Sustaining Alabama's Fisheries Resources: A Risk-Based Integrated Environmental, Economic, and Social Resource Management Decision Framework

The natural systems that make up Alabama’s Mobile Bay, its watershed, and adjacent marine waters serve as critical natural infrastructure supporting water supply, transportation, power generation, recreation, commercial fishing, agriculture, forestry, and a wide variety of other valued uses for the people in the watershed. Development and multiple uses have significantly impacted the unique biodiversity of the ecosystem and its sustainable uses.  Gulf of Mexico waters off Alabama were further impacted by the Deepwater Horizon oil release in 2010. This paper presents results of Phase 1 of a NOAA-funded assessment of freshwater and marine fisheries of the Mobile Bay watershed, the related aquatic system, and the stresses imposed by anthropologic and natural conditions. The project is a collaborative effort among government, corporate, and private stakeholders to develop decision tools supporting locally relevant ecosystem recovery plans that ensure sustainable fisheries and seafood industry for Mobile Bay and its watershed.  The effort must balance environmental, economic, and social demands to create a scientifically, legally and socially acceptable plan. Two collaborative multi-stakeholder workshops were held in 2009 to identify perspectives on the most immediate threats to a sustainable Mobile Bay system. Challenges associated with multi-stakeholder coordination, resource allocation among potentially competing uses, and public education of how human activities potentially impact system health were ranked higher than threats for sustainable system management than more traditional environmental perturbations such as non-point source pollution or aging infrastructure. A conceptual framework was developed to help understand and quantify interactions between environmental, economic, social, and built capital systems following the five principles recommended for long-term ecosystem restoration of the Gulf of Mexico identified in Navy Secretary Mabus Report to the President following the Deepwater Horizon oil release.  The long-term project will create a multidisciplinary decision support system to evaluate social and environmental factors that influence management of a sustainable fishery; support man-made infrastructure investments; and provide a common language for expressing goals, processes, and concerns affecting stewardship of Alabama's fisheries resources.  The decision support system will bring together existing models and data systems and focus them on development of ecosystem and social recovery plans. The system will be based on existing and planned models of physical and biological processes, land use and social economics developed by Gulf-wide academic and government researchers.  The analytical framework will be a conceptually simple dashboard to focus the results of more detailed process models on development of overall recovery plans.