for more information and resources to come!
Note: Banner picture credit belongs to Kathy Plavko. All other picture credits belong to Courtney Flint.