About the Tampa Bay Watershed Forest Working group

• Mission
• Goals
• Collaboration
• Collaborators

Mission:

Create a scientific framework for the ecological assessment and sustainable management of the Tampa Bay watershed’s trees and forested ecosystems along the urban – wildland continuum.

Goals:

1. Understand the Tampa Bay watershed trees and forest as an ecological system. The program brings together researchers from the biological, physical, and social sciences to collect new data and synthesize existing information on how both the ecological and engineered systems of Tampa Bay watershed work.
2. Understand how the Tampa Bay watershed trees and forest ecosystems change over long time periods.
3. Use the ecological knowledge created to help support educational and community-based activities. Interactions between the project and the watershed’s communities are an important component of the project. Such an integrative project includes many disciplines and many research and educational institutions, both in the watershed and beyond.
4. The Tampa Bay watershed forest ecosystem framework has a special opportunity to both contribute to and examine ecological management and decision-making practices at a range of geographic scales. While all ecology educators would assert that understanding the environment has utility, here is the opportunity to test this relationship in a bold and long-term fashion.

Increasing Capacity for Collaboration

Initially the TBWFWG developed a mission statement and set of four over arching objectives. Using that mission statement and objectives various partners within the TBWFWG have conducted bio-physical, economic and social research, organized and presented numerous workshops, written peer reviewed publications, newspaper articles and newsletters, and developed this web site.

The existence of the TBWFWG and the public recognition of some of the work being done by its members has generated interest in creating new partnerships in forest conservation within the watershed and broadening the potential for shared projects. But how do we proceed to use the informal and unstructured form of the TBWFWG to move forward in our mission of ‘creating a scientific framework for ecological assessment and sustainable management of the Tampa Bay watershed’s trees and forested ecosystems’? Examples of successful collaborative efforts from across the nation suggest several key approaches that are appropriate for our group.

1. Build on common ground established by a sense of place and community – a shared vision. The TBWFWG has undertaken this step through the consensus based development of a vision and goals.
2. Create opportunities for interaction – among diverse groups.
   The TBWFWG continues to organize and present workshops that bring planners, engineers, community activists, researchers and natural resource managers together to consider information and knowledge concerning forest conservation, and to identify issues and opportunities for shared work on forest conservation within the watershed.
3. Build understanding by fostering the exchange of information and ideas among members, agencies and organizations.
   This website is intended to provide a mechanism for the sharing of data and other information between partners; to provide a shared and secured on-line work environment; and the ability to post program announcements.

Times are changing, budgets are shrinking and we are adapting to the changing issues in our urbanizing watershed. The watershed’s natural systems are increasingly stressed by demands for ecosystem goods and services which raises many difficult questions. How do we maintain a healthy economy without depleting the natural resources that are the basis of sustainability? How can the Tampa Bay watershed grow and develop while maintaining a healthy environment for our children and grandchildren? There are no easy answers to questions like these, but we must begin to deal with them with the best information we have right now, while engaging diverse audiences in conservation projects and fostering partnerships between communities, private business, government and science.

Rob Northrop
University of Florida-Institute of Food and Agricultural Science
Hillsborough County Extension

Michael G. Andreu, Ph.D.
University of Florida, School of Forest Resources and Conservation

Collaborators:

• Florida Department of Agriculture – Division of Forestry
• SWFWMD
• USDA Forest Service
• USDA Forest Service – Wildland Interface South
• City of Tampa
• Hillsbrough County
• City of Temple Terrace
• City of Lakeland
• Tampa Bay Estuary Program
• Natural Resource Planning Services
• EPA
• EPC of Hillsborough County
• University of South Florida
• University of Florida