This presentation is part of the Landscape Conservation Planning and Prioritization Organized Session.
Setting a goal to understand nutrient reduction in restored wetlands provides an opportunity to promote inter-institution dialogue around scientific assessment and management realities. The H2Ohio Wetland Monitoring Program mobilizes university researchers across Ohio to investigate the effectiveness of state agency-funded wetland projects. Sustained working relationships with wetland practitioners capture relevant metrics around wetland design and management decisions. The Program’s annual workshop connects >30 academic scientists and technical staff with agency and management partners for a series of structured activities and informal networking. Likewise, researchers exchange knowledge with land managers through a combination of standardized prompts and unstructured field visits, the latter of which catch insights not always detected in written form. Dialogue in each space grounds the Program’s purpose in acquiring actionable data, without sacrificing independent scientific research. The Program maintains workflows for inter-institution communication across the life cycle of a wetland project (i.e., design, construction, present use) and integrates management-related metrics into monitoring design (i.e., sampling locations near water level control structures, avoiding sensitive features upon land manager request). The first two years of the Program offer emergent themes to frame next steps in the broader space of “science-informed management”; considering how to balance expectations of urgently requested information with the scientific reality of monitoring ecological change. Ultimately, investment in wetland practitioner partnerships can strengthen understanding of wetland nutrient services in human-altered landscapes and human-managed ecosystems.
