Abstract
Prior to exponential growth in the early to mid-2000s, the Town of Bluffton, SC was one square mile; as of 2015, it is approximately 55 square miles. Associated with this growth was a shellfish harvesting closure for nearly onethird of the May River in 2009. The Town and its partners developed and began to implement the May River Watershed Action Plan in 2011. The plan is a “living document” allowing for the incorporation of new information and technology as well as modifications based upon its impact on water quality. The continuous evaluation of the success of any watershed management plan is crucial to keeping a plan relevant. Utilizing an adaptive management logic model strategy provides managers a tool to effectively assess and modify their watershed management plan in response to ever-changing environmental conditions, an increasing technical knowledge base, increasing implementation costs, and decreasing resources, in the face of a constant demand for action and favorable results. This case study provides an example of utilizing an adaptive management logic model to initially evaluate a watershed plan.
Parent Publication
Citation
Jones, Kimberly W.; Ellis, Christopher L.; Ritchie, Jeremy S. 2016. Watershed planning, implementation and assessment: the May River Watershed Action Plan case study. In: Stringer, Christina E.; Krauss, Ken W.; Latimer, James S., eds. 2016. Headwaters to estuaries: advances in watershed science and management -Proceedings of the Fifth Interagency Conference on Research in the Watersheds. March 2-5, 2015, North Charleston, South Carolina. e-General Technical Report SRS-211. Asheville, NC: U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service, Southern Research Station. 7 p.
