Administration

Scope of SNEP

TECHNICAL FRAMEWORK

Public Participation

Summary

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Several aspects of SNEPs assignment presented particular challenges to the team in developing a strategic technical approach. These included Sierrawide scale, interdisciplinary scope, lack of a driving issue and emphasis on integration, ecological versus social aspects in SNEP, poor data and scientific knowledge, time frame, assessment and policy alternatives, and role of public participation in the process. These are each considered separately (the latter in a separate section, Public Participation).

Sierra-wide Scale

The geographic scope of the assignment remained a challenge through the course of the project. Even defining the outer boundaries for the study region remained a debate for over a year. The logical bounds of a Sierra region were different for almost every issue and discipline. Although this might not seem a significant problem, the imperative to integrate among analyses encouraged the Science Team to seek a consensus boundary. In the end, the team accepted a compromise boundary, recognizing that analysis of individual issues could modify boundaries without impeding integration.
For many issues, assessments and management were most approachable at scales below the Sierrawide level, for example, at the regional level. Nonoverlapping and hierarchic patterns of Sierran diversity created difficulty in approaching regionalization synthetically. In the end, the Science Team accepted diversity within the Sierra by not forcing consensus regional boundaries and recognizing that conclusions pertain to different hierarchic scales. In SNEP reports, authors point out issues relevant at different levels.

Interdisciplinary Scope

SNEPs assignments called for an interdisciplinary scientific evaluation. Various disciplines were named; SNEP added to these. Despite the attempt to cover all important issues, gaps remained. It became impossible to add scientists for every important discipline; some issues had to be evaluated by scientists whose primary work was not in the area of their direct expertise.
Large interdisciplinary teams function differently from small or individual efforts, leading to unexpected challenges. Large team size and diversity of compositioneventually about eighty active scientistsled to divergence of opinion on almost everything. Effective decision making, strategic planning, maintaining schedules, budgeting, and reporting became time consuming and unwieldy. Developing technical project groups and committees, and giving the Coordinating Committee executive power, helped to order the diversity and make progress.

Integration

Most previous bioregional assessments and landscape evaluations had at their core a single or a few crises or driving issues. The trend has been to start with these central issues (e.g., endangered owl, salmon, marbled murrelet) and expand to become more integrated ecological analysis. SNEP, by contrast, began as an integrated ecological study, with no central emphasis given in the charge. Although some key issues were highlighted (old growth, watersheds, wildlife), they were repeatedly set in the context of an integrated ecological assessment. Determination of priority and importance was left in the hands of the Science Team. In this, the team was aided by previous surveys of public and scientific opinion about priority issues in the Sierra Nevada (Sierra Summit, Sierra Now, Sierra Nevada Research Planning Program). These issues were merged with priorities derived from scientific experience and judgment.
Ultimately the challenge centered on how to do a truly integrated ecosystem study. The whole (Sierran ecosystem) could not be studied usefully only as a whole, but individual pieces dissected for analysis would lead to dis-integration. Further, scientific tradition conditions scientists to focus on narrow topics, small areas, controlled situations, and repeatable conditions and to work in small teams with scientists of their own discipline. Working at the level of system interconnections, considering relationships among topics, and seeing the whole as well as

the parts remain as challenges for science as well as SNEP.

Ecological and Social Aspects

SNEPs charges stressed that social as well as ecological components were part of ecosystems, ecosystem sustainability, and SNEP analysis. Both the importance of this orientation and the uncertain implications of how to deal with it are not new with SNEP but nonetheless were recast in SNEPs attempts to define its mission and to understand what assessment standards to use and what broad targets to consider as appropriate futures for the Sierra. The imperative to assure ecological sustainability while providing human goods and desires (from the SNEP assignment) provided both a tension point and some guidance on how to assess trade-offs.

Data Quality and Scientific Knowledge

Despite an eagerness to achieve objectives that Congress requested, poor data quality and availability and limited scientific understanding simply did not allow the level of analysis Congress and the public might want. This reality influenced the way SNEP approached its charge, the nature of conclusions presented, the ability to achieve integrated assessments, and the way conclusions could be used.

Time Frame

Given the scope and complexity of SNEP, two and one-half years proved too short a time to complete the task. The interdisciplinary nature of the project, size and diversity of the team, enormous start-up time, need to develop a new GIS, lack of compiled information, inability of most scientists to devote more than part-time to the project, large geographic distances involved, and need for both analysis and integration all challenged the timing for completion of SNEP. Some projects, by the rudimentary nature of information, required new data gathering or information collection. Development of simulation models that integrated parts of the system were highly time consuming. Participation with the public absorbed scientists time to a much greater degree than had been anticipated.