Browsing by Author "McEvoy, Jamie"

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Bounded Stories
(Wiley, 2018-11) Shanahan, Elizabeth A.; Raile, Eric D.; French, Kate A.; McEvoy, Jamie
Narrative Policy Framework (NPF) and framing scholars share an interest in how the construction of policy arguments influences opinions and policy decisions. However, conceptual clarification is needed. This study advances the NPF by clarifying the meaning and function of frames and narrative, as well as their respective roles in creating policy realities. We explore sociological and psychological roots of framing scholarship and map these onto NPF’s science of narratives philosophy, suggesting that narratives can reveal internally held cognitive schemas. We focus on issue categorization frames as boundaries for narrative construction. Within these bounds, narrative settings further focalize the audience by specifying where action toward a solution takes place. Based on 26 interviews with floodplain decision makers in Montana, we capture internally held cognitions through the assemblage of issue categorization frames and narrative elements. We find that settings can traverse issue categorization frames and policy solutions, with actions of characters that unfold within the setting being key. Similarly, we find that a single issue categorization frame can contain multiple different narratives and that individuals may simultaneously hold multiple different narratives internally. Overall, this study contributes to policy process research through establishment of connections among narratives, issue categorization frames, and cognitive schemas.
Can the Adoption of Desalination Technology Lead to Aquifer Preservation? A Case Study of a Sociotechnical Water System in Baja California Sur, Mexico
(2015-09) McEvoy, Jamie
There is growing concern about the sustainability of groundwater supplies worldwide. In many regions, desalination—the conversion of saline water to freshwater—is viewed as a way to increase water supplies and reduce pressure on overdrawn aquifers. Using data from reports, articles, interviews, a survey, and a focus group, this paper examines if, and how, the adoption of desalination technology can lead to aquifer preservation in Baja California Sur (BCS), Mexico. The paper outlines existing institutional arrangements (i.e., laws, rules, norms, or organizations) surrounding desalination in BCS and concludes that there are currently no effective mechanisms to ensure aquifer preservation. Four mechanisms that could be implemented to improve groundwater management are identified, including: 1) integrated water-and land-use planning; 2) creation of an institute responsible for coordinated and consistent planning; 3) improved groundwater monitoring; and 4) implementation of water conservation measures prior to the adoption of desalination technology. This paper concludes that viewing water technologies, including desalination, as sociotechnical systems—i.e., a set of technological components that are embedded in complex social, political, and economic contexts—has the potential to create a more sustainable human–environment–technology relationship. By assessing desalination technology as a sociotechnical system, this study highlights the need to focus on institutional development and capacity building, especially within local water utilities and urban planning agencies.
CHANGE: Climate and Hydrology Academic Network for Governance and the Environment
(American Meteorological Society, 2011-08) Garfin, Gregg; Gregg, Nancy; Magaña, Victor; Stewart, Ronald; Rolfe, J. Terry; McEvoy, Jamie
Characters matter: How narratives shape affective responses to risk communication
(Public Library of Science, 2019-12) Shanahan, Elizabeth A.; Reinhold, Ann Marie; Raile, Eric D.; Poole, Geoffrey C.; Ready, Richard C.; Izurieta, Clemente; McEvoy, Jamie; Bergmann, Nicolas T.; King, Henry
Introduction. Whereas scientists depend on the language of probability to relay information about hazards, risk communication may be more effective when embedding scientific information in narratives. The persuasive power of narratives is theorized to reside, in part, in narrative transportation. Purpose. This study seeks to advance the science of stories in risk communication by measuring real-time affective responses as a proxy indicator for narrative transportation during science messages that present scientific information in the context of narrative. Methods. This study employed a within-subjects design in which participants (n = 90) were exposed to eight science messages regarding flood risk. Conventional science messages using probability and certainty language represented two conditions. The remaining six conditions were narrative science messages that embedded the two conventional science messages within three story forms that manipulated the narrative mechanism of character selection. Informed by the Narrative Policy Framework, the characters portrayed in the narrative science messages were hero, victim, and victim-to-hero. Natural language processing techniques were applied to identify and rank hero and victim vocabularies from 45 resident interviews conducted in the study area; the resulting classified vocabulary was used to build each of the three story types. Affective response data were collected over 12 group sessions across three flood-prone communities in Montana. Dial response technology was used to capture continuous, second-by-second recording of participants’ affective responses while listening to each of the eight science messages. Message order was randomized across sessions. ANOVA and three linear mixed-effects models were estimated to test our predictions. Results. First, both probabilistic and certainty science language evoked negative affective responses with no statistical differences between them. Second, narrative science messages were associated with greater variance in affective responses than conventional science messages. Third, when characters are in action, variation in the narrative mechanism of character selection leads to significantly different affective responses. Hero and victim-to-hero characters elicit positive affective responses, while victim characters produce a slightly negative response. Conclusions// In risk communication, characters matter in audience experience of narrative transportation as measured by affective responses.
