The Pinelands Development Credit Program

The “Pine Barrens” are a UNESCO-designated biosphere reserve encompassing about 1.1 million acres in southern New Jersey. A state agency, the New Jersey Pinelands Commission, in conjunction with county and local governments, works to implement land management and environmental protection goals via a comprehensive management plan. The pinelands development credit (PDC) program is one tool aimed specifically at land preservation outcomes. The PDC program is a regional “transfer of development rights” market allowing landowners to sell their rights to further develop their property and enter their land into permanent protected status. Since the program’s inception in 1982, over 55,000 acres of sensitive and rare ecosystem have been protected; the more than 1,200 transactions account for US$63 M of economic value. The PDC program is a clear illustration of the role that financial instruments and market mechanisms can play in achieving environmental protection outcomes. This case study offers an overview of the pinelands area, PDC program, and the transfer of development rights concept before examining the PDC program and its outcomes in greater detail. While the program has been hailed as a success, it will face challenges in the coming years, including a relatively inefficient process for converting PDCs into protected lands and the question of how the program can evolve once eligible lands become more scarce.

Developing Collegial Relationships to Address Hurdles in Ex Situ Turtle Conservation on an Indonesian University Campus

Building collegial international relationships is an important aspect of conservation and conservation education. The relationship relies on researchers understanding the local context of the conservation project and the sociocultural perspectives of all partners. Therefore, we situated our case study within sociocultural theory. Our case study focuses on the relationships and project work which developed between a biologist/science educator at the University of Bengkulu in Bengkulu, Sumatra, Indonesia, and a science education professor at the University of North Carolina Greensboro, Greensboro, NC, USA, who shared longtime interests in herpetology. Employing the sociocultural perspective, we describe the background of each University group leader and how their previous experiences led to the development of a partnership focused on turtle conservation. In this case study, we seek to understand the social and cultural development of the researchers’ relationship as they teamed to address the ex situ conservation challenges of working with terrestrial and semiaquatic turtles. An examination of the researchers’ partnership provides a framework for the analysis of the work accomplished and remaining and offers insights to others interested in collaborative international conservation projects.

Environmental and Economic Transformation of an Old Industrial Area

Since the national reform and opening policy of 1978, textile manufacturing has played a vital role in China’s advance. Confronted with the global importance of sustainable development, the industry faces a range of environmental and economic challenges. This inquiry addresses the issues created in an old industrial area and outlines ways in which textile production can be updated. Xiangyang City is taken as the case study, with the focus on three aspects: the use of renewable energy, energy recycling, and industrial tourism initiatives. This study summarizes the current situation and main environmental challenges in China’s textile production and can assist researchers by suggesting development directions and strategies for industrial upgrading and land uses.

Assessing Impacts to National Park Visitation From COVID-19

Yosemite National Park is a popular tourist destination with high visitation levels that have increased throughout the summer season over the past several decades. Like with other protected areas, high visitation levels pose challenges for coordinating resources, infrastructural capacity, and visitor experiences. Use limits, including rationing vehicle entry at gates by reservation, are one possible strategy to manage visitation levels. After an initial full closure, the park chose to operationalize a multiphased permit system for day-use and overnight entry over the course of the pandemic in accordance with local and national guidelines for operational safety. While park closures and other entry restrictions have been common in recent years due to wildland fires and other natural hazards, the pandemic-related entry limits represent a nearly yearlong experiment. The prolonged entry ration along with restrictions to group activities has limited visitation and potentially reduced transmission of the novel coronavirus. We review the per capita COVID-19 case count in surrounding counties given the flow of tourism from outside the region, assess the changes in access to the park with the novel reservation system, compare monthly visitation during the 2020 use limits with prior decadal averages, detail how high visitation levels and crowding persist, and review the Park’s plans for an ongoing day-use permit system. We conclude with the ongoing challenges managers face in light of continued high visitation. Readers will be able to debate the efficacy of use limits and what may be a sustainable level of visitation for the park.

Groundwater Recharge for Water Security

The Arizona Water Banking Authority (AWBA) was established in 1996 to make full use of Arizona’s Colorado River entitlement. It aims to address groundwater depletion in central Arizona and to protect Colorado River water users against future shortages due to interannual variability in water availability. Each year, the AWBA pays the costs to deliver any of the state’s unused entitlement to Colorado River water into central and southern Arizona and to store that water underground. The AWBA stores water on behalf of Central Arizona Project municipal subcontractors, other mainstream municipal Colorado River water rights holders, and tribal entities. Through its interstate banking agreements, the AWBA can also store water on behalf of the states of Nevada and California. Water stored by the AWBA is accounted for using Arizona’s statutorily created system of long-term storage credits (LTSCs), which allow future pumping of stored water within the same hydrologic basin. During shortage conditions in the Lower Basin of the Colorado River, the AWBA will distribute the LTSCs, enabling recipients to pump groundwater that otherwise would not be permitted. In this way, the AWBA serves as a unique insurance mechanism against shortages for users of Colorado River water in Arizona and the Lower Basin. To date, the AWBA’s focus has been on storage, yet in the coming years, its activities will shift to recovery, and it will need to confront additional challenges associated with matching supplies with demands and limitations on water available for recharge.

