California Planning Research Articles

University of California plans fund for student and faculty startups

University of California plans fund for student and faculty startups

Using seabird habitat modeling to inform marine spatial planning in central California's National Marine Sanctuaries.

Understanding seabird habitat preferences is critical to future wildlife conservation and threat mitigation in California. The objective of this study was to investigate drivers of seabird habitat selection within the Gulf of the Farallones and Cordell Bank National Marine Sanctuaries to identify areas for targeted conservation planning. We used seabird abundance data collected by the Applied California Current Ecosystem Studies Program (ACCESS) from 2004–2011. We used zero-inflated negative binomial regression to model species abundance and distribution as a function of near surface ocean water properties, distances to geographic features and oceanographic climate indices to identify patterns in foraging habitat selection. We evaluated seasonal, inter-annual and species-specific variability of at-sea distributions for the five most abundant seabirds nesting on the Farallon Islands: western gull (Larus occidentalis), common murre (Uria aalge), Cassin’s auklet (Ptychorampus aleuticus), rhinoceros auklet (Cerorhinca monocerata) and Brandt’s cormorant (Phalacrocorax penicillatus). The waters in the vicinity of Cordell Bank and the continental shelf east of the Farallon Islands emerged as persistent and highly selected foraging areas across all species. Further, we conducted a spatial prioritization exercise to optimize seabird conservation areas with and without considering impacts of current human activities. We explored three conservation scenarios where 10, 30 and 50 percent of highly selected, species-specific foraging areas would be conserved. We compared and contrasted results in relation to existing marine protected areas (MPAs) and the future alternative energy footprint identified by the California Ocean Uses Atlas. Our results show that the majority of highly selected seabird habitat lies outside of state MPAs where threats from shipping, oil spills, and offshore energy development remain. This analysis accentuates the need for innovative marine spatial planning efforts and provides a foundation on which to build more comprehensive zoning and management in California’s National Marine Sanctuaries.

Integrated Decision Support for Energy/Water Planning in California and the Southwest

Integrated Decision Support for Energy/Water Planning in California and the Southwest

Dispatches

Dispatches

The role of science in supporting marine protected area network planning and design in California

Marine protected areas (MPAs) can be an effective tool for marine conservation, especially if conservation goals are clearly identified and MPAs are designed in accordance with ecological principles to meet those goals. In California (USA), the Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative led four regional public planning processes to design a statewide network of MPAs. The MLPA planning processes were carefully structured to provide a clearly-defined and important role for science and scientists. Over 50 scientists contributed directly to this MPA planning effort as members of a Science Advisory Team or in other capacities. Stakeholders were charged with developing alternative MPA proposals in each region, while scientists served as advisors and evaluated MPA proposals against science-based guidelines. Four key conditions supported the successful integration of science into the MPA network planning effort. First, the MLPA legislation provided a strong legal mandate for the use of the best readily available science and policy-makers strongly supported scientific input and the use of science-based MPA design guidelines. Second, the structure of the public planning process clearly identified the role of scientists and enabled a transparent and participatory process that promoted the use of science. Third, simple science-based MPA design guidelines provided benchmarks for assessing the likely effectiveness of alternative MPA proposals at achieving MLPA goals. Finally, scientists were engaged extensively and were responsive to the evolving informational needs of each regional MPA planning process. The redesigned statewide network of MPAs generally reflects the successful integration of science and science-based MPA design guidelines into a public policy process.

The Limits to Planning

If planning is to matter for urban development and policy, it is not sufficient for plans to be implemented. Plans and planning must also have a causal role—they must lead to outcomes that would not be realized otherwise. In case studies of municipal climate action planning in California, I find little evidence for any causal impacts. Instead, cities are using climate plans to codify policies that were likely to happen anyway. The results call for a more nuanced view of when it makes sense to plan, what types of plans are most useful, and how to evaluate a plan’s effects.

