LA River Watershed STEW-MAP

The Stewardship Mapping and Assessment Project (STEW-MAP) is a national research program developed by the US Forest Service that has been implemented in numerous places across the US and internationally. STEW-MAP is a publicly available, online stewardship database and map of groups and organizations that work to conserve, manage, monitor, transform, advocate for, and/or educate the public about their local environments. Leveraging national expertise and previous regional investment in Los Angeles County STEW-MAP, the LA River STEW-MAP provides detailed information on the geographical footprint and collaborative relationships of organizations working in the Los Angeles River watershed. This includes partners associated with the LA River Urban Waters Federal Partnership. Led by the Loyola Marymount University Center for Urban Resilience (CURes), LA River STEW-MAP is the first to be supported and guided by the US Forest Service’s three main units: State and Private Forestry, the Pacific Southwest Research Station, and the Angeles National Forest. By focusing on the LA River watershed, this project aims to capture and raise awareness of the many collaborative stewardship activities and relationships that are occurring to advance LA River revitalization. The following provides preliminary results of the Los Angeles River STEW-MAP.

Organizations were inventoried and contacted in two waves:

1. The first wave utilized contact lists provided by 12 partners as well as online research and snowball sampling.
2. The second wave consisted of newly suggested groups, collected two months after the initial wave.

The maps below show all inventoried organizations with provided addresses. On each of the maps click on the circle in the bottom left to view the legend. Drag the map to change view and zoom in the bottom right to change extent.

The LA River STEW-MAP Survey was distributed via email to 535 invitees on June 18th, 2019. The survey closed on October 31st, 2019 after being open for a period of approximately 4 months. The following period, spanning November and December of 2019, was devoted to follow-up.

On each of the maps below click on the circle in the bottom left to view the legend. Each point can be clicked to view a corresponding pop up, drag the map to change view, and zoom in the bottom right to change extent. *Note: not all organizations are visible in the set map extent.

The legal designations of organizations are categorized by color. Click on an organization to see the specific designation.

STEW-MAP defines environmental stewardship as: “the act of conserving, managing, monitoring, transforming, advocating for, and/or educating the public about their local environments.” Groups were asked to identify which of these stewardship types described their work, and which one best represented their primary stewardship activities. They were also asked to report the specific focus areas of their efforts.

Organizations were asked which of 33 listed site types they worked and which was their primary site type. Site Types were grouped into four categories: Land & Built Environment, Fresh Water & Marine Related, Systems Related, and Other. Click on an organization to see the specific site type.

Of the primary site types depicted above, below is the breakdown of their ownership.

The map below shows the percent of total efforts each organization reported dedicating to stewardship.

Below are the organizations classified by year founded.

The groups in the map are distributed into quantiles- each category has the same number of organizations and clusters can be seen in the differing time spans.

The chart to the left shows the data distributed into equal, 10-year intervals.

Groups were asked to list the organizations that they work with for collaborative stewardship projects, that they go to for knowledge and expertise regarding environmental stewardship, and that provide funding or other types of support for their stewardship activities. The 96 respondents named 780 partnerships with organizations as collaborators, knowledge providers and/or funders. These data are still being cleaned up and analyzed and the results will be part of the final LA River STEW-MAP report.

The below is a network diagram from the LA County STEW-MAP, to illustrate how the stewardship relationships may be visualized.

The survey also included questions about organizational mission, financial information, policies that may influence stewardship activities, etc. These questions are being analyzed and the results will be part of the final LA River STEW-MAP report.

The goal of STEW-MAP is to be both research and application. The results can offer a better understanding of the scope and impacts of stewardship as well as provide a tool for finding organizations, mobilizing around an issue, and communication.

Nationally, STEW-MAP researchers have worked with stewardship practitioners to build tools appropriate for each particular city. These can include products such as: a searchable database, custom maps and reports, online visualizations, etc. In addition to a forthcoming LA River STEW-MAP report, the research team is working to develop online maps of the stewardship turfs of each organization.

This project is also part of the development of a national multi-city platform to visualize both the STEW-MAP turfs and the network relationships.