Cultural theory of risk as a heuristic for understanding perceptions of oil and gas development in Eastern Montana, USA
(Elsevier BV, 2017-11) McEvoy, Jamie; Gilbertz, Susan J.; Anderson, Matthew B.; Ormerod, Kerri Jean; Bergmann, Nicolas T.
This paper applies Douglas’ cultural theory of risk to understand perceptions of risk associated with oil and gas development in eastern Montana. Based on the analysis of interviews with 36 rural residents, findings show the dominant perception of risk is most closely aligned with an Individualist worldview. Despite direct experience with oil or wastewater spills, most interviewees described spills as “no big deal”, viewed nature as resilient, and felt that the economic benefits outweigh negative impacts. Cultural theory was a useful heuristic for understanding this dominant worldview, as well as identifying points of deviation. For example, interviewees discussed the benefits of landowner associations – a more Egalitarian approach to dealing with oil companies. Some landowners relied on external authorities (e.g., sheriff) when dealing with oil companies, revealing a Hierarchical approach to issues they face. Interviewees expressed frustration with the lack of enforcement of existing regulations, which can be interpreted as either support for – or indictment of – Hierarchical solutions. While the Individualist worldview is dominant, our qualitative analysis reveals the complex tensions at work among rural residents. The results suggest areas where policymakers, advocacy groups, and residents may find common ground to address potential environmental and health risks.
Defining Ecological Drought for the Twenty-First Century
(American Meteorological Society, 2017-12) Crausbay, Shelley D.; Ramirez, Aaron R.; Carter, Shawn L.; Cross, Molly S.; Hall, Kimberly R.; Bathke, Deborah J.; Betancourt, Julio L.; Colt, Steve; Cravens, Amanda E.; Dalton, Melinda S.; Dunham, Jason B.; Hay, Lauren E.; Hayes, Michael J.; McEvoy, Jamie; McNutt, Chad A.; Moritz, Max A.; Nislow, Keith H.; Raheem, Nejem; Sanford, Todd
Droughts of the twenty-first century are characterized by hotter temperatures, longer duration, and greater spatial extent, and are increasingly exacerbated by human demands for water. This situation increases the vulnerability of ecosystems to drought, including a rise in drought-driven tree mortality globally (Allen et al. 2015) and anticipated ecosystem transformations from one state to another—for example, forest to a shrubland (Jiang et al. 2013). When a drought drives changes within ecosystems, there can be a ripple effect through human communities that depend on those ecosystems for critical goods and services (Millar and Stephenson 2015). For example, the “Millennium Drought” (2002–10) in Australia caused unanticipated losses to key services provided by hydrological ecosystems in the Murray–Darling basin—including air quality regulation, waste treatment, erosion prevention, and recreation. The costs of these losses exceeded AUD $800 million, as resources were spent to replace these services and adapt to new drought-impacted ecosystems (Banerjee et al. 2013). Despite the high costs to both nature and people, current drought research, management, and policy perspectives often fail to evaluate how drought affects ecosystems and the “natural capital” they provide to human communities. Integrating these human and natural dimensions of drought is an essential step toward addressing the rising risk of drought in the twenty-first century
Desalination and Water Security: The Promise and Perils of a Technological Fix to the Water Crisis in Baja California Sur, Mexico
(2014-10) McEvoy, Jamie
Across the globe, desalination is increasingly being considered as a new water supply source. This article examines how the introduction of desalinated water into the municipal water supply portfolio has affected water security in the coastal tourist city of Cabo San Lucas in Baja California Sur (BCS), Mexico. It also analyses the competing discourses surrounding desalination in the region and discusses alternative water management options for achieving water security. This article challenges the notion that desalination is an appropriate and sufficient technological solution for arid regions. The findings provide evidence of increased yet delimited water security at a neighbourhood scale while identifying new vulnerabilities related to desalination, particularly in the context of the global South. This article concludes that implementing a technological fix on top of a water management system that is plagued with more systemic and structural problems does little to improve long-term water management and is likely to foreclose or forestall other water management options. This multi-scalar analysis contributes to the emerging literature on water security by considering both a narrow and broad framing of water security and identifying a range of factors that influence water security.
