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Place-based social-ecological research is often designed to improve local environmental governance, but it can also inform decisions at larger scales or in other places. However, the focus on local perspectives in such research creates challenges for transferring insights to other locations, and for aggregating understanding to larger scales. In this paper, we discuss how ResNet, a new pan-Canadian network of researchers working on place-based social-ecological case studies via ecosystem services, will face (and hopefully overcome) these challenges while taking advantage of the unique benefits of a place-based approach. Drawing on insights from the literature and from the first 10 years of the Programme for Ecosystem Change and Society (PECS), we outline solutions to six key challenges to multi-scale knowledge integration across place-based cases, and explore how ResNet is employing some of these solutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scattered trees are declining rapidly on Australian farms, a process that threatens landscape sustainability. Addressing this decline requires, in part, understanding how landholders perceive and manage scattered trees. We explored this via a quantitative survey of landholders in the Lachlan catchment of New South Wales. Although landholders are typically aware that scattered trees are declining more rapidly than other trees on the land they manage, they are less likely to actively encourage their regeneration compared to other trees. Landholders believe scattered trees have many private and public benefits, although they often believe their public benefits are lower than those provided by long strips or large patches of trees. Landholders who undertake mixed grazing and cropping are less likely than those who focus solely on grazing to actively encourage regeneration of scattered trees, and more likely to view them as impacting negatively on their agricultural enterprise. Reversing scattered tree decline requires programs to both increase landholder awareness of their public benefits and to address the specific land management constraints faced by different types of landholders when considering protecting and regenerating scattered trees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]