Monitoring and resource management: Streams, land cover, and the use of water quality information in public policy

Successful resource management depends on effective characterization of resource conditions and their changes over time. Such information is often supplied by environmental monitoring, the collection of scientific data at specified intervals from a network of sites in order to characterize ambient conditions, trends over time, and causes of observed phenomena. As the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy has stated, "More than any other measure, monitoring provides accountability for management actions." Yet the policy complexities of resource management, and the wide range of monitoring scales, objectives, designs, and indicators, make it difficult to articulate just how monitoring information is used in resource management, and how its use can be improved.;This dissertation presents three examples of water quality monitoring that seek to integrate in-stream pesticide measurements with spatial analysis of land use in order to provide information directly relevant to current policy initiatives. The first chapter investigates relationships between land use and concentrations of pyrethroid pesticides in urban streams, and finds that hydrologic complexity makes it difficult to identify direct spatial linkages. The second chapter identifies positive correlations between agricultural applications of pesticides and their concentrations and toxicity in streams. The third chapter evaluates the effectiveness of on-farm vegetated treatment systems, and finds that these systems reduced the concentrations of most pesticides in agricultural runoff.;The final chapter explores the use of water quality monitoring information in regional resource management. The study analyzed models of decision making and information transfer proposed in the economics and policy literature, identified distinguishing model attributes, and compared those attributes with the experiences of scientists and policy makers who are involved in regional water quality monitoring and management. Interview responses indicated that, although the natural science issues are complex, the relatively limited legal scope of water quality regulation and the regional opportunities for sustained professional interaction provided a forum for rational decision making facilitated by institutional structures that fostered co-production of knowledge by scientists and decision makers.