Group Model Building for a Healthier Chesapeake Bay

On October 9th, COAST Card’s partners from Norway, Dr. Pål Davidsen and Dr. Aklilu Tadesse, facilitated a system dynamics modeling (SDM) workshop with key stakeholders involved in Chesapeake Bay research and restoration. The workshop began with presentations about the COAST Card project, the Chesapeake Assessment Scenario Tool (CAST), and the process of SDM. This was then followed by an engagement activity where stakeholders identified important ecosystem services, and their responses were grouped into categories such as climate resilience and food production. These categories were assigned to groups of participants tasked with creating causal loop diagrams in a group model-building activity by specifying supporting ecosystem services and underlying threats. The workshop concluded with presentations about key findings from the project’s Potomac listening sessions and the social network analysis of the Potomac watershed. It was a very productive and informative meeting overall, and the results from the group modeling activity will be used to help progress the Chesapeake Bay and Watershed Report Card.

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