Groundwater Recharge for Drought and Endangered Species Protection

San Antonio Water Systems (SAWS) developed its H2Oaks aquifer storage and recovery project in response to pumping restrictions set on its primary source of water supply, the Edwards Aquifer. The H2Oaks project pumps water from the Edwards Aquifer during wet years and transports it to the H2Oaks project site, where it is injected into the Carrizo-Wilcox aquifer for storage. Stored water is withdrawn to meet municipal demand when restrictions on Edwards Aquifer pumping are in place. Although created for the purpose of securing supplies for SAWS, the H2Oaks project became a centerpiece for regional water management. Storage is used during drought to mitigate impacts on pumping while ensuring minimum springflows needed to protect endangered species in the Edwards aquifer. Currently, the project stores over 176,000 acre-feet of water. This case study traces the development of the H2Oaks project from the passage of the Edwards Aquifer Act to the project’s current implementation. The H2Oaks project demonstrates the potential for groundwater recharge projects to store water as protection against drought conditions. It also demonstrates how storage by one entity can support water management needs across the broader community of water users.

The Pinelands Development Credit Program

The “Pine Barrens” are a UNESCO-designated biosphere reserve encompassing about 1.1 million acres in southern New Jersey. A state agency, the New Jersey Pinelands Commission, in conjunction with county and local governments, works to implement land management and environmental protection goals via a comprehensive management plan. The pinelands development credit (PDC) program is one tool aimed specifically at land preservation outcomes. The PDC program is a regional “transfer of development rights” market allowing landowners to sell their rights to further develop their property and enter their land into permanent protected status. Since the program’s inception in 1982, over 55,000 acres of sensitive and rare ecosystem have been protected; the more than 1,200 transactions account for US$63 M of economic value. The PDC program is a clear illustration of the role that financial instruments and market mechanisms can play in achieving environmental protection outcomes. This case study offers an overview of the pinelands area, PDC program, and the transfer of development rights concept before examining the PDC program and its outcomes in greater detail. While the program has been hailed as a success, it will face challenges in the coming years, including a relatively inefficient process for converting PDCs into protected lands and the question of how the program can evolve once eligible lands become more scarce.

Towards Capturing Human Well-Being-Nature Relationships in Poverty Assessments in Rural Malawi and Rwanda

Despite repeated emphasis on the links between the natural environment and human well-being and the disproportionate and direct dependence of the rural poor on natural resources, these links have not been well addressed in poverty assessments. Common poverty profiles neither reflect the contribution of nature to well-being nor the multiple values and meanings that people ascribe to nature. Building on a conceptual grounding for including environmental components in well-being measures, our work aimed to determine for which components it is legitimate to do so according to the people whose well-being is measured. We developed a focus group discussion protocol to elicit perceptions of environment-well-being relationships in rural settings in Rwanda and Malawi. The protocol included a well-being free-listing exercise, a matching exercise linking the listed items to predefined well-being dimensions, and a discussion of environment-well-being connections. We found that severe environmental degradation, hazards, and conflicts over access to land and forests in these diverse rural areas are deeply and directly linked to well-being. Environmental changes such as flooding or extended drought led to losses of income, crops, and assets, as well as prolonged periods of psychological stress, constrained freedom of choice, and in extreme cases, death. Our results suggest that some environmental components are constituent to well-being. We emphasise the importance of validating the precise environmental components that are considered relevant to well-being in different contexts. Extending poverty measurement with relevant environmental components can help in targeting action towards reducing poverty in a more legitimate, context-specific way.

Groundwater Recharge to Address Seawater Intrusion and Supply in an Urban Coastal Aquifer

The Orange County Water District (OCWD) was created in 1933 by the California Legislature and tasked with managing water resources in Orange County. As a part of its strategy to fight seawater intrusion and guarantee a reliable groundwater supply in the basin, OCWD built a recycled wastewater facility that treats wastewater received from the Orange County Sanitation District and recharges the water into the basin through injection wells and infiltration ponds. OCWD’s first recycled wastewater facility, Water Factory 21, began operating in 1975 and was replaced in 2008 by the Groundwater Replenishment System (GWRS). Recharged water not serving as a barrier for seawater instruction is pumped by local water districts and municipalities (referred to as “producers”), who pay a pumping fee to OCWD. Water provided by GWRS is both more reliable and less expensive for the producers than water acquired from other sources, including imported surface water. In responding to the recognized threat of seawater intrusion, OCWD owes its success to creatively enabling recharge through the development of novel source water. OCWD’s broad purview and authority to manage groundwater, combined with its effective implementation and long-term stewardship of the recharge program as it has evolved over many years, have enabled innovation in MAR using treated wastewater.

Surface Water Quality Regulation as a Driver for Groundwater Recharge

Water scarcity commonly motivates managed aquifer recharge projects, but other factors can motivate recharge efforts, including in relatively water-rich areas. Surface water quality regulation has been a major driving force behind a large-scale recharge project in development in Virginia’s Coastal Plain region, where nutrient pollution from agricultural and urban sources has degraded the Chesapeake Bay’s ecosystems, leading state and federal regulators to require dischargers to reduce their nutrient contributions to the watershed over time. Hampton Roads Sanitation District is pursuing the Sustainable Water Initiative for Tomorrow, an innovative, multi-benefit initiative designed to address both nutrient pollution in the Chesapeake Bay watershed and regional groundwater overdraft in the Coastal Plain. When fully implemented, the initiative is expected to recharge approximately 100 million gallons per day of drinking-water quality, treated municipal wastewater into the Potomac Aquifer System through injection facilities located at five of the District’s wastewater treatment plants. As a result, the District expects to reduce its nutrient discharges from those plants by approximately 90%, enabling it to meet its own mandated nutrient limits while also generating nutrient credits that it can trade to other dischargers. Modeling suggests that the initiative will increase regional water pressure within the confined aquifer system, helping to combat groundwater overdraft and its negative impacts, including aquifer compaction and related land subsidence, falling water levels in wells, and saltwater intrusion. This case study provides insights into the influence of institutional context on managed aquifer recharge and on multi-benefit water resource projects more generally.