Applications Invited for Balancing Human and Natural Assets into a Holistic Water Resource Management Framework

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About the Organization

The Water Research Foundation (WRF) is the leading research organization advancing the science of all water to meet the evolving needs of its subscribers and the water sector. WRF is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, educational organization that funds, manages, and publishes research on the technology, operation, and management of drinking water, wastewater, reuse, and stormwater systems—all in pursuit of ensuring water quality and improving water services to the public.

WRF was formed in 2018 through the integration of three highly respected research collaboratives: WateReuse Research Foundation, Water Environment Research Foundation, and Water Research Foundation. Separately, these organizations focused on research to support varied segments of the water sector—water reuse, wastewater and stormwater, and drinking water, respectively. Now a One Water organization, WRF delivers the research programming the sector needs to address the most pressing water issues holistically.

About the Grant

This project is funded by The Water Research Foundation (WRF) as part of WRF’s Research Priority Program.

Project Objectives:

This project aims to create a more effective watershed management framework by balancing human and natural land uses to overcome the limitations of past approaches focused on individual pollutants. The goal is to integrate human and natural systems to foster resilient watershed health, supported by a user-friendly decision-support framework and real-world case studies to guide stakeholders in improving holistic watershed management strategies:

• Review and develop watershed condition metrics and assessment protocols for both human and natural asset structures and functions that best describe holistic approach watershed health and benefits in a social-ecological system context.
• Evaluate landscape conservation, recovery, and mitigation management strategies to assess their effectiveness in maintaining and improving watershed conditions and achieving aquatic ecosystem health targets along a disturbance gradient.
• Build an Ecosystem-Based Management (EBM) and Natural and Nature-Based (NNB) decision-support framework to set watershed and ecosystem health goals that support desired social-ecological outcomes. Ensure the framework is adaptable and can be applied to multiple ecosystems and landscapes beyond the initial watershed.

Budget:

Applicants may request up to $200,000 in WRF funds for this project.

Background and Project Rationale:

Balancing human and natural needs, uses, and benefits is an enormous challenge in the face of major change drivers, especially the loss of watershed structural and functional integrity and pervasive climate change. Managing the challenges of shifting ecological baselines caused by these change drivers requires new and strategic, ecosystem-based management and decision support. To address and more effectively manage these complex systems and their interactions in an appropriate Social-Ecological System (SES) context, a better understanding of the interdependencies of human systems, geophysical settings, ecosystem structures, and interrelated vulnerabilities is needed. Holistic, watershed scale Ecosystem-Based Management (EBM) approaches that link watershed health to aquatic ecosystem health and social benefits are flourishing.

Increasingly, the management focus is on EBM alternatives that integrate Natural and NatureBased (NNB) practices into One-Water management frameworks (https://uswateralliance.org/) for the self-sustaining and resilient services they bring to both ecosystems and social systems. Conservation and recovery tools incumbent in NNB practices have the power to holistically manage and mitigate landscape and climate change drivers and underlying pressures— including nutrients—that collectively impact our waters and their security. NNB management practices have the potential to return structural and functional integrity to the watershed and restore balance to human and natural assets that meet the Clean Water Act and WRF subscriber water resource quality and sustainability objectives. Natural and nature-based remedies emphasize conservation and natural recovery practices that expand upon One Water principles and protocols by providing more sustainable and resilient outcomes for climate, biodiversity, and society.

Actionable policies and regulations are essential to incite meaningful management outcomes, but current practices are often costly and lack adequate application scale and power to attain health and well-being objectives for ecosystems and social systems alike. Financial capital models often attempt to balance human and natural assets on a monetary basis. However, these models tend to lean heavily toward meeting inelastic human needs that can undervalue the non-monetary, existential worth that integrated social and natural values provide. Pluralistic value models integrate competing human and natural asset values (i.e., nonmonetized “capital”) toward optimized functionality consistent with resilient and sustainable SES outcomes. With a better understanding of these optimal coexistence options and solutions, WRF subscribers can more effectively guide policy and management within economic, technological, and legal constraints.

WRF subscribers have created tens of thousands of watershed-based plans (e.g., 9-key element plans, Integrated Water Resource Management [IWRM] plans, and Enhanced Watershed Management Plans [EWMP]), and Total Maximum Daily Loads (TMDL) that have, according to the GAO (2013), not produced desired results in the field. Usually, the narrow focus on individual pollutants does not provide the collective chemical, physical, and biological outcomes, and broader benefits of “healthy” watersheds. “Integrated” plans and protocols are often limited to regulated source management that provide pollutant “treatments”, rather than enduring remedies for ecosystem degradation and climate change. Conserving or improving watershed and aquatic ecosystem integrity adds value with more resilient and self-sustaining natural outcomes often at a lower cost than engineering solutions. The importance of balancing human and natural uses of the land to successful One Water outcomes should not be underestimated.

Expected Deliverables:

Possible deliverables will be associated with the four steps identified in the approach.

• Comprehensive synthesis document that includes:
• Review document of utility actual practices and literature hypothetical cases. Include type of plans, models (simulation, scenario analysis, risk- based tools, optimization tools) used, and metrics evaluated.
• Summary analysis of benefits and gaps identified in the review document (a literature review and an industry scan to differentiate between published materials and real-world use cases to help clarify the scope and focus of each component in the synthesis document).
• Decision-support framework and utility facing guidance.
• Implementable dashboard (ideally with an example utility).
• Synthesis of next steps and proposed future research.

Project Duration:

The anticipated period of performance for this project is 24 months from the contract start date.

Eligibility

Proposals will be accepted from domestic or international entities, including educational institutions, research organizations, governmental agencies, and consultants or other for-profit entities.

How to Apply

Proposals are accepted exclusively online in PDF format, and they must be fully submitted before 3:00 pm Mountain Time on Wednesday, May 7, 2025.

The online proposal system allows submission of your documents until the date and time stated in this RFP. To avoid the risk of the system closing before you press the submit button, do not wait until the last minute to complete your submission. Submit your proposal at https://forms.waterrf.org/cbruck/rfp-5295.

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Tags Environment and Sustainability Water Research Others