RESUMEN

Wildlife corridors aim to promote species' persistence by connecting habitat patches across fragmented landscapes. Their implementation is limited by patterns of land ownership and complicated by differences in the jurisdictional and regulatory authorities under which lands are managed. Terrestrial corridor conservation requires coordination across jurisdictions and sectors subject to site-specific overlapping sources of legal authority. Mapping spatial patterns of legal authority concurrent with habitat condition can illustrate opportunities to build or leverage capacity for connectivity conservation. Streamside areas provide pragmatic opportunities to leverage existing policy mechanisms for riverine and terrestrial habitat connectivity across boundaries. Conservation planners and practitioners can make use of these opportunities by harmonizing actions for multiple conservation outcomes. We formulated an integrative, data-driven method for mapping multiple sources of legal authority weighted by capacity for coordinating terrestrial habitat conservation along streams. We generated a map of capacity to coordinate streamside corridor protections across a wildlife habitat gap to demonstrate this approach. We combined values representing coordination capacity and naturalness to generate an integrated legal-ecological resistance map for connectivity modeling. We then computed least-cost corridors across the integrated map, masking the terrestrial landscape to focus on streamside areas. Streamside least-cost corridors in the integrated, local-scale model diverged (∼25 km) from national-scale least-cost corridors based on naturalness. Spatial categories comparing legal- and naturalness-based resistance values by stream reach highlighted potential locations for building or leveraging existing capacity through spatial coordination of policy mechanisms or restoration actions. Agencies or nongovernmental organizations intending to restore or maintain habitat connectivity across fragmented landscapes can use this approach to inform spatial prioritization and build coordination capacity. Article impact statement: Combined mapping of legal authority and habitat condition reveals capacity to coordinate actions along streams for clean water and wildlife.

Mapeo de la Autoridad Legal para los Corredores Terrestres de Conservación a lo Largo de Ríos Stahl et al. Resumen Los corredores de fauna buscan promover la persistencia de las especies al conectar los fragmentos de hábitat a lo largo de paisajes fragmentados. Su implementación está limitada por los patrones de propiedad de tierras y se complica con las diferencias entre las autoridades jurisdiccionales y regulatorias que las administran. La conservación por corredores terrestres requiere de coordinación entre las jurisdicciones y los sectores sujetos a fuentes de autoridad legal que se traslapan y que son específicas del sitio. El mapeo de los patrones espaciales de la autoridad legal simultánea a la condición del hábitat puede ilustrar oportunidades para construir o hacer uso de la capacidad para la conservación por conectividad. Las áreas adyacentes a los cauces fluviales proporcionan oportunidades prácticas para hacer uso de los mecanismos políticos existentes para la conectividad de hábitats ribereño y terrestre a través de las fronteras. Los planificadores y practicantes de la conservación pueden usar estas oportunidades al armonizar las acciones para múltiples resultados de conservación. Formulamos un método integrativo orientado por los datos para mapear las múltiples fuentes de autoridad legal ponderadas por la capacidad para coordinar la conservación de hábitats terrestres a lo largo de ríos. Generamos un mapa de la capacidad para coordinar los corredores de protección a lo largo de los vacíos en los hábitats de fauna para demostrar esta estrategia. Combinamos los valores por medio de la representación de la capacidad de coordinación y la naturalidad para generar un mapa de resistencia legal y ecológica para el modelado de la conectividad. Después, computamos los corredores de menor costo en todo el mapa integrado, enmascarando el paisaje terrestre para enfocarnos en las áreas adyacentes al cauce fluvial. Los corredores de menor costo adyacentes a los cauces dentro del modelo integrado de escala local difirieron (∼25 km) de los corredores de menor costo basados en la naturalidad a escala nacional. Las categorías espaciales que compararon los valores de resistencia basada en la legalidad y en la naturalidad por alcance del río resaltaron las localidades potenciales para la construcción o el uso de la capacidad existente por medio de la coordinación espacial de los mecanismos de política o de las acciones de restauración. Las agencias y organizaciones no gubernamentales con la intención de restaurar o mantener la conectividad del hábitat en un paisaje fragmentado pueden utilizar esta estrategia para informar la priorización espacial y construir la capacidad de coordinación.

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RESUMEN

The term "governance" encompasses both governmental and nongovernmental participation in collective choice and action. Law dictates the structure, boundaries, rules, and processes within which governmental action takes place, and in doing so becomes one of the focal points for analysis of barriers to adaptation as the effects of climate change are felt. Adaptive governance must therefore contemplate a level of flexibility and evolution in governmental action beyond that currently found in the heavily administrative governments of many democracies. Nevertheless, over time, law itself has proven highly adaptive in western systems of government, evolving to address and even facilitate the emergence of new social norms (such as the rights of women and minorities) or to provide remedies for emerging problems (such as pollution). Thus, there is no question that law can adapt, evolve, and be reformed to make room for adaptive governance. In doing this, not only may barriers be removed, but law may be adjusted to facilitate adaptive governance and to aid in institutionalizing new and emerging approaches to governance. The key is to do so in a way that also enhances legitimacy, accountability, and justice, or else such reforms will never be adopted by democratic societies, or if adopted, will destabilize those societies. By identifying those aspects of the frameworks for adaptive governance reviewed in the introduction to this special feature relevant to the legal system, we present guidelines for evaluating the role of law in environmental governance to identify the ways in which law can be used, adapted, and reformed to facilitate adaptive governance and to do so in a way that enhances the legitimacy of governmental action.

RESUMEN

In this article we summarize histories of nonlinear, complex interactions among societal, legal, and ecosystem dynamics in six North American water basins, as they respond to changing climate. These case studies were chosen to explore the conditions for emergence of adaptive governance in heavily regulated and developed social-ecological systems nested within a hierarchical governmental system. We summarize resilience assessments conducted in each system to provide a synthesis and reference by the other articles in this special feature. We also present a general framework used to evaluate the interactions between society and ecosystem regimes and the governance regimes chosen to mediate those interactions. The case studies show different ways that adaptive governance may be triggered, facilitated, or constrained by ecological and/or legal processes. The resilience assessments indicate that complex interactions among the governance and ecosystem components of these systems can produce different trajectories, which include patterns of (a) development and stabilization, (b) cycles of crisis and recovery, which includes lurches in adaptation and learning, and (3) periods of innovation, novelty, and transformation. Exploration of cross scale (Panarchy) interactions among levels and sectors of government and society illustrate that they may constrain development trajectories, but may also provide stability during crisis or innovation at smaller scales; create crises, but may also facilitate recovery; and constrain system transformation, but may also provide windows of opportunity in which transformation, and the resources to accomplish it, may occur. The framework is the starting point for our exploration of how law might play a role in enhancing the capacity of social-ecological systems to adapt to climate change.