Adapting stakeholder processes to region-specific challenges in marine protected area network planning

Marine protected area (MPA) network planning in California was conducted over the course of nearly seven years through implementation of the Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA). State agency and contract staff collaborated through a public–private partnership called the MLPA Initiative (Initiative), supporting regional groups of stakeholders in crafting MPA network proposals for consideration by the MLPA Blue Ribbon Task Force (BRTF) and ultimately the California Fish and Game Commission. To design a statewide network, the Initiative divided California’s 1770 km coastline into five “study regions” for sequential planning, each with a separate “regional stakeholder group” (RSG) consisting of fishermen, conservationists, recreational users, and others with intimate knowledge of the area, who were tasked with proposing alternative MPA network designs. Each study region presented a different set of factors that needed to be considered by Initiative staff in designing the overall stakeholder planning process. Furthermore, as planning for each study region was completed, a formal “lessons learned” evaluation was conducted that informed process design in subsequent study regions. Thus, designing a statewide MPA network through regional MPA planning processes presented the opportunity and challenge of adapting the stakeholder process design to both regional differences and lessons learned over time. This paper examines how differences in regional characteristics and lessons learned influenced three important elements of the stakeholder process, including convening the stakeholders, managing stakeholder engagement, and integrating input from managing state agencies. The fundamental structure and unique management characteristics of the Initiative were essential in facilitating adaptation of these process elements over time. The California MLPA Initiative provides a case study in process flexibility to address changing contexts and a model for similar coastal and marine spatial planning processes.

A comparison of approaches used for economic analysis in marine protected area network planning in California

In addition to fostering biodiversity goals, marine protected area (MPA) implementation has economic consequences for both commercial and recreational fisheries. During the implementation of the State of California (USA) Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA), which mandates the creation of an MPA network in California's state waters, the stakeholders and policymakers utilized a pair of economic analyses that addressed these considerations. One was a comparative, static assessment of short-term, “worst case” potential socioeconomic impacts to important fisheries based on surveys of local fishermen. This analysis made no assumptions about fishery management outside of MPAs, assumed no spillover of fish from MPAs into fished areas or reallocation of fishing effort, and estimated the maximum potential dollar-value economic impacts over a short time scale. The other was a dynamic, bioeconomic assessment of the changes in spatial distribution of biomass and catch, based on published biological parameter values, oceanographic models of larval connectivity, and a range of possible levels of fishing. This analysis explicitly accounted for fish population dynamics, spillover, fisher movement, and fishery management outside of the MPAs, but was limited to long-term, equilibrium-based results because of a lack of baseline abundance data. Both evaluation methods were novel in their spatial resolution and their use directly in an MPA design process, rather than after implementation. The two methods produced broadly similar (at a regional spatial scale) evaluations of the likely effects of proposed MPAs on fisheries, at least when the bioeconomic model assumed fishery management was conservative. Our experience with these analyses in the MLPA Initiative process led to several suggestions for future MPA design efforts: (i) since the change in fish biomass inside MPAs partly depends on fisheries management outside of them, it is useful to integrate or coordinate conventional fishery management and MPA planning efforts; (ii) integrate modeling assessments early into MPA design, as part of a post-implementation adaptive management approach; and (iii) integrate empirical fishery data into bioeconomic models in order to improve representations of human behavior and short-term forecasts of changes in fished populations.

Air quality planning in California’s changing climate

California is home to some of the worst air quality in the nation and ninety percent of the state’s population lives in areas that are out of attainment with at least one of the National Ambient Air Quality Standards. Increasing temperatures associated with climate change will make meeting air quality standards more difficult. Under a changing climate, additional emission reductions will be needed to achieve clean air standards. These additional emission reductions and associated costs are called the “climate penalty.” Air quality planning is the process of assessing the emission reductions needed to meet air quality standards and outlining the programs and policies that will be implemented to achieve these emission reductions. This paper reviews the challenges that a changing climate will pose for air quality planning in California and identifies opportunities for adaptation. While state air quality regulators in California are taking enormous strides to address global warming, less work is happening at the regional, air district level. Air districts are the agencies responsible for developing air quality improvement plans. An important first step for regional air quality regulators will be to quantify the climate penalty and understand their region’s vulnerability to climate change. Limitations in regulatory authority could impede measures to improve preparedness. Regional agencies will likely need to look to state and federal agencies for additional emission reductions.

