Here at the Upper New, we are pleased to announce that we will be hosting a local bioregional “confluence” in parallel with the global r3.0 Conference happening in September 2026. While the r3.0 Conference will be held remotely, with daily sessions available as video conferences or webinars, our local Upper New confluence will be a small gathering of people interested in bioregional learning, planning, and building in the Upper New bioregion. In fact, most of the participants in the conference will be gathered in similar small groups in bioregions all over the world.
Where’s the Upper New bioregion? It’s in northwestern North Carolina and southwestern Virginia, stretching from Blowing Rock to Blacksburg. You can find us on the map below. We encourage you to locate yourself on the map.
If the embedded map is difficult to use, here’s a link to the map.
Quick side note: The featured image for this post, showing a small rock in the bend of a river reflecting clouds, is actually the New River, where it crosses the state line between North Carolina and Virginia. The photograph was captured by Benjamin Erlandson, and is used with his permission.
About the Conference
Taking place from September 8-10, the theme of the 2026 r3.0 Conference is “Bioregional Regeneration as Collapse Resilience: Earth-centric Biocultural Kinship, Knowledge & Governance”. As noted on the conference website:
“The r3.0 Conference kicks off Global Bioregional Month in September 2026 by gathering the bioregionally committed and the bioregional curious for three days online together. Each day will be anchored by a two-hour interactive panel, on the 3 central themes of Relational Kinship, Knowledge Commons, and Self-Governance. These will be bookended by cross-bioregional Reflection Sessions at diverse timings to bridge global time zones. And most of the audience will attend via in-person Confluences organized by bioregional groups globally – last year, more than 50 bioregional groups registered to host Confluences across 6 continents, and we expect even more this year!”
2026 r3.0 Conference
2026 Conference Structure
Each day of the conference is centered around a single interactive panel session, with each day focused on a particular theme.
Day One: Relational Kinship
Day Two: Knowledge Commons
Day Three: Self-Governance
More detail is available about these themes and sessions on the Conference agenda.
Each day of the conference, time will be allotted for local Confluence groups to engage with the recordings of the panel sessions, and to share reflections about the Conference themes, to discuss developments in our own bioregional contexts, and to foster any other discussions unfolding as a result.
Confluence participants will have ample time to engage internally on each day of the r3.0 conference. Due to time zone differences around the world, the r3.0 conference tech team will ensure that panel recordings are available within two hours after panel conclusion, allowing for those of us that cannot “watch live” to catch up on the contents before our reflection sessions.
This is a photograph of the Little River at its confluence with the New River in Virginia. Photograph copyright Benjamin Erlandson, used with permission.
Upper New Confluence Format
As the Upper New is, organizationally speaking, relatively new on the bioregional scene, we have elected to hold a “Living Room” Confluence, which is a smaller self-hosted gathering of approximately 5-10 people. These smaller events are typically geared toward folks who are early along on the pathway to bioregionalism: curious and ready to find out more by engaging with others of similar interest.
Conference Agenda + Schedule
Over the three days of the conference agenda, the schedule follows a stable pattern. Each day, these sessions will occur as follows on eastern time (converted)
9:30AM: Introduction Session (online via r3.0)
10:00AM – 12:00PM: Conference Panel Session (online via r3.0)
4:00PM – 5:30PM: Confluence Reflection Session (in-person/hybrid via Upper New)
Tuesday, September 8th
Conference Introduction: Bioregional Regeneration as Collapse Resilience
On Wednesday and Thursday, there are optional additional reflection sessions at 6:00AM. For the Upper New Confluence, these will be considered opportunities for additional individual solitary reflection time over breakfast, etc.
Confluence Conference Registration
Confirmed participants in the Upper New Confluence will receive access to a customized r3.0 Conference Registration link that allows them to register and attend r3.0 free of charge. If you are a budding bioregionalist in the Upper New bioregion and wish to participate, please contact us to indicate your interest and we’ll be in touch ASAP!
If you know someone in the Upper New bioregion who would be interested in attending this confluence, please do not hesitate to share this post with them and encourage them to sign up for a slot to attend!
Beyond r3.0 – Turtle Island Bioregional Congress
In addition to participating as a confluence host organization, the Upper New will be following up this bioregional experience with another. Upper New Founder Benjamin Erlandson will be attending the 11th Turtle Island Bioregional Congress (TIBC11) from September 15th – 19th. For the first time in 17 years, a Continental-scale Bioregional Congress for all of North America (Turtle Island) will be hosted in-person in Vernonia, Oregon, in the heart of the Cascadia Bioregion.
As a delegate, we will be networking with bioregionalists across the continent of North America, sharing notes and best practices, and building momentum for each other. It’s possible that Dr. Erlandson will be presenting some of the frameworks we’re putting in place here in the Upper New as well.
Protecting the Night, Empowering Our Communities: Announcing “Building the Darkway, Part I”
The Blue Ridge Parkway at Air Bellows Gap during reconstruction and resurfacing.
