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Flash droughts, characterized by their unusually rapid intensification, have garnered increasing attention within the weather, climate, agriculture, and ecological communities in recent years due to their large environmental and socioeconomic impacts. Because flash droughts intensify quickly, they require different early warning capabilities and management approaches than are typically used for slower-developing “conventional” droughts. In this essay, we describe an integrated research-and-applications agenda that emphasizes the need to reconceptualize our understanding of flash drought within existing drought early warning systems by focusing on opportunities to improve monitoring and prediction. We illustrate the need for engagement among physical scientists, social scientists, operational monitoring and forecast centers, practitioners, and policy-makers to inform how they view, monitor, predict, plan for, and respond to flash drought. We discuss five related topics that together constitute the pillars of a robust flash drought early warning system, including the development of 1) a physically based identification framework, 2) comprehensive drought monitoring capabilities, and 3) improved prediction over various time scales that together 4) aid impact assessments and 5) guide decision-making and policy. We provide specific recommendations to illustrate how this fivefold approach could be used to enhance decision-making capabilities of practitioners, develop new areas of research, and provide guidance to policy-makers attempting to account for flash drought in drought preparedness and response plans.

Ecological transformation creates many challenges for public natural resource management and requires managers to grapple with new relationships to change and new ways to manage it. In the context of unfamiliar trajectories of ecological change, a manager can resist, accept, or direct change, choices that make up the resist-accept-direct (RAD) framework. In this article, we provide a conceptual framework for how to think about this new decision space that managers must navigate. We identify internal factors (mental models) and external factors (social feasibility, institutional context, and scientific uncertainty) that shape management decisions. We then apply this conceptual framework to the RAD strategies (resist, accept, direct) to illuminate how internal and external factors shape those decisions. Finally, we conclude with a discussion of how this conceptual framework shapes our understanding of management decisions, especially how these decisions are not just ecological but also social, and the implications for research and management.

Natural resource managers worldwide face a growing challenge: Intensifying global change increasingly propels ecosystems toward irreversible ecological transformations. This nonstationarity challenges traditional conservation goals and human well-being. It also confounds a longstanding management paradigm that assumes a future that reflects the past. As once-familiar ecological conditions disappear, managers need a new approach to guide decision-making. The resist–accept–direct (RAD) framework, designed for and by managers, identifies the options managers have for responding and helps them make informed, purposeful, and strategic choices in this context. Moving beyond the diversity and complexity of myriad emerging frameworks, RAD is a simple, flexible, decision-making tool that encompasses the entire decision space for stewarding transforming ecosystems. Through shared application of a common approach, the RAD framework can help the wider natural resource management and research community build the robust, shared habits of mind necessary for a new, twenty-first-century natural resource management paradigm.

Many cultural benefits of ecosystems are difficult to capture in standard ecosystem services (ES) assessments. Scholars and practitioners often respond to this gap by seeking to develop new scientific methods to capture and integrate the plural values associated with diverse cultural benefits categories. This increasing emphasis on value pluralism represents an essential step toward recognitional justice within ES theory and practice. However, current approaches continue to rest on the assumption that ES-knowledge is only made available to decision-makers through scientific documentation. As a result, scholars and decision-makers fail to account for the role of knowledge pluralism as a core element of recognitional justice, and a key enabling factor for meaningful consideration of the plural values linked to cultural benefits of ES. In this paper, we contribute to a pluralist theory of cultural-benefits-knowledge, and ES-knowledge more broadly. Using a Critical Interpretive Synthesis of environmental management literature, we conceptualize a wider range of knowledge forms that convey cultural benefits, based on the knowledge-as-practice concept in addition to the knowledge-as-product concept more familiar to Western actors. As part of the synthesis, we explore when and how diverse forms of cultural-benefits-knowledge intersect with decision-making processes, and the value aspects and categories of cultural benefits most frequently conveyed by each form of knowledge. Our synthesizing argument offers a critique of the concept of “ES-knowledge-use,” proposing a shift in focus toward “learning opportunities” that exist across phases of decision-making. We demonstrate that attention to a greater diversity of knowledge forms (knowledge pluralism), and a fuller spectrum of opportunities to integrate them (learning opportunities) can support more meaningful consideration of the plural values associated with cultural benefits of ecosystem services (value pluralism). In combination, attention to knowledge pluralism and value pluralism can help bring the ES approach into alignment with environmental justice through the recognition and legitimization of multiple identities, well-beings, and human-nature relationships, as reflected in meaningful consideration of the diverse cultural benefits of ES.

Natural and cultural resource managers are increasingly working with the scientific community to create information on how best to adapt to the current and projected impacts of climate change. Engaging with these managers is a strategy that researchers can use to ensure that scientific outputs and findings are actionable (or useful and usable). In this article, the authors adapt Davidson’s wheel of participation to characterize and describe common stakeholder engagement strategies across the spectrum of Inform, Consult, Participate, and Empower. This adapted framework provides researchers with a standardized vocabulary for describing their engagement approach, guidance on how to select an approach, methods for implementing engagement, and potential barriers to overcome. While there is often no one “best” approach to engaging with stakeholders, researchers can use the objectives of their project and the decision context in which their stakeholders operate to guide their selection. Researchers can also revisit this framework over time as their project objectives shift and their stakeholder relationships evolve.

