The Emerging Commodity of Restored Streams: Science, Policy and Economics in New Markets for Ecosystem Service Commodities

Dr. Robertson will use the relatively well-established stream mitigation banking industry in North Carolina to examine the interactions and tensions between restoration science, environmental policy, and market forces, and how they have shaped the mitigation banking industry. Additional insight will be gained by examining policy development in cognate programs in Oregon and Ohio. To address questions and hypotheses surrounding mitigation banking he will use a combination of biophysical surveys and modeling, policy analysis and archival data collection, and interviews. He will work with two other project Investigators, Martin Doyle and Rebecca Lave, to characterize a series of field sites using wellestablished biophysical field methods, using the goals for regulatory performance standard attainment, and using the methods and criteria considered relevant by entrepreneurial stream bankers. The Investigators will then conduct a series of interviews with private bankers, regulatory personnel, and scientists in the three field regions in order to evaluate how individuals responding to the divergent interests of science, policy and markets encounter and resolve tensions. In addition, they will hold a series of educational workshops for students in which we use this project to illustrate cross-cutting research hypotheses development, methods, and interpretation in the natural and social sciences, and issues that arise when conducting such cross-cutting research.