The Blue Ridge Parkway is globally celebrated for its breathtaking daytime vistas, drawing millions of visitors to our winding mountain roads every year. But half of the Parkway’s story happens after sunset.
As part of our ongoing engagement with the Blue Ridge Parkway Foundation’s Blue Ridge Rising program, we are thrilled to announce the official release of our new position paper: Building the Darkway, Part I: Dark Skies & Tourism Along the Blue Ridge Parkway.
Why Building The Darkway Matters for Our Gateway Communities
This isn’t just a technical manual for stargazers or a rigid set of environmental demands. Building the Darkway is a visionary, high-level blueprint designed specifically for the municipalities, local businesses, and residents who form the backbone of the Parkway corridor.
As tourism evolves, “astrotourism” (travel driven by the desire to see natural, light-pollution-free night skies) is booming. Our region sits on a perceived “goldmine” of natural darkness, but as urban sprawl expands, this valuable economic and ecological asset is slipping away. This paper draws a line in the sand—or rather, a stake in the mountain soil. It explores how we can balance economic growth with common-sense nocturnal conservation. By implementing smart, targeted, and warm-colored outdoor lighting, our communities can:
Boost local economies by attracting high-value, low-impact overnight tourists.
Protect native Appalachian wildlife, from our famous “Blue Ghost” fireflies to migratory birds and salamanders.
Save money and energy by eliminating wasted, poorly aimed light that shines directly into the sky.
Detail of center line on Blue Ridge Parkway pavement
A Call to Action for Virginia and North Carolina Leaders
If you live, work, or serve in government within the Parkway’s gateway counties, this paper was written for you. True paradigm shifts happen from the ground up, and we need municipal leaders, county commissioners, chambers of commerce, and local advocates to help guide this practical transition.
We are explicitly looking to spark civil discourse, collaborative policy changes, and progressive stewardship frameworks in the following counties:
In Virginia: Augusta, Nelson, Rockbridge, Amherst, Botetourt, Bedford, Roanoke, Franklin, Floyd, Patrick, Carroll, and Grayson Counties.
In North Carolina: Surry, Alleghany, Ashe, Watauga, Wilkes, Caldwell, Avery, Burke, McDowell, Mitchell, Yancey, Buncombe, Henderson, Transylvania, Haywood, Jackson, and Swain Counties.
Whether you want to protect the rural heritage of Floyd County, manage high-recreation headwaters in Watauga County, or balance urban-adjacent growth in the Roanoke Region, this paper provides regional models pressure-tested for your specific community’s needs.
As a complement to this position paper, we’ve built an interactive map: Building The Darkway. It is important to be able to explore the area and highlight elements of the proceeding argument in a way that can be visualized for understanding.
In addition to mapping the adjacent counties as gateway communities, we have contextualized the counties (and the Blue Ridge Parkway) within all connected bioregions (USGS sub-basins) and Level III North American ecoregions. Another element of this project that is of importance to us is that a substantial portion of the Blue Ridge Parkway serves as a “boundary” of the Upper New River bioregion, along the Blue Ridge Escarpment and Eastern Continental Divide. As such, we find anything associated with the Blue Ridge Parkway to be of keen interest.
Open Access: Understanding Our Creative Commons License
We want this document to be used as a tool for public education, community town halls, and local policy debates. To ensure it is shared widely while maintaining the integrity of the work, we are releasing the paper under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs (CC BY-NC-ND) License.
Here is what that means in plain English for you, your organization, or your local government:
Attribution (BY): You are free to download, share, and distribute this paper, but you must give appropriate credit to the authors and link back to our original work.
NonCommercial (NC): You cannot use this paper, or any part of it, for commercial marketing purposes or sell it for profit.
NoDerivatives (ND): If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you may not distribute the modified material publicly. We want the integrity of this collective regional framework to remain intact.
We encourage you to download the PDF, email it to your local representatives, share it with your neighborhood associations, and bring its concepts to your next planning board meeting.
Let’s work together to ensure the Blue Ridge region thrives by day—and stays beautifully, economically, and ecologically dark by night.
Sunset view from the Blue Ridge Parkway near Balsam, NC.
The Executive Summary of the position paper is included below for a detailed overview of each section’s findings and recommendations.
Executive Summary
Dark Skies and Responsible Outdoor Lighting
This position document introduces DarkSky International as the primary global authority combating light pollution and outlines its International Dark Sky Places (IDSP) certification programs. For the Blue Ridge Parkway and its adjacent regions, the most applicable tracks are International Dark Sky Parks (for public conservation lands) and International Dark Sky Communities (for adjacent towns enacting protective local lighting ordinances). To guide these local transitions, the document highlights the Five Principles for Responsible Outdoor Lighting, which require all outdoor light to be useful, targeted downwards, low-level, controlled with timers or motion sensors, and warm-colored to minimize atmospheric scattering and blue-light disruption.
