Press

To help navigate the effects of climate change on watersheds, an interdisciplinary team of researchers, including Brain Chaffin, assessed six water basins across the United States. The study is highlighted in “Water and Governance: Changing Water Laws in a Changing State” in New Security Beat in August 2018.

In 2018, Water & Society Lab Ph.D. student Amber Data received a prestigious NSF Graduate Research Fellowship. Launched in 1952 shortly after Congress established NSF, GRFP represents the nation's oldest continuous investment in the U.S. STEM workforce.

In 2017, Brian Chaffin received a National Science Foundation fellowship to study social and ecological perspectives on the Middle Platte River watershed in Nebraska. Scientists have studied this watershed since the Dust Bowl, but researchers haven't yet collected data that show the interactions between humans and the natural resource, and they don't know how those dynamics change over time, Chaffin said in an interview with the Missoulian in 2017.

Publications

Selected peer-reviewed publications

Chaffin, B.C., and M. Scown. 2018. Social-ecological resilience and geomorphic systems. Geomorphology 305: 221-230.

Cosens, B.A., L. Gunderson, and B.C. Chaffin. 2018. Introduction to the special feature Practicing Panarchy: Assessing legal flexibility, ecological resilience, and adaptive governance in regional water systems experiencing rapid environmental change. Ecology and Society 23(1): 4. https://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol23/iss1/art4/  

Allen, C.R, H. Birge, D.G. Angeler, C.A. Arnold, B.C. Chaffin, D.A. DeCaro, A.S. Garmestani, and L.H. Gunderson. 2018. Quantifying uncertainty and trade-offs in resilience assessments. Ecology and Society 23(1): 3. https://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol23/iss1/art3/  

Gosnell, H., B.C. Chaffin, J.B. Ruhl, C.A. Arnold, R.K. Craig, M.H. Benson, and A. Devenish. 2017. Transforming (perceived) rigidity in environmental law through adaptive governance: a case of Endangered Species Act implementation. Ecology and Society 22(4): 42. https://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol22/iss4/art42/  

Scown, M.W., J.E. Flotemersch, T.L. Spanbauer, T. Eason, A.S. Garmestani, and B.C. Chaffin. 2017. People and water: exploring the social-ecological condition of watersheds of the United States. Elementa: Science of the Anthropocene 5: 64. https://www.elementascience.org/articles/10.1525/elementa.189/  

Chaffin, B.C., and H. Gosnell. 2017. Beyond mandatory fishways: federal hydropower relicensing as a window of opportunity for dam removal and adaptive governance of riverine landscapes in the United States. Water Alternatives 10(3): 819-839. http://www.wateralternatives.org/index.php/alldoc/articles/vol10/v10issue3/383-a10-3-9/file  

Baird, T., B.C. Chaffin, and D.J. Wrathall. 2017. A disturbance innovation hypothesis: perspectives from human and physical geography. The Geographical Journal 183(2): 201-208.

DeCaro, D.A., B.C. Chaffin, E. Schlager, A.S. Garmestani and J.B. Ruhl. 2017. Legal and institutional foundations of adaptive environmental governance. Ecology and Society 22(1): 32. http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol22/iss1/art32/

Chaffin, B.C., A.S. Garmestani, L.H. Gunderson, M.H. Benson, D.G. Angeler, C.A. Arnold, B. Cosens, R.K. Craig, J.B. Ruhl, and C.R. Allen. 2016. Transformative environmental governance. Annual Review of Environment and Resources 41: 399-423.

Chaffin, B.C., W.D. Shuster, A.S. Garmestani, B. Furio, S. Albro, M.M. Gardiner, M. Spring, and O.O. Green. 2016. A tale of two rain gardens: Barriers and bridges to adaptive management of urban stormwater in Cleveland, Ohio. Journal of Environmental Management 183(2): 431-441.

Chaffin, B.C., A.S. Garmestani, D.G. Angeler, D.L. Herrmann, C.A. Stow, M. Nyström, J. Sendzimir, M.E. Hopton, J. Kolasa, and C.R. Allen. 2016. Biological invasions, ecological resilience and adaptive governance. Journal of Environmental Management 183(2): 399-407.

Herrmann, D.L., K. Schwartz, W.D. Shuster, A. Berland, B.C. Chaffin, A.S. Garmestani, and M.E. Hopton. 2016. Ecology for the shrinking city. BioScience 66(11): 965-973. https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/66/11/965/2754227  

Cosens, B., and B.C. Chaffin. 2016. Adaptive governance of water resources shared with Indigenous peoples: the role of law. Water 8 (3): 97. http://www.mdpi.com/2073-4441/8/3/97/html  

Chaffin, B.C., R.K. Craig, H. Gosnell, and A.S. Garmestani. 2016. Institutional networks and adaptive water governance in the Klamath River Basin, USA. Environmental Science & Policy 57: 112-121.