A phenology-based approach to map crop types in the San Joaquin Valley, California

An accurate and timely crop-type map is essential in water planning in California. So far, no effort has been made to effectively and efficiently identify specific crop types on an annual basis in this area. We have explored the potential of Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) reflectance images to annually map major crop types in the San Joaquin Valley, California. A phenology-based classification approach has been employed, which has extracted phenological metrics from normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) profiles and identified crop types based on these metrics using decision trees. According to a comparison with traditional maximum-likelihood classification, this phenology-based approach has shown great advantages when the size of the training set was limited by ground-truth availability and when the central tendency was absent in agricultural systems heavily influenced by human activities.

Understanding variations in Medicare Consumer Assessment of Health Care Providers and Systems scores: California as an example.

To understand reasons why California has lower Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (CAHPS) scores than the rest of the country, including differing patterns of CAHPS scores between Medicare Advantage (MA) and fee-for-service, effects of additional demographic characteristics of beneficiaries, and variation across MA plans within California. Using 2008 CAHPS survey data for fee-for-service Medicare beneficiaries and MA members, we compared mean case mix adjusted Medicare CAHPS scores for California and the remainder of the nation. California fee-for-service Medicare had lower scores than non-California fee-for-service on 11 of 14 CAHPS measures; California MA had lower scores only for physician services measures and higher scores for other measures. Adding race/ethnicity and urbanity to risk adjustment improved California standing for all measures in both MA and fee-for-service. Within the MA plans, one large plan accounted for the positive performance in California MA; other California plans performed below national averages. This study shows that the mix of fee-for-service and MA enrollees, demographic characteristics of populations, and plan-specific factors can all play a role in observed regional variations. Anticipating value-based payments, further study of successful MA plans could generate lessons for enhancing patient experience for the Medicare population.

US environmental governance and local climate change mitigation policies

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate local climate change mitigation planning in California with the goal of understanding how the relationships between the state, the local air agencies, and the localities within their jurisdictions shape the willingness and capacity of local communities to plan for climate change mitigation through greenhouse gas emissions reduction.Design/methodology/approachThe research: analyses documents relating to localities' climate change mitigation planning activities, including the production of action plans, general plan elements, emissions inventories, or official resolutions supporting mitigation planning, establishment of partnerships with other governmental and non‐governmental organizations, and development of community input processes and planning committee membership and structure. It also involves measurement and descriptive analysis of variables capturing: local air agencies' institutional character, orientation regarding climate change policymaking, and mitigation planning activities and programs; and localities' mitigation planning processes and policies, institutional and demographic characteristics, and relationships with other sub‐state entities working on climate change mitigation.FindingsIntergovernmental partnerships can powerfully impact localities' technical and financial capacities for pursuing climate change mitigation planning. This exploratory study points to the potential for strong leadership by air quality control agencies to greatly influence the decision of localities within their jurisdictions to engage in voluntary mitigation planning. Furthermore, decentralized collaboration does not prevent, and may encourage, policy harmonization through localities' widespread reliance on the technical assistance from specialized non‐governmental organizations.Practical implicationsFindings might enable advocates of local‐level climate change mitigation planning to target their resources for maximal returns in terms of geographic policy coverage and pledged GHG emissions reductions. Theoretically, this study contributes to discussions on the relationship between the quality of policy outputs and various forms of environmental governance.Originality/valueClimate change mitigation planning in the USA is in a formative stage. In fact, the authors found that even the California Governor's Office of Planning and Research (OPR) must work continuously and with imperfect data to compile a list of the state's local‐level mitigation planning efforts. This study contributes to the growing body of knowledge of local planning policy innovations in California and highlights the importance of leadership from the regional scale for city‐level engagement with mitigation planning.

Local emergency evacuation planning in California, USA: a comparison with the hurricane states

Many of the losses due to wildfires, floods, and other hazards can be avoided with proper evacuation planning. This study examined local emergency evacuation readiness in the State of California of the USA. Emergency planning documents were obtained from 41 of the 58 California counties; only 8 of those were free-standing emergency evacuation plans eligible for evaluation. The plans were evaluated using a tool previously developed for a congressional study of hurricane evacuation plans. The California plans scored relatively well in the areas of decision making and communications but scored poorly on other issues including planning for alternative transportation modes and evacuating special needs populations. Overall, the California evacuation plans did not measure up to those developed in the hurricane states. This study highlights the need to strengthen and standardise evacuation planning in at-risk areas and to improve knowledge about local evacuation preparedness.