The Blue Ridge Rising Project and Action Plan
The Blue Ridge Rising initiative is a regional project hosted by the Blue Ridge Parkway Foundation to unite 29 gateway communities and counties across Virginia and North Carolina. Backed by a $5.1 million Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) grant and over $4.2 million in matching funds, the project implements a shared Action Plan built upon six elements: Marketing, Visitor Experience, Advocacy, Resource Protection, Education, and Capacity. Within this regional framework, Blue Ridge Rising aims to protect dark skies by measuring sky quality, replacing non-compliant lighting fixtures on public lands, and supporting gateway communities in achieving official Dark Sky certification.
Mapping The Darkway and Wildlife Migration
The document introduces an interactive map (“Building The Darkway”) that integrates adjacent gateway counties within their broader connected ecoregions and bioregions, such as the Upper New River sub-basin. This geographical framework directly connects to The Nature Conservancy’s “Migrations in Motion” project, which models how species must travel northward and upward to survive changing global climates. The continuous, public land of the Appalachian Corridor serves as a continent-scale “climate superhighway” and a core refuge within the broader Eastern Wildway. Keeping this corridor wild and dark is essential to prevent urban sprawl from blocking the natural migrations of mammals, birds, and amphibians.
Perceiving and Navigating Roads: Relevant Ecologies
To understand animal movement, the document bridges road ecology (the environmental impacts of transportation networks) with sensory ecology (how animals perceive their surroundings). Every species occupies a unique biological sensory bubble known as an Umwelt and navigates its environment by interpreting natural communication signals—a field of study known as biosemiotics. When migratory species encounter the Blue Ridge Parkway, their sensory worlds face severe disruption from “sensory pollution”. This includes acoustic shuttering from engine noise, flat asphalt surfaces that trick insects into laying eggs on roads, and blinding high-beam headlights that temporarily wipe out nocturnal vision.
Ecological Consequences of Artificial Night Lighting (ALAN)
The document establishes critical distinctions between Artificial Light at Night (ALAN) and superfluous, wasted light. Light pollution acts as a pervasive ecological stressor that combines with habitat loss and climate change to create a destructive “combinatorial crucible” for wildlife. Applying the economic theory of the Jevons Paradox, the document demonstrates how increasing lighting efficiency historically rebounds into an exponential increase in total light pollution rather than energy savings. Using a “panarchy” systems framework, the document maps these compounding threats across terrestrial food webs (insect population declines), marine-land interfaces, and aerial migration corridors.
Regional Biospherical Impacts and Specific Appalachian Threats
On a regional scale, ALAN causes widespread biospherical damage, resulting in plant lifecycle disruptions (phenological shifts), pollination failures, wildlife disorientation, and altered predator-prey dynamics. The document identifies severe ecological threats to species unique to the Southern Appalachian and Upper New River bioregions. Species highly dependent on absolute natural darkness—such as the rare “Blue Ghost” firefly, native Appalachian salamanders, and aquatic hellbenders—face population instability due to encroaching human light domes.
Darkness: Ecological Crisis and Human Impact
The document frames the loss of natural darkness as a “Tragedy of the Commons,” where a shared public resource is degraded by unmanaged human intrusion. This crisis is driven by anthropocentrism—the culturally biased belief that human convenience exempts society from ecological limits. The paper chronicles how human nocturnal activities colonize the night, causing intrusive disruptions across twelve distinct sensory channels and fundamentally reorganizing vulnerable ecosystems.
Systems Literacy, Leverage Points, and Ecosemiotics
To reverse these trends, the document applies systems theory and Donella Meadows’ framework of “leverage points” to design effective conservation interventions. These range from shallow adjustments (modifying local lighting parameters and codes) to mid-level changes (improving informational flows) and deep paradigm shifts (reorganizing how human societies value darkness). By utilizing ecosemiotics—the tracking of ecosystem transitions through biological indicators—and integrating Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK), communities can shift their mental models from viewing darkness as a commercial resource to viewing it as a shared kinship.
Commodification vs. Community Stewardship
The document offers an ecocentric critique of commercializing darkness strictly as a tourist commodity. Promoting unregulated “dark sky tourism” risks introducing destructive consumer behaviors into fragile mountain habitats. Instead, the document advocates for decommodifying the night sky through grassroots, sector-by-sector community stewardship. This includes instituting a strict “visitor contract” to govern tourist behavior, weaving nocturnal conservation into public education, and shifting local tourism economies from consumption to active biosphere protection.
Bioregional Stewardship Framework and Policy Models
A multi-scalar Bioregional Stewardship Framework is proposed for the Blue Ridge corridor, utilizing a “tri-lens implementation strategy” to establish a protective regional “stewardship overlay”. This model is pressure-tested across distinct pilot zones categorized by human impact tiers: Tier 1 Urban-Adjacent Hubs (Roanoke Region, VA), Tier 2 High-Recreation Headwaters (Watauga County, NC; Augusta County, VA; Swain County, NC), and Tier 3 Rural Agrarian Buffers (Floyd County, VA; Alleghany County, NC). To fund this transition, the document outlines concrete policy mechanisms, including green taxes, visitor user fees, redirected marketing budgets via “Chambers of Stewardship,” and a structured degrowth tracking system to actively engineer the reduction of regional light footprints.
