Nicole Herman-Mercer | United States Geological Survey (original) (raw)
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Papers by Nicole Herman-Mercer
WIREs. Water, May 21, 2024
Global water systems are facing unprecedented pressures, including climate change-driven drought ... more Global water systems are facing unprecedented pressures, including climate change-driven drought and escalating flood risk, environmental contamination, and over allocation. Water management and governance typically lack integration across spatial scales, including relationships between surface and ground water systems. They also routinely ignore connectivity across temporal scales, including the need for intergenerational water planning. As a global and interdisciplinary group of scientists, we seek to highlight how power and scale dynamics influence and determine water outcomes. We argue that attending to complex water systems challenges requires understanding the function and influence of power at different temporal and spatial scales. Building this understanding is key to designing multi-scalar, reflexive, and pluralistic policy solutions that avoid ineffective or unintended outcomes. We use a co-learning process to reveal important lessons for the challenges of interdisciplinary research and set a pluralist agenda for understanding power and scale in future water governance
Science and policy governance, including the development of modeling and decision support tools f... more Science and policy governance, including the development of modeling and decision support tools for the management of natural resources and environments, can be improved with enhanced: (1) stakeholder and public engagement; (2) societal and institutional continuity in the evaluation of management and policy decisions, and (3) recognition of the role that biases, beliefs, heuristics, and values (BBHV) play in science and decision making. Addressing these three critical needs is essential for: (1) the societal acceptance and larger-scale use of science in decision-making, (2) the follow-through documentation, assessment, and governance of dynamic coupled humannatural systems beyond the scales of typical political or management cycles, and (3) the enhanced recognition and differentiation between what people and communities want based on their gut instincts, and what they might need based on greater knowledge and thoughtful consideration. Here we suggest that creating a multi-media hierarchically-structured "Record of Engagement" (RoE) that would support meeting these critical needs by offering: (1) a reward system for engagement (in addition to other possible incentives); (2) a record structure and system for a) evaluating processes and outcomes, b) understanding the system/issue in the future, and c) fostering transferability and "lessons learned" to other systems or issues, and (3) an opportunity to systematize, facilitate, create efficiencies, and improve the engagement of experts and stakeholders in participatory modelling, planning and governance, including in the recognition of the role of BBHV. The RoE would document: the nature of the system/issue, available evidence, the facilitation processes used for engagement, including participatory modeling processes, as well as proposed actions and governance possibilities to spur follow through. The constituencies engaged in the science and decision making processes, and their relative power to provide knowledge and affect decisions, would also be documented. Recognizing the importance of BBHV, the RoE would further document the ethical principles, beliefs, other factors used in arguments for suggested decisions, emotions expressed by different constituencies, and the behavioral and group dynamics of the engagement. A diversity of technological tools (e.g. artificial intelligence and natural language processing, machine vision and behavioural analysis, expert system design, gamification) and approaches (e.g. soft systems methodology, behavioural operations research, companion modelling) would help create the RoE while ensuring that key principles of stakeholder engagement are applied and adapted as needed.
Scientific Investigations Report
Abstracts with programs, 2022
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts, Dec 1, 2015
AGU Fall Meeting 2020, Dec 15, 2020
JAWRA Journal of the American Water Resources Association
Human factors that influence water availability in the Basin were discovered by reviewing hundred... more Human factors that influence water availability in the Basin were discovered by reviewing hundreds of published literature items and articles from the literature following an extensive keyword search. The different factors were drawn from reviewing the literature, and datasets to support the factor were researched across open data catalogs and the world wide web. Data related to the Human Factors project water availability sectors of agriculture, industrial, municipal, and those related to ecosystem services, tourism, or other uses can be found here. Reproducible R scripts used to pull data or process data can be found within the section for the sector itself. Reproducible R scripts used to manage the literature review can be found within its own section.
