Informing the Development of the Coast Model of the Watershed Game

Abstract

Water resource challenges are increasing in severity and frequency, resulting in negative ecological, social, and economic impacts to communities. This is particularly true for the impacts of nonpoint source pollution, despite efforts to mitigate it in the United States (e.g., Stets et al. 2020). Nonpoint source pollution cannot be managed effectively on a community-by-community basis. Rather, management must occur on a watershed scale. This can be problematic, given that land and water management traditionally have been based on jurisdictional boundaries, whereas watersheds cross multiple political and jurisdictional boundaries (Uitto and Duda 2002).

Development and Application of an Environmental Education Tool (Board Game) for Teaching Integrated Resource Management of the Water Cycle on Coral Reef Islands

“…In this context, board games have been developed as learning materials in various fields such as medicine, chemistry, geology, physics, finance, environment, language, culture, history, and sociology, taking advantage of the concept of learning while having fun [20]. The rise in "serious games" (SGs) [21], which aim to solve social problems, has also led to an increase in the number of SGs on local issues, and recently, many regionally-based SGs have been developed (e.g., [22][23][24][25][26]). Although many SGs on water issues have been created [27], few have focused on the hydrological cycles of small islands in tropical or subtropical regions.…”