Ecological Drought: Accounting for the Non-Human Impacts of Water Shortage in the Upper Missouri Headwaters Basin, Montana, USA
(MDPI AG, 2018-02) McEvoy, Jamie; Bathke, Deborah J.; Burkardt, Nina; Cravens, Amanda E.; Haigh, Tonya; Hall, Kimberly R.; Hayes, Michael J.; Jedd, Theresa; Poděbradská, Markéta; Wickham, Elliot
Water laws and drought plans are used to prioritize and allocate scarce water resources. Both have historically been human-centric, failing to account for non-human water needs. In this paper, we examine the development of instream flow legislation and the evolution of drought planning to highlight the growing concern for the non-human impacts of water scarcity. Utilizing a new framework for ecological drought, we analyzed five watershed-scale drought plans in southwestern Montana, USA to understand if, and how, the ecological impacts of drought are currently being assessed. We found that while these plans do account for some ecological impacts, it is primarily through the narrow lens of impacts to fish as measured by water temperature and streamflow. The latter is typically based on the same ecological principles used to determine instream flow requirements. We also found that other resource plans in the same watersheds (e.g., Watershed Restoration Plans, Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Watershed Assessments or United States Forest Service (USFS) Forest Plans) identify a broader range of ecological drought risks. Given limited resources and the potential for mutual benefits and synergies, we suggest greater integration between various planning processes could result in a more holistic consideration of water needs and uses across the landscape.
A Geospatial Approach for Identifying and Exploring Potential NaturalWater Storage Sites
(2017-08) Holmes, Danika L.; McEvoy, Jamie; Dixon, Jean L.; Payne, Scott
Across the globe, climate change is projected to affect the quantity, quality, and timing of freshwater availability. In western North America, there has been a shift toward earlier spring runoff and more winter precipitation as rain. This raises questions about the need for increased water storage to mitigate both floods and droughts. Some water managers have identified natural storage structures as valuable tools for increasing resiliency to these climate change impacts. However, identifying adequate sites and quantifying the storage potential of natural structures is a key challenge. This study addresses the need for a method for identifying and estimating floodplain water storage capacity in a manner that can be used by water planners through the development of a model that uses open-source geospatial data. This model was used to identify and estimate the storage capacity of a 0.33 km2 floodplain segment in eastern Montana, USA. The result is a range of storage capacities under eight natural water storage conditions, ranging from 900 m3 for small floods to 321,300 m3 for large floods. Incorporating additional hydraulic inputs, stakeholder needs, and stakeholder perceptions of natural storage into this process can help address more complex questions about using natural storage structures as ecosystem-based climate change adaptation strategies.