Practical Synthesis: Getting to Darkness
The final section provides an operational case study focused on managing dark skies tourism within the Elkin-to-Doughton section of the Parkway. It outlines the logistical and financial realities of dark-sky event planning, covering environmental impact calculations, ambient traffic management protocols, and using urban light domes as educational tools. The paper presents a comprehensive rollout budget for a zero-emission Blue Ridge Parkway Electric Shuttle Experience Tour, addressing technical infrastructure hurdles like mobile vs. stationary EV charging, ticket pricing equity, and the expansion of regenerative camping educational programs. Ultimately, the paper provides prioritized recommendations for the Blue Ridge Rising action plan.
We’re seeking narratives about Hurricane Helene and the resulting floods and landslides, etc. that occurred across the Appalachian region: fiction and nonfiction, geolocated photo essays, documentary and fiction films as well.
Sept 27, 2024: The New River flooding under the US 21 bridge on the border of North Carolina and Virginia.
Join us for Friday Afternoon in the Universe, an open discourse multigenerational learning community hosted by The Upper New. This post is a quick introduction to the many ways any person can participate in the global Friday community.
Friday Topics Schedule
Date
Topic
4/24/2026
Bioregions
5/22/2026
Sufficiency
6/26/2026
Foodsheds
7/24/2026
Composting
8/28/2026
Ecosemiotics
9/25/2026
Energy
10/23/2026
Darkness
11/27/2026
Commons
12/25/2026
Waste
We have put together a master Google Calendar for Friday Afternoon In The Universe, listing the meeting times and locations for our Sparta-based discussion series. Eventually this calendar will include globally relevant “pre-Friday” deadlines for document submissions, etc.
Ways to Participate
There are six easy ways to participate in any Friday discussion group.
Listserv
Local Discussion Group (Sparta or elsewhere)
Facilitator
Notetaker
Listserv Moderator
Discussion Host (Where You Are)
Keep scrolling for basic information about how to participate in each of these ways. You can also read more in-depth information about Friday Afternoon In The Universe.
Listserv
Everyone who participates in our Friday discussions anywhere in the world will be a member of the listserv, as this is the primary mode of communication for the Friday community.
It is perfectly acceptable for people in the Friday community to participate only through the listserv, engaging in online conversations at any pace, and thus having access to all the resources generated around each topic, made available through the shared Google Drive.
You can visit the listserv on Google Groups and ask to join. You’ll fill out a quick form and then we’ll be notified, and an admin will approve your request.
Friday: Local Discussion Group
Whether you’re within reasonable travel distance of Sparta or elsewhere, you can participate in any in-person discussion wherever they are happening in the world. It’s preferred if you would register in advance at your Friday location of choice, but, as the old saying goes, walk-ins are welcome too.
All the libraries in the Upper New bioregion.
We’re hoping that we can have a satellite Friday session at every library in the Upper New Bioregion, as well as every library in our nine neighboring bioregions.
All the libraries across the Upper New and our nine neighboring bioregions.
Here’s a table showing the counts of all library branches in each bioregion.
Bioregion
Library Count
Upper New
19
Upper Catawba
31
Watauga
6
South Fork Holston
16
North Fork Holston
4
Middle New
12
Upper James
7
Upper Roanoke
28
Upper Dan
16
Upper Yadkin
24
TOTAL
163
Imagine 163 Friday discussions happening across this cluster of bioregions. If five people showed up to each of the 163 sessions, that would mean around 800 people would be participating in the same topic of discussion at once!
We’re always looking for people to volunteer as discussion facilitators. If you’re a discussion facilitator, basically it’s your job to make sure the discussion runs smoothly, following our guidelines.
We’re putting the finishing touches on a Facilitator Guidebook, so anyone who decides to volunteer will have plenty of support to ensure the job is done well.
A map showing all counties that overlap with the northern half of the Upper New and our neighbor bioregions.
Every Friday discussion needs at least one notetaker, and preferably two. If more than two notetakers show up for a Friday discussion, that would be most excellent. The more, the merrier.
What notetakers do is use notebooks to take handwritten notes about what is happening and what is said within the discussion, and by whom. These notes are then compiled and shared back to the community for inclusion in the Friday shared drive.
Notetakers are the people who build the analog bridge between the “digital detox” of the Friday discussions with the online community of the Friday listserv and shared drive.
A map showing all counties that overlap with the southern half of the Upper New and our neighbor bioregions.
Listserv Moderator
As the online Friday community grows, we know we’re going to need listserv moderators.
With the Friday listserv, this will mostly entail helping to manage new member sign-ups and invitations, as well as moderating the messages of new members. All new members’ posts to the listserv are moderated by default during initial membership in the community.
