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Working for Water: A Transdisciplinary Collaboration for Wetlands Restoration in an Urbanizing Watershed
Citation:
Druschke, C. Working for Water: A Transdisciplinary Collaboration for Wetlands Restoration in an Urbanizing Watershed. Presented at Rhetoric Society of America, San Antonio, TX, May 22 - 26, 2014.
Impact/Purpose:
Participation in this panel will help to promote the dialog about the importance of accounting for public opinion and perceptions in watershed-based restoration efforts. It will specifically focus on the practical aspects of cross-disciplinary collaboration between natural and social scientists.
Description:
In 2013, I collaborated with staff at the Environmental Protection Agency’s Atlantic Ecology Division to explore the public perceptions of services and disservices associated with restoration of riparian areas and wetlands in the urbanizing Woonasquatucket River watershed in northern Rhode Island. The qualitative research I conducted with federal, state, and local land managers and members of the general public informed an ecosystem services indicator tool meant to prioritize freshwater restoration projects throughout the state. But the project also served as a chance to extend my earlier Iowa-based research into the rhetorical power of the watershed as a topos: a common-place capable of prompting action for conservation. Building from Kenneth Burke’s framing of rhetoric as identification, I use my work to in these two watersheds to expand Gregory Clark’s notion of the rhetorical landscape. Meanwhile, I offer a practical guide for the evolving role of rhetorical theory in conservation practice.