Watershed Collaborations: Entanglements with Common Streams

Watershed Collaborations: Entanglements with Common Streams By Cleo Assan Woelfle-Erskine A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Energy and Resources in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Isha Ray, co-chair Professor Stephanie M. Carlson, co-chair Professor Jeffrey M. Romm Professor Kimberly TallBear Professor Laurel G. Larsen Spring 2015 ! ! ! ! Abstract: Watershed Collaborations: Entanglements with common streams Along California's North Coast, where salmon hover on the cusp of extinction, scientists and local residents seek new collaborations. Agencies, tribes, and watershed councils commission competing studies to determine links between human water use, oceanic cycles, and salmon decline. Modelers turn to ranchers' expert opinions to condition hydrologic models. Ranchers import beavers to build dams that may raise the water table. These watershed collaborations begin to transcend boundaries of human institutions, scientist / lay person, and even species. Restoring salmon-bearing streams is a project to reconfigure human relationships to water and inhabitation practices. In the western U.S., this project necessarily entails a serious grappling with Manifest Destiny legacies of Native American sovereignty, property regimes, legal doctrines, and water infrastructures. My dissertation investigates how watershed collaborations transform scientific practices, environmental subjectivities, and trans-species relations, using Salmon Creek (Sonoma Co., CA) as a case. Salmon Creek is typical of thousands of small watersheds in the Pacific West in that summer water extractions by farmers and rural residents dry many tributaries into a series of disconnected pools. This anthropogenic drought compounds historic beaver removal, logging, and road building that have altered water, sediment, and large wood supply to the stream, limiting steelhead (Oncorhynchus mykiss) and coho salmon (O. kisutch) recovery. I argue that collaborative watershed research that refuses to privilege expert science over local and Indigenous knowledges can create novel modes of scientific practice, discursive shifts, and new governance approaches. I stretch the limits of the terms ‘watershed’ and ‘collaboration’ to encompass interactions among (1) scientists and local knowledge holders, (2) living species and the landscapes they inhabit, and (3) humans and other species that depend on riverine ecosystems. Though disparate in methodology, the fields this dissertation contributes to—Science and Technology Studies, Environmental Politics, and Eco- hydrology—share a commitment to critically re-working social-natural boundaries. Natural flow regimes—dynamic streamflow patterns that drive riverine biodiversity—arise from a kind of collaboration between climatic factors, geology, plants, and animals in a river basin, and are then further shaped by human ground and surface water diversions. Regarding the ecosystem as a collaboratory in which humans play a role, Quantifying abiotic habitat characteristics to determine thresholds for salmonid oversummer survival in intermittent streams investigates the role of different flow-mediated factors (dissolved oxygen, temperature, groundwater inflow, and pool volume) affect juvenile coho and steelhead occurrence in two Salmon Creek tributaries. Drawing on three years of juvenile fish surveys, synoptic water and isotope monitoring and streamflow gauging to populate statistical models, I found that low dissolved oxygen and pool volume limit survival; however both salmonid species can survive in spring-fed intermittent pools that contain sheltering logs or overhanging banks. Citizen science surveys of stream drying patterns and salmon occurrence can complement agency monitoring and should be incorporated into salmon recovery efforts. Regarding human collaboratives of knowledge and practice, ‘Thinking with salmon about rain tanks: stream commons as intra-actions’ puts forth the argument that cultural practices of water use evolve in response to new understandings of other species' dependence on shared streams. Some Salmon Creek residents who install rain cisterns to curtail summer water use do so out of concern for salmon, and describe salmon and other riverine creatures as having rights to enough water to survive that are of the same status as human rights to water. Other residents are unwilling to reduce water use because the connection between their wells and the stream are poorly understood and difficult to measure. ‘Rain tanks, springs, and broken pipes as emerging water 1 commons along Salmon Creek, CA, USA’ develops a method for studying up from household water practices and local knowledge of springs, aquifers, and rainfall. Residents