Perhaps the most influential involvement possible for anyone in the Friday community is to volunteer as a discussion host, setting up another satellite Friday somewhere in the biosphere.
Consider putting in a diagram showing the minimum number of volunteers needed to start a Satellite Friday.
Host: can be one person or multiple or organization
Facilitator: can be same as host(s) or additional people
Notetaker: need at least one for each Friday discussion
Participants: really, one person other than the facilitator and notetaker is all it takes, but ideally at least three people would be an acceptable minimum for a discussion event
As we are with the facilitators, we’re putting the finishing touches on a Discussion Host Guidebook, so anyone who decides to volunteer will have plenty of support to ensure the job is done well.
Imagine, finding a local Friday group wherever you happen to be traveling, being able to walk in and have a discussion that is synchronized with the global topical schedule.
Map showing libraries of the continental United States.
According to data from OpenStreetMap, there are approximately 17500 library branches in the continental United States. If five people held a Friday discussion at each branch, that means 87,500 people would be participating in the same topic of discussion at once!
What about all of North America?
Map showing libraries of North America
And South America and Africa?
Map showing libraries of South America and Africa
And Europe and Asia?
Map showing libraries of Europe and Asia.
And Oceania?
Map showing libraries of Oceania
Imagine Friday discussions across the globe.
According to data from OpenStreetMap, there are more than 97,000 library branches in the biosphere. If five people held a Friday discussion at each branch, that means 485,000 people would be participating in the same topic of discussion over the course of an international day! That’s almost half a million people.
We’ve got two workshops coming up at The Upper New, hosted at our headquarters in Sparta, North Carolina:
Monday, March 23: Watersheds as Bioregions
Tuesday, March 24: Good Citizen Science (iNaturalist)
The workshops will take place at 115 Atwood Street, Sparta, NC, in the same building complex that houses the Alleghany County Public Library and the Alleghany Campus of Wilkes Community College. (This building is also known as the BDC.)
The Upper New is seeking volunteer bioregional correspondents across the biosphere to contribute to a library of bioregional resources for ecological learning. Essentially, we want folks to serve as groundtruthers reporting evidence of bioregional activities, wherever their chosen bioregion may be within the biosphere. We currently have a couple volunteers in place, including one focusing on permaculture as she engages in various bioregions in South America.
At face value, Local Watersheds (LW) is a web-based system where any person on the planet can geolocate themselves within their current watershed boundary, wherever they may be at the time. They can then access curated information about the watershed.
At its core, LW is a tool for understanding bioregions and bioregionalism: bioregional learning, planning, building.
Quick tip: If you’re in a big hurry, feel free to go ahead and support the Local Watersheds project through our Givebutter campaign.
“The rejuvenation of local economies will also require the development of different forms of technology…They share common traits of being smaller in scale, generally based on renewable energy, relatively less expensive, widely dispersed, locally owned and controlled, and environmentally benign. The discussion of alternative technology, pro and con, has tended to focus too much on tools and too little on materials and bioregionally appropriate designs and procedures that reduce the need for expensive and destructive technologies. Pliny Fiske in Austin, Texas has developed a catalog of bioregionally available and cost-competitive building materials, such as caliche and mesquite. Similar inventories need to be done elsewhere as an alternative to importing expensive environmentally damaging materials. We need similar catalogs of bioregionally appropriate methods of forestry, land management, and agriculture that minimize the need for energy and high technology.” (p. 74-75)
Orr, D. W. (1991). Ecological Literacy: Education and the Transition to a Postmodern World. (n.p.): State University of New York Press.
As such, LW is an interactive global atlas accessing nested networks of watersheds as bioregions, identifying inventories of local, renewable, sustainable materials and services as bioregional catalogs in service of local communities and economies within limits. LW is a tool for local communities to build, curate, and update bioregional catalogs for their watersheds, and to share these catalogs with the world, in service of bioregional learning, planning, building, and stewardship.
Potential Uses of the Local Watersheds Application
Beyond simply cataloging inventories of watersheds, we foresee a variety of potential uses for LW, including teaching and learning, research, presentation, and planning.
Use LW as an exploratory learning tool, perusing maps, etc.
Use LW to conduct ecosocial research about one or more watersheds/bioregions
Use LW to collect evidence for a public or private argument, presentation, or discussion (such as a town hall meeting)
Use LW as a tool for bioregional planning to build a bioregional community.
Let’s take a brief look at how LW could be used for bioregional learning, planning, and building. (These elements of usage for LW are derived heavily from the work of Robert Thayer, which he presents in his book LifePlace.)
Bioregional Learning
Elements of bioregional learning include mapping, spatial analysis, and regional geography, regional geology and climate, bioregional flora and fauna, hydrology and watershed analysis, water resource management, landscape ecology and restoration. To be more specific, consider mapping and restoration.
