Kelly Mott Lacroix's Achievements

Starting August 8, 2016, Kelly Mott Lacroix will be a Hydrologist/Presidential Management Fellow working for the U.S. Forest Service in the Watershed, Fish, Wildlife, Air, and Rare Plants division of the Washington, D.C. office. She will be working on instream flow science and policy for Forest Service lands in the West. The Presidential Management Fellowship is a prestigious 2-year training and development program for citizen-scholars with recent graduate degrees from a variety of academic disciplines and career paths. The program is extremely competitive, with about 3% of all applicants receiving fellowships after an arduous, multistage assessment and testing process.  

Kelly finished her Ph.D. in Arid Lands Resource Sciences in 2015.  Immediately following graduation she was appointed as a Senior Research Analyst, for the Water RAPIDS (Research and Planning Innovations for Dryland Systems) program at the Water Resources Research Center (WRRC).  While studying and completing her Ph.D. she was a Research Analyst at WRRC.

Dissertation Title:

Advancing Water Management Through Methods to Assess Environmental Flow Needs and Improve Stakeholder Engagement

Abstract:           

Previous studies have focused predominantly on the identification of the current problems with water governance. However, because humans have an important role in shaping the global water cycle, the time has come to focus on solutions. In order to further water management solutions, a better understanding of the tools needed to manage water for ecosystems and effective methods for co-producing knowledge or encouraging social learning are needed. This dissertation research provides a regional example of approaches to advance water management using a tool to assess environmental flows needs in Arizona and frameworks for promoting common ground and social learning in stakeholder engagement. All three papers have been peer-reviewed and published:

Mott Lacroix K.E. and Megdal, S.B. (2016) Explore, Synthesize, and Repeat: Unraveling Complex Water Management Issues through the Stakeholder Engagement Wheel. Water, 8(4):118. (Open Access) http://www.mdpi.com/2073-4441/8/4/118(link is external)

Mott Lacroix, K.E., Xiu, B. and Megdal, S.B. (2016) Building Common Ground for Environmental Flows using Traditional Techniques and Novel Engagement Approaches. Environmental Management, 57(4), 912-928. DOI 10.1007/s00267-016-0656-8.

Mott Lacroix, K.E., Xiu, B., Nadeau, J. and Megdal, S.B. (2016) Synthesizing environmental flow needs data for water management in a water-scarce state: The Arizona environmental water demands database. River Research and Applications, 32: 234 –244. DOI: 10.1002/rra.2858.