“In Montana, you're only a week away from a drought”: Ranchers’ perspectives on flood irrigation and beaver mimicry as drought mitigation strategies
(Elsevier BV, 2022-08) Moore, Megan A.; McEvoy, Jamie
The concept of natural water storage has gained traction as an alternative to traditional dams that can potentially mitigate the impacts of changing precipitation patterns by slowing runoff and increasing aquifer recharge. We investigated the barriers and opportunities for two natural water storage practices, flood irrigation and beaver mimicry. We interviewed 8 amenity and 14 traditional ranchers in the Red Rock Watershed in southwest Montana. We found ranchers predominately rely on reactive, rather than proactive drought strategies. Most amenity ranchers had formal drought plans in place, but none of the traditional ranchers had formal drought plans. Ranchers perceived the two natural water storage practices differently. While all agreed on the benefits of flood irrigation, they saw the barriers, such as labor issues and loss of efficiency to outweigh the benefits. Many ranchers were skeptical of the benefits beaver mimicry could provide and voiced concerns over the cost, permits, water rights, and operational impacts. While there are barriers to both strategies, local agencies and actors can work to build trust and practice flexibility when working with ranchers. Ranchers mentioned potential incentives for implementing these strategies, which local agencies can use when working with them.
Integrating Ecological Impacts: Perspectives on Drought in the Upper Missouri Headwaters, Montana, United States
(American Meteorological Society, 2021-04) Cravens, Amanda E.; McEvoy, Jamie; Zoanni, Dionne; Crausbay, Shelley; Ramirez, Aaron; Cooper, Ashley E.
Drought is a complex challenge experienced in specific locations through diverse impacts, including ecological impacts. Different professionals involved in drought preparedness and response approach the problem from different points of view, which means they may or may not recognize ecological impacts. This study examines the extent to which interviewees perceive ecological drought in the Upper Missouri Headwaters basin in southwestern Montana. Through semistructured interviews, this research investigates individuals’ perceptions of drought by analyzing how they define drought, how they describe their roles related to drought, and the extent to which they emphasize ecological impacts of drought. Results suggest that while most interviewees have an integrated understanding of drought, they tend to emphasize either ecological or nonecological impacts of drought. This focus was termed their drought orientation. Next, the analysis considers how participants understand exposure to drought. Results indicate that participants view drought as a complex problem driven by both human and natural factors. Last, the paper explores understandings of the available solution space by examining interviewees’ views on adaptive capacity, particularly factors that facilitate or hinder the ability of the Upper Missouri Headwaters region to cope with drought. Participants emphasized that adaptive capacity is both helped and hindered by institutional, cultural, and economic factors, as well as by available information and past resource management practices. Understanding how interviewees perceive the challenges of drought can shape drought preparedness and response, allowing those designing programs to better align their efforts to the perceptions of their target audience.
Murky waters: divergent ways scientists, practitioners, and landowners evaluate beaver mimicry
(Resilience Alliance, Inc., 2022-01) Pfaeffle, Tori; Moore, Megan A.; Cravens, Amanda E.; McEvoy, Jamie; Bamzai-Dodson, Aparna
Beaver mimicry is a fast-growing conservation technique to restore streams and manage water that is gaining popularity within the natural resource management community because of a wide variety of claimed socio-environmental benefits. Despite a growing number of projects, many questions and concerns about beaver mimicry remain. This study draws on qualitative data from 49 interviews with scientists, practitioners, and landowners, to explore the question of how beaver mimicry projects continue to be promoted and implemented, despite the lack of comprehensive scientific studies and unclear regulatory requirements. Specifically, we investigate how these three groups differentially assess the salience, credibility, and legitimacy of evidence for beaver mimicry and analyze how those assessments affect each group’s conclusions about the feasibility, desirability, and scalability of beaver mimicry. By highlighting the interaction between how someone assesses evidence and how they draw conclusions about an emerging natural resource management approach, we draw attention to the roles of experiential evidence and scientific data in debates over beaver mimicry. Our research emphasizes that understanding how different groups perceive salience, credibility, and legitimacy of scientific information is necessary for understanding how they make assessments about conservation and natural resource management strategies.