Mapping and Geography
Mapping, spatial analysis, and regional geography: People would use LW to “study the local bioregion from a hierarchical physiographic perspective, learning mapping skills, studying geographic principles, and gradually focusing closer and closer on the home place.” (Thayer, R. L., 2003)
Ecology, Stewardship, and Restoration
Landscape ecology and restoration: People would use LW to “study the dynamic spatial patterns and distributions of species within the bioregion, learning to identify, protect, and restore the critical habitats, corridors, and networks upon which the ecological integrity of the region depends.” (Thayer, R. L., 2003)
Bioregional Planning
Thayer gives a brief introduction to bioregional planning (as compared to traditional planning practices) in LifePlace:
“the trends in such processes are toward increased respect for the limits and potentials of the region; reduction in the scale of physical intervention; a finer-grained, more regional self-sufficiency; ever-broadening grassroots constituency and public support; more incorporation of local wisdom from long-term residents and those intending to stay; intersection of sustainability goals and regionally distinct characteristics; and adaptation to different scales and different situations with similar, but not necessarily identical, outcomes or results.” (p. 173)
Thayer, R. L. (2003). LifePlace: Bioregional Thought and Practice. Ukraine: University of California Press.
Within this context, let’s consider four types of planning activities where people might find LW to be a useful set of tools: mapping, monitoring, indexing, and footprinting.
Mapping
One technique is to seek and record all mappable information about the bioregion. In this fashion, maps become social research and action tools whose value is at least as great as that of the single-resource data layers (e.g. soils, hydrology, vegetation, slope) typical of top-down ecological planning.
Monitoring
Monitoring of ecosystem conditions is another important bioregional planning tool: monitoring of water quality and quantity, wildlife and fish populations, recreational or transit use, climate conditions, and the like.
Indexing
Indexing involves focusing on a physical parameter such as water, energy, or food; thus an analyst can determine how much is produced within a given region versus how much is consumed. Resulting ratios can be used to gauge relative self-sufficiency versus dependency on external supplies. Periodic measurement of these benchmarks allows relative progress toward or away from desired sustainable conditions to be determined.
Footprinting
Ecological footprinting is where someone calculates the land-equivalent areas needed for sustainable production of life needs, such as water, energy, food, or wood. This is a process conceptualized by William Rees and Mathis Wackernagel, among others.
Visual mockup of the Local Watersheds interactive map interface, showing the Upper New River bioregion with a single HUC-10 (watershed) selected and highlighted in the associated attribute table. Base map is the Esri World Topographic Map licensed under the Esri Master License Agreement.
Bioregional Building
Beyond planning, there is bioregional building, which entails executing the elements within a bioregional plan, in a sense.
There are three major areas of bioregional building:
Biodiversity Framework
Agricultural Heart
Regenerative Communities and Infrastructure
Below are some examples of building activities that could take place in each of these three areas, using LW as a toolset while conducting these activities.
Biodiversity Framework
Living corridors
Protect what remains of natural river, stream, and slough corridors and enhance their capacity to provide habitat for biodiversity, species mobility, water quality, erosion control, flood control, and amenity values for both private landowners and the public.
Whole watersheds
Plan for and manage whole watersheds from headwaters to confluence or outflow.
Conservation areas
Define joint public-private natural areas and manage them as quilts of conservation.
Agricultural Heart
Farmland preservation
Identify and preserve in perpetuity the best farmlands in the valley and mitigate the loss of agricultural land by preserving a great deal more of it than is developed.
“Foodshed”
Consider the bioregion as a “foodshed” and support local consumption of locally produced foods.
Expanded farming role
Find ways to pay farmers for the ecological cultural and stewardship services they provide. This is where the “food not lawns” idea may also fit in.
Regenerative Communities and Infrastructure
Compact cities and towns
Grow cities and towns inward and upward, not outward. Locate “new” development on “old” sites.
New village centers
Redesign aging shopping centers as dense vertically integrated mixed land use centers containing commercial shops, offices, recreation, civic amenities, residential buildings.
Regenerative transit
Provide multimodal bus-bicycle-rail transit using fees extracted from the real costs of automobile sprawl.
Local Energy
Generate energy as locally as possible, at appropriate scales. Avoid transmission loss at all costs.
An Open Educational Focus
Our intention for Local Watersheds for all the platform tools to serve as an open educational resource that will be registered as an OER Hub through OER Commons.
Hopefully, you’re already beginning to think about how you could use a toolset like Local Watersheds to conduct your own bioregional learning, planning, and building!
What’s the Real Purpose of Local Watersheds?
We’re creating LW to provide people with a global local toolset for bioregional planning, teaching, and learning, made available as open educational resources (OER). The motivation is to foster ecological literacy, systems wisdom, and ecocentric mindsets, as well as bioregional perspectives, stewardship, and engagement through the planning, teaching and learning uses of this toolset.
What does success for Local Watersheds look like?
Success for LW means that users around the biosphere are accessing and contributing high quality information elements to the database inventory with increasing frequency, and that teaching, learning, and building/planning activities using LW tools are happening with increasing frequency and regularity throughout the biosphere. Success means that more bioregional communities are defined and cultivated across the biosphere.
