Regionalizing integrated watershed management: a strategic vision

In addressing the conference theme, Integrating Information Technology and Social Science Research for Effective Government, this paper examines the challenges that government agencies face while trying to protect and restore water quality from a watershed management standpoint. Our geographic focus is the San Diego city-region and its neighboring jurisdictions (including Mexico). We find that there is a pressing need to develop a dynamic regional information system that can help guide and track individual development projects (micro-development) in the context of the larger (macro-development) of whole watersheds. Yet serious constraints stand in the way. Fortunately, advances taking place in certain scientific, sociotechnical and regulatory domains are promising. Three stand out: (1) the growth of sustainability science and emergence of cyberinfrastructure for multiscalar environmental monitoring, (2) the mobilization of what the National Research Council calls knowledge-action collaboratives---including university-government-community partnerships, and (3) regulatory innovation calling for watershed-based approaches to environmental policy and planning. We need a concerted strategy to integrate and take full advantage of these trends. This paper provides a strategic vision along such lines. A case study on digital systems for environmental mitigation and tracking is also presented. Digital government research themes related to this case study include: (1) long-term preservation and archiving of government records, (2) integration of data grids and geographic information systems, and (3) citizen interactions through transparency of and universal access to digital records.