Great work starts with a great plan. For the Kenai River area, we’re lucky to have had many brilliant minds over the years put their heads together on how to best steward our watershed for future generations of healthy fish, wildlife, and communities. These documents represent our highest long-term intentions from some of our most engaged and experienced community members.
In fact, so many great local planning documents have been written that it can be a challenge to know where to start using them. Further, sometimes the various agencies and organizations that publish these plans are not fully aware of each other’s mutual goals, like ships passing in the night. But we can do better. The more we know about how we already want to work together, the more we can accomplish, sooner.
Thus was the inspiration for an informal project Kenai Watershed Forum began in 2021. We reviewed and summarized a handful of local plans with natural resource management goals, which are listed at the end of this post. The majority of these plans, some of which are hundreds of pages, were assessed in 2021 by KWF staff Jack Buban, and organized into the spreadsheet linked here. The document is an achievement, but is still somewhat an overwhelming avalanche of information. How should we use these plans, where do we start?
With the advent of widely-available artificial intelligence chatbots like ChatGPT, we wanted to see what they could do to help. We provided ChatGPT with the summary spreadsheet linked above along with a few other documents, and tested prompts to help identify where mutual goals and priorities exist. You can see the specific back-and-forth conversation here.
The resulting output is shared at the end of this post, and is striking in several ways:
- None of the recommendations are unfamiliar ideas. The ChatGPT analysis highlights fundamental shared goals like habitat protection zoning, wetlands mapping and assessment, and addressing aquatic invasive species.
- An “overlap matrix” produced by ChatGPT is a useful visual, although the first version it suggested was highly incomplete.
- Knowing that similar goals are described in multiple, independent, page-referenced planning documents provides a powerful tool for future grant writing.
Artificial intelligence is of course just that – artificial. Like artificial flavoring, it can’t really ever capture the collective wisdom and detail of the original documents. We can’t control everything that is happening behind the scenes with this kind of AI-aided analysis, thus we should by no means consider the results complete. Some results may even be total hallucinations. But, we can see that AI can be a powerful tool for getting a foothold on what might otherwise be a difficult mountain of information.
The kind of exercise described here is a reminder for us to regularly check back in on KWF’s fundamentals. We look forward to hearing from you about what you think, and hope you’ll join us!
See the ChatGPT conversation prompts here. Final response posted below.
*** All content below here was produced by ChatGPT ***
Kenai Peninsula Borough Management Plans Analyzed
- Kenai River Review, 1978
- Kenai River Comprehensive Management Plan (KRSMA), 1997
- Kenai Peninsula Borough Comprehensive Plan (KPB), 2005 & 2019
- Kenai Peninsula Fish Habitat Strategic Plan (KPFHP), 2010
- Kenai National Wildlife Refuge Comprehensive Plan (KNWR), 2010
- City of Soldotna Comprehensive Plan, 2011
- City of Kenai Comprehensive Plan, 2016
- Kenai Peninsula Fish Habitat Partnership Conservation Action Plan, 2022
- Kenai Peninsula Fish Habitat Partnership Climate Change Supplement, 2022
Detailed Breakdown of Overlapping Goals in Kenai Peninsula Borough Management Plans
Key Overlapping Priorities
- Nonpoint Source Pollution – Use sustainable design in public development to manage stormwater, retain native vegetation, and reduce impervious surfaces.
- Wetlands – Mapping, understanding, and protecting wetlands through funding, assessments, and conservation strategies.
- Invasive Aquatic Organisms – Monitoring, controlling, and eradicating invasive species like pike and elodea to protect native fish habitats.
- Habitat Protection Zoning – Zoning policies to direct public access and prevent habitat damage while promoting sustainable development.
- Bank Protection and Erosion – Establish erosion control measures and bank protection zones along sensitive river areas.
- Water Quantity – Prohibit new dams/diversions that reduce essential stream flows and protect fish habitats.
- Fish Passage – Prioritize the replacement of culverts and bridges to restore normal stream function and fish passage.
- Setback Measures – Review and improve riparian setback measures to enhance water quality and habitat protection.
- General Water Quality Practices – Protect riparian areas, wetlands, and streams to enhance water quality through conservation.
Priority Area Summaries
- Nonpoint Source Pollution
- Present in: KRSMA (Page 45), KPB (Page 67, 2019 Plan), City of Soldotna (Page 32, 2011 Plan), 2022 Conservation Action Plan (Page 28), KNWR (Section 3.25)
- Focus: Sustainable design, stormwater management, native vegetation retention
- Education and Outreach: Increase public awareness on nonpoint source pollution and encourage sustainable practices (KPB, Page 70), (2022 Climate Change Supplement, Page 15)
- Wetlands
- Present in: KRSMA (Page 53), KPFHP (Page 22, 2010 Plan), KPB (Page 58, 2005 Plan), City of Soldotna (Page 29, 2011 Plan), City of Kenai (Page 41, 2016 Plan), 2022 Conservation Action Plan (Page 18), KNWR (Section 3.10), Kenai River Review (Page 17)
- Focus: Wetland mapping, funding, ecological assessments, conservation planning
- Education and Outreach: Provide workshops and materials on wetland protection (KPFHP, Page 24), (2022 Conservation Action Plan, Page 30)
- Invasive Aquatic Organisms
- Present in: 2022 Conservation Action Plan (Page 14), KNWR (Section 3.7), KPB (Page 71, 2019 Plan)
- Focus: Monitoring and eradicating elodea, pike, and other invasive species threatening aquatic habitats.
- Education and Outreach: Public education campaigns to prevent the spread of invasive species (2022 Conservation Action Plan, Page 16)
- Habitat Protection Zoning
- Present in: KRSMA (Page 66), KPB (Page 70, 2019 Plan), City of Kenai (Page 55, 2016 Plan), 2022 Conservation Action Plan (Page 25), Kenai River Review (Page 19)
- Focus: Zoning policies to minimize habitat damage, guide public access, and protect riparian areas
- Education and Outreach: Engage communities to promote habitat zoning (KPB, Page 72), (2022 Climate Change Supplement, Page 20)