who participate in monitoring salmon populations, water quality, and their own springs and rain tanks report that these activities have increased their sense of interdependence with other human and nonhuman neighbors who rely on the watershed’s limited water sources. Drawing on Barad’s (2007) concepts of apparatus and intra-action, I argue that the notion of water as an interspecies commons is co- evolving with rainwater harvesting and that collective choice frameworks that embrace both management practices and environmental imaginaries represent a coherent alternative both to state and market frameworks of water governance and to traditional adaptive management methods and discourses. Mobilizing approaches from feminist Science and Technology Studies, the introduction extends the idea of watershed collaborations to encompass humans and other species. I draw on extended interviews with scientists, policy-makers, and local residents to argue that members of knowledge practice collaboratives foment discourses that bring humans and other species — especially beaver and salmon, which affect water and nutrient cycles and thus are considered "ecosystem engineers"— into symbiotic relations with mutual responsibilities. In the conclusion, I explore how these concepts of multi-species collaboratives may filter up from local collaborations into public water and species recovery debates, and consider limitations to more entangled approaches to watershed governance. Salmon Creek is geographically small and removed from major river basins, yet functions as a kind of microcosm of the political, cultural, and ecological tempests these salmon recovery and ecological restoration projects stir up at any scale. Salmon are simultaneously a global fishery resource, a key subsistence and cultural resource for traditional peoples around the Pacific, a scientific project to avert extinction, and a contested site of knowledge production. In asking what forms of collaboration are productive, and how collaborations transform those who undertake them, this research contributes to debates on practice and ethics inherent in environmental governance in the Anthropocene era. 2 Contents Introduction: Multiple valences of watershed collaboration ………………………… 1 Quantifying abiotic habitat characteristics to determine thresholds for salmonid oversummer survival in intermittent streams ……………………………………… 23 Rain tanks, springs, and broken pipes as emerging water commons along Salmon Creek, CA, USA …………………………………………………………… 44 Thinking with salmon about rain tanks: commons as intra-actions ………………… 56 Conclusion ………………………………………………………………………… 75 ! i ! Acknowledgements Many thanks to my mentors, collaborators, friends, and queer family. Salmon Creek residents, the Salmon Creek Watershed Council, and the Gold Ridge Resource Conservation district welcomed me into their research collaboration and provided logistical assistance during fieldwork. Lauren Hammack, Brian Cluer, Michael Fawcett, Sierra Cantor, John Green, Noel Bouck, Kathleen Kraft, Diane Masura, David Shatkin, Hazel Flett and Erna Andre were especially critical to my work; Walt Ryan, Delia Moon, and Victor Daniels provided access to field sites, while Brock Dolman first introduced me to the watershed. Many people helped with fieldwork: Heather Hochrein, Jason Hwan, Danielle Svelha- Christianson, Mary Matella, Kasaia Luckel, and Suzanne Kelson. Thanks to Brian “Little B” Peterson, Kristina Cervantes-Yoshida, Kauaoa Fraiola, Mike Bogan, Sibyl Diver, Guillermo Jaimes, the Watershed Governance Graduate Student Conversation Group, my writing group, ERG Water Group, and the Romm-Iles and Carlson-Power lab for invaluable analysis help and critical responses. My mentors and committee members, Stephanie Carlson, Laurel Larsen, Jeff Romm, Kim TallBear, and Isha Ray, have supported and pushed me and demonstrated five exceptional ways to mentor students. The Water Underground, the cast and crew of The Gold Fish, or Straight Flushes for the Manifestly Destined, and Suigetsukan dojo kept my head above water. July Cole swam with me the whole way. ! ii! Introduction: Multiple valences of watershed collaboration Where salmon hover on the cusp of extinction, some scientists and people who live along salmon-bearing streams seek new collaborations. Agencies, tribes, and watershed councils commission competing studies to tease out links between human use of land and water, global oceanic cycles, and the precipitous decline in salmon populations (Sarna-Wojcicki 2014). Tribal resource managers turn to ecological models to validate traditional knowledge in the eyes of state fisheries boards (ICTMN 2014). Scientists enlist commercial fishers and seals fitted with pressure

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