Intended Impact of Local Watersheds
Who are the “targeted audiences” of Local Watersheds?
At full capacity, Local Watersheds should serve all humans in the biosphere, in service of all living beings.
As a pilot, in the Upper New River basin/watershed/bioregion, there are approximately 350,000 humans. This audience is our alpha target.
The nine neighboring basins (Middle New, Upper James, Upper Roanoke, Upper Dan, Upper Yadkin, Upper Catawba, Watauga, South Fork Holston, North Fork Holston) contain a much larger population of humans (including parts of the Charlotte Metropolitan area). This audience is our beta target.
The United States (340 million), Canada (41 million), and Mexico (131 million) will be included in our North American outreach campaign. This is an audience of ~512 million humans.
One of the questions we were asked about Local Watersheds is: What is the estimated number of lives impacted by this project once it is fully deployed?
As we mentioned above: a successful North American outreach campaign includes an audience of ~512M humans, and a ten percent return on this campaign means impacting the lives of 5 million humans. As this is a global project in service of all humans in the biosphere, if we are to define “fully deployed” for the LW project, this would mean that all humans have access to the LW platform (regardless of frequency of use).
So, when fully deployed, we would hope for Local Watersheds to impact billions of human lives.
We’re not stopping with humans. The idea is to impact the lives of all species with which we humans share the biosphere, as a result of increased ecological literacy, ecocentric mindsets, and bioregional stewardship achieved by humans in service of our biospherical community members.
A foundational purpose of Local Watersheds, and of bioregionalism in general, is to take on ecocentric mindsets to move beyond anthropomorphism, anthropocentrism, which is also called human exceptionalism or human supremacism.
Local Watersheds should help us all understand that we share the biosphere with all living beings, and LW can help us to take the steps necessary to reorient our existences to share this space from the perspective of interspecific ecological justice.
Who will be the primary users of Local Watersheds?
Primary users of LW would include contributors, groundtruthers, administrators, learners, teachers, researchers, planners, presenters, and journalists.
Primary use cases would include teaching, learning, research projects, bioregional planning, evidence-based arguments, articles, white papers, demos, presentations, and public discussions.
Happening Next: Develop For Good
Here’s the really good news about Local Watersheds: we’re already getting serious traction! The Upper New has been accepted to join Develop for Good’s upcoming Winter 2026 project batch.
Our cohort runs from October 27, 2025 to February 21, 2026. Develop for Good has assembled a volunteer team of undergraduate students to work on a web application design for Local Watersheds.
In their communications with us, Develop for Good informed us that the student team’s work “may include user research, information architecture, visual design mockups, interactive prototypes, and recommendations for implementation platforms. The deliverable will be design documentation that your technical contractors can use to guide actual development.”
Develop for Good also emphasized their excitement about us taking an innovative approach to ecological education, and look forward to working with you!
More about Develop For Good
Develop For Good is a recent phenomenon, hatched during the COVID pandemic, when universities sent millions of students home, and internship and employment opportunities essentially vanished overnight:
“Spurred by the critical needs of both students looking for work and nonprofits seeking digital support, Computer Science students at Stanford created Develop for Good. We support diverse college students as they build software for nonprofits under industry mentorship. Our mission is to ensure every college student has the opportunity to gain real-world, high-impact tech experience, all while creating meaningful solutions for the nonprofit sector.”
Here Develop For Good explains a bit more about their “cohort” approach to design work.
“We offer 16-week batches of custom, made-to-order services, which can include a combination of our sprint types depending on the scope of your needs and what a project team can achieve in this timeframe. Each project team consists of the following members: 1 student Product Manager, 1 student Design or Technical Manager, 4-6 Designers and/or Engineers, up to 1 Team Mentor based on availability, and additional 1:1 Mentors based on availability. Together, the members of a team will dedicate ~800 hours of technical work…”
A map of the Upper New River basin bioregion, showing boundaries of each HUC-10 watershed within. Base map is derived from OpenStreetMap. OpenStreetMap is open data, licensed under the Open Data Commons Open Database License (ODbL) by the OpenStreetMap Foundation (OSMF)
Support Local Watersheds!
If you think this Local Watersheds project is a great idea, there is already a great way for you to help The Upper New get the project up and running: you can support the project through our Givebutter Campaign.
We’re raising $5000 to extend the design and development “runway” for The Local Watersheds Project.
This includes supporting our in-house efforts to develop an “alpha” prototype database and application that can be tested locally in the Upper New River basin (05050001) and our nine neighboring basins, such as the Upper Yadkin (03040101) and Watauga (06010103) basins.
Please consider supporting our work today. Thank you!
Join the Upper New Team: Become our first volunteer Managing Editor for our publication, The Upper New Review.
To find out more about us and the Managing Editor role, please keep reading.
The Upper New
The Upper New, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) educational literary nonprofit. We are an ecological educational organization fostering ecological literacy and ecological stewardship at local and global scales. Our first project (of many educational projects), launched in 2023, is The Upper New Review.