Modeling of Effects of Peak Load Pricing on Metropolitan Network and Activities

Peak load pricing has long been seen as a way to internalize externalities, as a set of incentives to shift peak hour trips to off-peak periods, and as a mechanism to generate revenues. However, how travelers trade time for money and respond to peak–off-peak pricing differentials is an open question that generates some timely and related questions, including the following: (a) How can the activity location and traffic implications for multiple times of the day in a major metropolitan area be modeled? (b) What are the network effects of peak load pricing on selected routes on level of service and urban development? It is possible to conduct simulations on actual highway networks to treat these questions. None of the urban models, however, can examine simultaneous route choice and time-of-day choice involving millions of travelers, thousands of traffic network zones, and hundreds of thousands of network links in an equilibrium system. This research addressed these questions by extending the Southern California Planning Model so that it could be used to determine the effects of pricing schemes on the time-of-day choice for travel, trip distribution, and network traffic for the greater Los Angeles, California (five-county), metropolitan area. The model estimated improvements in levels of service throughout the highway network for alternative toll charges. The model examined how drivers traded route choice with time-of-day choice against the option of traveling less. The approach also estimated the revenues implied for local jurisdictions as well as the possible effects of altered development pressures on land use throughout the region. The effects of two different toll scenarios were compared, and policy implications were offered.

Toward an Enhanced Concept of Disaster Resilience: A Commentary on Behalf of the Editorial Committee

This Special Issue (Part 2) expands upon the theme “Building Local Capacity for Long-term Disaster Resilience” presented in Special Issue Part 1 (JDR Vol­ ume 5, Number 2, April 2010) by examining the evolving concept of disaster resilience and providing additional reflections upon various aspects of its mean­ ing. Part 1 provided a mixed set of examples of resiliency efforts, ranging from administrative challenges of integrating resilience into recovery to the analysis of hazard mitigation plans directed toward guiding local capability for developing re-

Collaborative Institutions in an Ecology of Games

This article seeks to improve our understanding of policy institutions and cooperation by adapting Long's (1958)analysis of the ecology of games to the context of collaborative land use and transportation planning in California. The traditional institutional rational choice analysis argues that collaborative institutions reduce the transaction costs of cooperation among multiple policy actors. The ecology of games framework extends IRC by emphasizing the consequences of multiple institutions and identifies several reasons why collaborative institutions may actually reduce the amount of cooperation in existing policy venues. Analyses of survey data from policy actors in five California regions demonstrate that higher levels of cooperation in collaborative institutions are associated with lower levels of cooperation in other land‐use and transportation planning institutions.

