Sustainability Management

What a beautiful wiki, and what marvelous tools. Congratulations.

Here in Vancouver BC, we are working on a similar "collaboration portal" for planning and managing watersheds. Alas, the nature of the work supported by our websites hides the content behind passwords and private groups, but I will be happy to give you a guided tour, find me via this website (how?) or this cool Skype macro:

The watershed sustainability programs being supported are:

• NewportBay.s4s.com - development of IRWMP, project reviews and integration, advances in the process and institutional structure for watershed management. No need to describe this wealthy, urbanized watershed to this audience!
• FraserBasin.s4s.com - very similar; emphasizing review, funding, mgmt of 100's of projects; bold planning, drawing from C.S. Holling's book Panarchy. This watershed is as large as all of California, and, except for 2.5M in coastal Vancouver, it is unpopulated forests and mountains.

Some parallels are uncanny. Newport Bay lost much of its vegetation to fire in 2007. Fraser Basin was heavily deforested 2005-7 by Mountain Pine Beetle (producing dramatic changes in hydrology). One difference noticeable: in BC, the huge changes in the Fraser Basin are recognized as due to anthropic global climate change. It is turning into California up here! In Southern California, it is much harder to specify global warming impacts within the Newport Bay watershed.