The Upper New Review
Fostering place-based creative works around the globe, The Upper New Review is an ecological literary arts hybrid digital multimedia publication focused on place-based expression of creativity in all its forms, wherever they occur on Earth.
The Upper New Review is a place-based socio-cultural archive for bioregionalism, ecological literacy, and sense of place, serving as a curated clearinghouse for expression, exploration, research, learning, design, and stewardship for the populations and communities of all watersheds of the world, exploring the Upper New River basin as our home and bioregion. We hope our curation and publication serves as an entry portal to a much deeper understanding of our relationships with the natural world and its ecological complexities.
Our intention is to treat our publication, whatever forms it may take, as one subset of the open educational resources (OERs) we intend to give away to all teachers and lifelong learners, wherever they may exist in the biosphere.
We see The Upper New Review as one window in the local-global ecological schoolhouse The Upper New is building over time. Moving forward, 2024 and 2025 will be a “reboot and grow wisely” phase 2.0 for The Upper New Review.
Position Description: Volunteer Managing Editor
We are looking for a volunteer Managing Editor to manage daily operations for The Upper New Review, working closely with The Upper New founder (and Publisher of The Upper New Review) Dr. Benjamin Erlandson to steer the publication in the direction(s) it needs to move, as aligned with the ecological mission and vision of The Upper New, Inc.
To fill this Managing Editor role, we need someone with quite a bit of experience in the traditional and modern hybrid digital sectors of the literary arts industry. We need someone autonomous, a self-starter with a “take charge” mentality who also understands how to dovetail progressive work into an existing decision cycle with an established company leadership team.
Moving forward, The Upper New Review intends to maintain appropriately flexible year-long submission windows for written works (prose and poetry), audiovisual works (visual arts, films/animations, audio recordings, performance art, interactive experiences), Research Narratives, Stewardship Stories, and proposals/pitches for various Upper New projects and initiatives that often cannot be easily categorized.
Maintaining a variety of channels of content acquisition, the Managing Editor will work with Upper New leadership to polish and maintain the protocols we are fine tuning to manage our highly selective review and publication process across these modalities, including our intention to treat all submitting and published creators as members of our lifelong ecological learning communities of practice.
Volunteer Managing Editor Responsibilities
Manage all submission calls/opportunities across platforms used by The Upper New Review (e.g., Submittable, Duosuma, etc.)
Manage reviewers and editors throughout the review/publication protocol as relevant for all incoming submissions
Manage communication with submitters as relevant, throughout the publication process
Manage drafting, editing, and publication of accepted works across all the digital platforms associated with The Upper New Review (e.g., Ghost, Vimeo, SoundCloud, Substack, etc.)
Provide regular update reports to the publisher for leadership decision support
Meet regularly with publisher for continued development of The Upper New Review
Plan and execute digital publishing workflow solutions and initiatives for The Upper New website and digital ecosystem
Assist The Upper New with producing intelligent, intentional outreach to creative individuals and groups across a variety of communication scenarios relevant to traditional and hybrid/digital publishing
Work autonomously and with other members of the Upper New team to complete all assigned engagement projects in a timely manner
Manage relationships with individuals and groups in service of improved digital publishing experiences for The Upper New
Practice systems thinking and systems wisdom within any number of relevant communities of practice
Engage as a lifelong learner
Defy the disciplines
Experience
3-5 years experience as literary editor
3+ years experience as Managing Editor, preferably in a hybrid/digital publishing environment
Experience planning and executing multimodal transdisciplinary publication projects preferred, but not required
Proficiency with Google Workspace
Proficiency with project management cloud systems (e.g. Trello, Notion, etc.)
Proficiency with Submittable, Duosuma, and Chill Subs platforms (among others) for submission acquisition and management
Proficiency with POINT or a similar team/people management platform
Superb editing skills alongside written and verbal communication skills
Proactive problem solving ability
Excellent time management, organizational, and multitasking skills
Proficient in SEO, performance metrics, and data analysis
Strong leadership skills
Able to work independently and in relevant team structures
Comfortable with remote/hybrid workflows and environments
Education
BA in literary arts, journalism, marketing, communications, or similar field of study required
MA/MFA in relevant field required (or provide evidence of equivalent experience)
PhD in relevant field preferred
Apply: Volunteer Managing Editor
To apply for this position, please fill out our application form, hosted on Jotform.
Prior to applying, be prepared to answer the following questions:
Why are you interested in joining The Upper New team to serve as volunteer Managing Editor of our publication?
What draws you to be a part of the global mission and vision of The Upper New?
Which elements of your previous editorial experiences do you think align you as the best person to serve as the Managing Editor of The Upper New Review?
Please give us one or two examples of how you might “push the envelope” to expand the capabilities and sophistication of a hybrid digital multimedia publication to serve as a tool for increasing ecological literacy.
You will also need to include your current resume or CV as part of the application process.
Click or tap the button below to be sent to the form.
