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Danica Schaffer-Smith is a Watershed Scientist at The Nature Conservancy. She completed her Ph.D. in Environmental Science and Policy at Duke University and a Postdoctoral Fellowship with Arizona State University’s Center for Biodiversity Outcomes and The Nature Conservancy. Danica uses remote sensing and geospatial analysis tools to inform locally appropriate conservation and management decisions. Her previous research has spanned a variety of topics, including characterizing hydrologic dynamics in managed wetlands and flood-irrigated agriculture, monitoring land use and land cover changes from regional to global scales, and quantifying linkages between coupled social-ecological systems. Her current work investigates watershed-scale solutions for improving water quality and resilience to increasingly extreme events.

Abstract

Enhancing watershed resilience through nature-based solutions and adaptive infrastructure management

How we manage landscapes and infrastructure in watersheds can either pose risks to people and biodiversity, or alternatively can enhance health, livelihoods, and equity. Under ongoing climate and land use changes, an increasing frequency and severity of extreme events highlights the need for watershed scale resilience planning. Developing appropriate interventions requires a better understanding of how extreme events affect hydrologic and biogeochemical processes across watersheds. Emerging technologies and tools such as satellite remote sensing, machine learning, and hydrologic modeling, coupled with effective partnerships and stakeholder engagement, can help us to better identify risks and to take advantage of opportunities to maintain high quality supplies of freshwater and ecosystem services into the future. I present examples from current watershed resilience science and practice involving both nature-based solutions and adaptative infrastructure management.