CLIMATE CHANGE: California’s 2020 Vision

As the source of 1.4% of the world’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and 6.2% of U.S. emissions, California is a significant actor on the global climate stage. In the coming decades, if current scientific thinking proves correct, California and many other parts of the world could face climatic fallout in the form of rising sea levels, more wildfires, water shortages, and pollution-aggravating heat waves. These changes, in turn, could incur immense public health costs and other economic losses. Against this backdrop, the Golden State has adopted a comprehensive plan—unprecedented in scale and scope—designed to reduce GHG emissions substantially by 2020. The long-range goal is to achieve emissions that are 80% below 1990 levels by 2050. On 11 December 2008, the state’s Air Resources Board (ARB), a department of the California Environmental Protection Agency (CalEPA) and the agency responsible for protecting air quality, approved the “Climate Change Scoping Plan” for reducing the state’s carbon footprint. The plan, developed by the ARB in coordination with representatives from other agencies, aims to reduce GHG emissions back to 1990 levels over the next 11 years; this means cutting emissions by about 15% from today’s “business-as-usual” levels. The ARB’s scientific staff predicts the plan’s measures will reduce the state’s GHG annual emissions by a total of 174 million metric tons. Development of the plan was a central requirement of AB 32, the state’s Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006. Pivotal to the plan is a cap-and-trade program that will cover 85% of the state’s GHG emissions and give industries a financial incentive to reduce those emissions. By setting a clear, mandatory cap on emissions, the plan allows the market itself to identify the most cost-effective ways to achieve that limit. Tradable emission “allowances” or permits are then distributed in an amount that equals the total emissions permitted by the cap. Complementing the cap-and-trade program will be a mix of strategies that combine technology-forcing performance standards, fees, and other policies. The California program is designed to work with the Western Climate Initiative (WCI), a group of states and provinces working collaboratively to reduce GHG levels on a regional scale. Rather than give allowances away for free, the WCI plans to auction at least 10% of permits at the outset while allowing other states to auction more if they choose. California plans on eventually auctioning all permits, perhaps as soon as 2016. “These auction revenues could net anywhere from one to five billion dollars or more annually by 2020, helping to fund the transition to a ‘green economy,’” says Bernadette del Chiaro, an energy analyst for the advocacy group Environment California. Other key features of the California plan include a requirement for utilities to generate one-third of their electricity from solar, wind, and geothermal sources by 2020; implementation of standards for low-carbon fuels, cleaner cars and trucks, and energy- and resource-efficient construction; and full deployment of the Million Solar Roofs Initiative, an incentive program aimed at installing 3,000 megawatts’ worth of new rooftop solar capacity by 2017. The complete plan is available at http://www.arb.ca.gov/cc/scopingplan/document/psp.pdf. “We believe that market structures like cap-and-trade are essential for businesses to meet their obligations until green technology comes to market,” adds Amisha Patel, policy advocate for climate change and energy issues for the California Chamber of Commerce. However, the plan has not received universal praise. The 12 December 2008 Los Angeles Times quoted James Duran, chairman of legislative affairs for the California Hispanic Chambers of Commerce, calling the plan “an economic train wreck waiting to happen” as far as small businesses go. The regulations and legislation tried out in California will likely be watched closely by the new White House. “What we do here will resonate and will have repercussions on the kinds of approaches and programs that the Obama administration will work to implement,” says ARB spokesman Stanley Young. “We are very conscious of the leadership role that we’ve got, and we want to develop a program that will integrate well with any federal program.”

EPA WEIGHS CO LIMITS

RETURN TO ISSUEPREVNewsNEXTEPA WEIGHS CO LIMITSCLIMATE CHANGE: Agency is evaluating California's plan for cars, trucksCHERYL HOGUECite this: Chem. Eng. News 2007, 85, 18, 7Publication Date (Print):April 30, 2007Publication History Published online14 November 2010Published inissue 30 April 2007https://doi.org/10.1021/cen-v085n018.p007aCopyright © 2007 American Chemical SocietyArticle Views10Altmetric-Citations-LEARN ABOUT THESE METRICSArticle Views are the COUNTER-compliant sum of full text article downloads since November 2008 (both PDF and HTML) across all institutions and individuals. These metrics are regularly updated to reflect usage leading up to the last few days.Citations are the number of other articles citing this article, calculated by Crossref and updated daily. Find more information about Crossref citation counts.The Altmetric Attention Score is a quantitative measure of the attention that a research article has received online. Clicking on the donut icon will load a page at altmetric.com with additional details about the score and the social media presence for the given article. Find more information on the Altmetric Attention Score and how the score is calculated. Share Add toView InAdd Full Text with ReferenceAdd Description ExportRISCitationCitation and abstractCitation and referencesMore Options Share onFacebookTwitterWechatLinked InReddit PDF (589 KB) SUBJECTS:Greenhouse gases Get e-Alerts

Calif. Physicians See Perils in Insurance Reform Plan

Calif. Physicians See Perils in Insurance Reform Plan

A new analytic method for finding policy-relevant scenarios

Scenarios play a prominent role in policy debates over climate change, but questions continue about how best to use them. We describe a new analytic method, based on robust decision making, for suggesting narrative scenarios that emerge naturally from a decision analytic framework. We identify key scenarios as those most important to the choices facing decision makers and find such cases with statistical analysis of datasets created by multiple runs of computer simulation models. The resulting scenarios can communicate quantitative judgments about uncertainty as well as support a well-defined decision process without many drawbacks of current approaches. We describe an application to long-term water planning in California.