Chaffin, B.C. and L.H. Gunderson. 2016. Emergence, institutionalization and renewal: rhythms of adaptive governance in complex social-ecological systems. Journal of Environmental Management 165(1): 81-87.

Green, O.O., A.S. Garmestani, C.R. Allen, J.B. Ruhl, C.A. Arnold, L.H. Gunderson, N.A.J. Graham, B. Cosens, D.G. Angeler, B.C. Chaffin, and C.S. Holling. 2015. Barriers and bridges to the integration of social-ecological resilience and law. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 13(6): 332-337.

Chaffin, B.C., R.L. Mahler, J.D. Wulfhorst, and B. Shafii. 2015. The role of agency partnerships in collaborative watershed groups: lessons from the Pacific Northwest experience. Environmental Management 55(1): 56-68.

Chaffin, B.C., R.K. Craig, and H. Gosnell. 2014. Resilience, adaptation, and transformation in the Klamath River basin social-ecological system. Idaho Law Review: Natural Resources & Environmental Law Edition 51(1): 157-193.

Chaffin, B.C., H. Gosnell, and B.A. Cosens. 2014. A decade of adaptive governance scholarship: synthesis and future directions. Ecology and Society 19(3): 56. http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol19/iss3/art56/

Chaffin, B.C., R.L. Mahler, J.D. Wulfhorst, and B. Shafii. 2012. Collaborative watershed groups in three pacific northwest states: a regional evaluation of group metrics and perceived success. Journal of the American Water Resources Association 48(1): 113-122.

Book Chapters

Chaffin, B.C., H. Gosnell, and R.K. Craig. 2018. The emergence of adaptive governance in the Klamath River basin. In Practical Panarchy for Adaptive Water Governance, B. Cosens and L.H. Gunderson, eds., pp. 83-97. Cham, Switzerland: Springer.

Chaffin, B.C. 2016. What is the primary cause of conflict in the Klamath River basin? In Natural Resource Conflicts: From Blood Diamonds to Rainforest Destruction (Vol. 2), M. Burnett, ed., pp. 579. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO.

Chaffin, B.C. and H. Gosnell. 2015. Measuring Success in Adaptive Management Projects. In Adaptive Management of Social-Ecological Systems, C. Allen and A. Garmestani, eds., pp. 85-105. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer.

Professional Presentations

Invited presentations

"Resilience, governance, and food-energy-water nexus policy in the Klamath River basin." Center for Environmental Research, Education and Outreach Seminar Series, Washington State University, Pullman, WA, 12 April 2018.

"Green infrastructure for urban stormwater management: investigation of professional GI networks in Cleveland, Ohio, USA as a potential source of transformative capacity." Lund University Center for Sustainability, Lund, Sweden, 18 Aug 2017.

"Evolving environmental governance in the Klamath River basin, USA." The Grainger River Center Lecture Series, Duke University, Durham, NC, 13 January 2017.

"The emergence of adaptive governance: negotiating tradeoffs between ecosystem services in the Klamath River basin." Portland State University School of Environment Seminar Series: Ecosystem Services: Practices, Policies, Politics, Portland, OR, 14 Jan 2016.

"Transformation in water governance: from urban stormwater management to rural water rights negotiations." Geography Department Seminar Series, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, VA, 10 Apr 2015.

Conference Papers

"Governance for navigating social-environmental regime shifts across working landscapes." SESYNC Boundary Spanning Symposium, Annapolis, MD, 11 Jun 2018.

"Beyond the next regime: environmental law and the capacity for SES transformation." Resilience 2017, Stockholm, Sweden, 23 Aug 2017.

"Adjudication and Tribal Water Rights Settlements as Acts of Climate Adaptation." American Association of Geographers Annual Meeting, Boston, MA, 7 Apr 2017.

"Analyzing Governance to Inform Water Security: Implementing Resilience Assessment Methods at the Basin Scale." INSAKA 2016, Kafue, Zambia, 15 Jun 2016.

"Transformative Environmental Governance: Guiding hydrologic change in North America toward social-ecological sustainability." Transformations 2015, Stockholm, Sweden, 5 Oct 2015.

Panels

"Debating the big questions in adaptive governance research." Individual presentation title: "The potential of adaptive governance to destabilize dominant power relations and unlock social-ecological traps." Resilience 2017, Stockholm, Sweden, 23 Aug 2017.