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts, Dec 1, 2018
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts, Dec 1, 2017
This is the second water-quality data series resulting from the ongoing partnership between the Y... more This is the second water-quality data series resulting from the ongoing partnership between the Yukon River Inter-Tribal Watershed Council (YRITWC) and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). The first data series (2006-2008) can be found at http://pubs.er.usgs.gov/publication/ofr20101241. The Yukon River Basin (YRB) is the fourth largest drainage basin in North America (855,000 km2, roughly twice the size of California). (More detailed descriptions can be found in Schuster and others, 2010 and Brabets and others, 2000.) To better understand the effects of climate change on the water quality of the Yukon River and its major tributaries, the USGS and the YRITWC developed a water-quality monitoring program with a vision to create a long-term database. This report contains water-quality data from samples collected in the Yukon River Basin during water years (WY) 2009 through 2013. A broad range of chemical analyses from 61 locations throughout the YRB are available here.
The dataset presents results of measurements of the thickness of the active layer (ALT) as a part... more The dataset presents results of measurements of the thickness of the active layer (ALT) as a part of a continuation of the Indigenous Observing Network (ION) project (ION 2.0) led by the Yukon River Intertribal Watershed Council (YRITWC) in partnership with the University of Alaska-Fairbanks. ION 2.0 continues the measurements of water quality constituents and expands the observation and monitoring program to include measurements of changes in the state of permafrost due to dynamics of the ALT at numerous of the long-term water quality monitoring sites at the communities along the Yukon River. The ION project has documented the long-term changes in major ion chemistry that have occurred over three decades throughout the Yukon River Watershed. The investigators have interpreted these changes as being driven by thawing of discontinuous permafrost throughout this large Arctic watershed and complementary measurements of the active layer will support further interpretation and modelling....
The water-quality data available here has been collected as part of a collaborative monitoring pr... more The water-quality data available here has been collected as part of a collaborative monitoring project between the US Geological Survey, Yukon River Inter-Tribal Watershed Council, and Yukon River Basin communities known as the Indigenous Observation Network. Since 2006 the USGS National Research Program (NRP) and Yukon River Inter-Tribal Watershed Council (YRITWC) have been partnering to collect water-quality samples from the Yukon River and tributaries with the assistance of trained community members living in the Yukon River Basin. The YRITWC provides support for this project through sample collection, sample processing and shipment logistics with communities and to the USGS. The USGS provides water analysis and data interpretation support. Through this partnership over 300 community members have been trained in water sample collection, which has resulted in over 1500 samples collected at more than 50 sites covering the entire 2,300 mile reach of the Yukon River since the program...
WIREs. Water, May 21, 2024
Global water systems are facing unprecedented pressures, including climate change-driven drought ... more Global water systems are facing unprecedented pressures, including climate change-driven drought and escalating flood risk, environmental contamination, and over allocation. Water management and governance typically lack integration across spatial scales, including relationships between surface and ground water systems. They also routinely ignore connectivity across temporal scales, including the need for intergenerational water planning. As a global and interdisciplinary group of scientists, we seek to highlight how power and scale dynamics influence and determine water outcomes. We argue that attending to complex water systems challenges requires understanding the function and influence of power at different temporal and spatial scales. Building this understanding is key to designing multi-scalar, reflexive, and pluralistic policy solutions that avoid ineffective or unintended outcomes. We use a co-learning process to reveal important lessons for the challenges of interdisciplinary research and set a pluralist agenda for understanding power and scale in future water governance
Science and policy governance, including the development of modeling and decision support tools f... more Science and policy governance, including the development of modeling and decision support tools for the management of natural resources and environments, can be improved with enhanced: (1) stakeholder and public engagement; (2) societal and institutional continuity in the evaluation of management and policy decisions, and (3) recognition of the role that biases, beliefs, heuristics, and values (BBHV) play in science and decision making. Addressing these three critical needs is essential for: (1) the societal acceptance and larger-scale use of science in decision-making, (2) the follow-through documentation, assessment, and governance of dynamic coupled humannatural systems beyond the scales of typical political or management cycles, and (3) the enhanced recognition and differentiation between what people and communities want based on their gut instincts, and what they might need based on greater knowledge and thoughtful consideration. Here we suggest that creating a multi-media hierarchically-structured "Record of Engagement" (RoE) that would support meeting these critical needs by offering: (1) a reward system for engagement (in addition to other possible incentives); (2) a record structure and system for a) evaluating processes and outcomes, b) understanding the system/issue in the future, and c) fostering transferability and "lessons learned" to other systems or issues, and (3) an opportunity to systematize, facilitate, create efficiencies, and improve the engagement of experts and stakeholders in participatory modelling, planning and governance, including in the recognition of the role of BBHV. The RoE would document: the nature of the system/issue, available evidence, the facilitation processes used for engagement, including participatory modeling processes, as well as proposed actions and governance possibilities to spur follow through. The constituencies engaged in the science and decision making processes, and their relative power to provide knowledge and affect decisions, would also be documented. Recognizing the importance of BBHV, the RoE would further document the ethical principles, beliefs, other factors used in arguments for suggested decisions, emotions expressed by different constituencies, and the behavioral and group dynamics of the engagement. A diversity of technological tools (e.g. artificial intelligence and natural language processing, machine vision and behavioural analysis, expert system design, gamification) and approaches (e.g. soft systems methodology, behavioural operations research, companion modelling) would help create the RoE while ensuring that key principles of stakeholder engagement are applied and adapted as needed.