The patchwork governance of ecologically available water: A case study in the Upper Missouri Headwaters, Montana, United States
(Wiley, 2023-09) Cravens, Amanda E.; Goolsby, Julia B.; Jedd, Theresa; Bathke, Deborah J.; Crausbay, Shelley; Cooper, Ashley E.; Dunham, Jason; Haigh, Tonya; Hall, Kimberly R.; Hayes, Michael J.; McEvoy, Jamie; Nelson, Rebecca L.; Poděbradská, Markéta; Ramirez, Aaron; Wickham, Elliot; Zoanni, Dionne
Institutional authority and responsibility for allocating water to ecosystems (“ecologically available water” [EAW]) is spread across local, state, and federal agencies, which operate under a range of statutes, mandates, and planning processes. We use a case study of the Upper Missouri Headwaters Basin in southwestern Montana, United States, to illustrate this fragmented institutional landscape. Our goals are to (a) describe the patchwork of agencies and institutional actors whose intersecting authorities and actions influence the EAW in the study basin; (b) describe the range of governance mechanisms these agencies use, including laws, policies, administrative programs, and planning processes; and (c) assess the extent to which the collective governance regime creates gaps in responsibility. We find the water governance regime includes a range of nested mechanisms that in various ways facilitate or hinder the governance of EAW. We conclude the current multilevel governance regime leaves certain aspects of EAW unaddressed and does not adequately account for the interconnections between water in different parts of the ecosystem, creating integrative gaps. We suggest that more intentional and robust coordination could provide a means to address these gaps.
Trust matters: Why augmenting water supplies via desalination may not overcome perceptual water scarcity
(2016-11-16) Fragkou, Maria Christina; McEvoy, Jamie
Historically, water scarcity has been understood to result from unfavorable climatological and hydrological factors. From this perspective, infrastructural solutions that augment water supplies, such as desalination, are seen as the way to overcome physical resource limits and resolve water scarcity. Drawing on theories of scarcity, risk perception, trust, and governance, we argue that past experiences with poor water quality and a long-standing mistrust of water providers create a particular mode of water scarcity: perceptual scarcity. This paper presents findings from household surveys conducted in two arid Latin American cities where large-scale desalination projects have been undertaken to provide potable water. While both projects use state-of-the-art desalination technology, our survey results indicate that the majority of respondents do not drink desalinated water from their taps and purchase bottled water instead. Our results show that, despite significant investments in infrastructure, respondents still lack an adequate supply of water that is perceived to be fit for human consumption. The two case studies provide empirical evidence that challenges the assumption that desalination technology will resolve water quality and water scarcity concerns. We conclude that institutional investments that promote a more reliable and trustworthy water governance system are as important as investments in physical infrastructure.
A typology of drought decision making: Synthesizing across cases to understand drought preparedness and response actions
(Elsevier BV, 2021-09) Cravens, Amanda E.; Henderson, Jen; Friedman, Jack; Burkardt, Nina; Cooper, Ashley E.; Haigh, Tonya; Hayes, Michael; McEvoy, Jamie; Paladino, Stephanie; Wilke, Adam K.; Wilmer, Hailey
Drought is an inescapable reality in many regions, including much of the western United States. With climate change, droughts are predicted to intensify and occur more frequently, making the imperative for drought management even greater. Many diverse actors – including private landowners, business owners, scientists, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and managers and policymakers within tribal, local, state, and federal government agencies – play multiple, often overlapping roles in preparing for and responding to drought. Managing water is, of course, one of the most important roles that humans play in both mitigating and responding to droughts; but, focusing only on “water managers” or “water management” fails to capture key elements related to the broader category of drought management. The respective roles played by those managing drought (as distinct from water managers), the interactions among them, and the consequences in particular contexts, are not well understood. Our team synthesized insights from 10 in-depth case studies to understand key facets of decision making about drought preparedness and response. We present a typology with four elements that collectively describe how decisions about drought preparedness and response are made (context and objective for a decision; actors responsible; choice being made or action taken; and how decisions interact with and influence other decisions). The typology provides a framework for system-level understanding of how and by whom complex decisions about drought management are made. Greater system-level understanding helps decision makers, program and research funders, and scientists to identify constraints to and opportunities for action, to learn from the past, and to integrate ecological impacts, thereby facilitating social learning among diverse participants in drought preparedness and response.