Scientific Investigations Report
Abstracts with programs, 2022
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts, Dec 1, 2015
AGU Fall Meeting 2020, Dec 15, 2020
JAWRA Journal of the American Water Resources Association
Human factors that influence water availability in the Basin were discovered by reviewing hundred... more Human factors that influence water availability in the Basin were discovered by reviewing hundreds of published literature items and articles from the literature following an extensive keyword search. The different factors were drawn from reviewing the literature, and datasets to support the factor were researched across open data catalogs and the world wide web. Data related to the Human Factors project water availability sectors of agriculture, industrial, municipal, and those related to ecosystem services, tourism, or other uses can be found here. Reproducible R scripts used to pull data or process data can be found within the section for the sector itself. Reproducible R scripts used to manage the literature review can be found within its own section.
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts, Dec 1, 2018
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts, Dec 1, 2017
This is the second water-quality data series resulting from the ongoing partnership between the Y... more This is the second water-quality data series resulting from the ongoing partnership between the Yukon River Inter-Tribal Watershed Council (YRITWC) and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). The first data series (2006-2008) can be found at http://pubs.er.usgs.gov/publication/ofr20101241. The Yukon River Basin (YRB) is the fourth largest drainage basin in North America (855,000 km2, roughly twice the size of California). (More detailed descriptions can be found in Schuster and others, 2010 and Brabets and others, 2000.) To better understand the effects of climate change on the water quality of the Yukon River and its major tributaries, the USGS and the YRITWC developed a water-quality monitoring program with a vision to create a long-term database. This report contains water-quality data from samples collected in the Yukon River Basin during water years (WY) 2009 through 2013. A broad range of chemical analyses from 61 locations throughout the YRB are available here.
The dataset presents results of measurements of the thickness of the active layer (ALT) as a part... more The dataset presents results of measurements of the thickness of the active layer (ALT) as a part of a continuation of the Indigenous Observing Network (ION) project (ION 2.0) led by the Yukon River Intertribal Watershed Council (YRITWC) in partnership with the University of Alaska-Fairbanks. ION 2.0 continues the measurements of water quality constituents and expands the observation and monitoring program to include measurements of changes in the state of permafrost due to dynamics of the ALT at numerous of the long-term water quality monitoring sites at the communities along the Yukon River. The ION project has documented the long-term changes in major ion chemistry that have occurred over three decades throughout the Yukon River Watershed. The investigators have interpreted these changes as being driven by thawing of discontinuous permafrost throughout this large Arctic watershed and complementary measurements of the active layer will support further interpretation and modelling....
The water-quality data available here has been collected as part of a collaborative monitoring pr... more The water-quality data available here has been collected as part of a collaborative monitoring project between the US Geological Survey, Yukon River Inter-Tribal Watershed Council, and Yukon River Basin communities known as the Indigenous Observation Network. Since 2006 the USGS National Research Program (NRP) and Yukon River Inter-Tribal Watershed Council (YRITWC) have been partnering to collect water-quality samples from the Yukon River and tributaries with the assistance of trained community members living in the Yukon River Basin. The YRITWC provides support for this project through sample collection, sample processing and shipment logistics with communities and to the USGS. The USGS provides water analysis and data interpretation support. Through this partnership over 300 community members have been trained in water sample collection, which has resulted in over 1500 samples collected at more than 50 sites covering the entire 2,300 mile reach of the Yukon River since the program...