Drought is an inescapable reality in many regions, including much of the western United States. With climate change, droughts are predicted to intensify and occur more frequently, making the imperative for drought management even greater. Many diverse actors – including private landowners, business owners, scientists, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and managers and policymakers within tribal, local, state, and federal government agencies – play multiple, often overlapping roles in preparing for and responding to drought. Managing water is, of course, one of the most important roles that humans play in both mitigating and responding to droughts; but, focusing only on “water managers” or “water management” fails to capture key elements related to the broader category of drought management. The respective roles played by those managing drought (as distinct from water managers), the interactions among them, and the consequences in particular contexts, are not well understood. Our team synthesized insights from 10 in-depth case studies to understand key facets of decision making about drought preparedness and response. We present a typology with four elements that collectively describe how decisions about drought preparedness and response are made (context and objective for a decision; actors responsible; choice being made or action taken; and how decisions interact with and influence other decisions). The typology provides a framework for system-level understanding of how and by whom complex decisions about drought management are made. Greater system-level understanding helps decision makers, program and research funders, and scientists to identify constraints to and opportunities for action, to learn from the past, and to integrate ecological impacts, thereby facilitating social learning among diverse participants in drought preparedness and response.

Drought is a complex challenge experienced in specific locations through diverse impacts, including ecological impacts. Different professionals involved in drought preparedness and response approach the problem from different points of view, which means they may or may not recognize ecological impacts. This study examines the extent to which interviewees perceive ecological drought in the Upper Missouri Headwaters basin in southwestern Montana. Through semistructured interviews, this research investigates individuals' perceptions of drought by analyzing how they define drought, how they describe their roles related to drought, and the extent to which they emphasize ecological impacts of drought. Results suggest that while most interviewees have an integrated understanding of drought, they tend to emphasize either ecological or nonecological impacts of drought. This focus was termed their drought orientation. Next, the analysis considers how participants understand exposure to drought. Results indicate that participants view drought as a complex problem driven by both human and natural factors. Last, the paper explores understandings of the available solution space by examining interviewees' views on adaptive capacity, particularly factors that facilitate or hinder the ability of the Upper Missouri Headwaters region to cope with drought. Participants emphasized that adaptive capacity is both helped and hindered by institutional, cultural, and economic factors, as well as by available information and past resource management practices. Understanding how interviewees perceive the challenges of drought can shape drought preparedness and response, allowing those designing programs to better align their efforts to the perceptions of their target audience.AMS copyright. Deposited by shareyourpaper.org and openaccessbutton.org. We've taken reasonable steps to ensure this content doesn't violate copyright. However, if you think it does you can request a takedown by emailing help@openaccessbutton.org.

With aquifers around the world stressed by over-extraction, water managers are increasingly turning to managed aquifer recharge (MAR), directly replenishing groundwater resources through injection wells, recharge basins, or other approaches. While there has been progress in understanding the geological and infrastructure-related considerations to make MAR more effective, critical evaluations of its institutional design and implementation are limited. This study assesses MAR projects, using a case study of projects proposed by groundwater sustainability agencies (GSAs) in California to comply with the state's Sustainable Groundwater Management Act of 2014; these projects will almost double the number of MAR projects in the United States. We draw on content analysis of groundwater sustainability plans that propose these projects. We first assess the types of recharge projects proposed and the stated aims of the projects, to assess when and why agencies are turning to MAR as a solution. We find that recharge basins are by far the most common approach, and that GSAs hope these basins will improve water table levels, reduce subsidence, and improve water quality. We then analyze potential barriers to project implementation and assess the projects' ability to achieve the stated goals. Primary concerns identified include a potential lack of available water, a potentially challenging legal framework, and minimal consideration of funding and cumulative land needs. To conclude, we discuss broader considerations for ensuring that MAR is an effective water management tool.

Researchers share tips for supporting research and life at a distance. Researchers share tips for supporting research and life at a distance.

There is substantial literature on the importance of bridging across disciplinary and science–management boundaries. One of the ways commonly suggested to cross boundaries is for participants from both sides of the boundary to jointly produce information (i.e., knowledge co-production). But simply providing tools or bringing people together in the same room is not sufficient. Here we present a case study documenting the mechanisms by which managers and scientists collaborated to incorporate climate change projections into Colorado’s State Wildlife Action Plan. A critical component of the project was the use of a collaborative modeling and visualization workspace: the U.S. Geological Survey’s Resource for Advanced Modeling (RAM). Using video analysis and pre/post surveys from this case study, we examine how the RAM facilitated cognitive and social processes that co-produced a more salient and credible end product. This case provides practical suggestions to scientists and practitioners who want to ...

Creativity is at the heart of successful research. Often the big goal is clear: Earn the PhD, write a winning grant, finish the master’s thesis, reach tenure, think up the next big thing in your field. But knowing which direction to go or how to move concretely toward that big goal is often not clear. Unfortunately, researchers are rarely taught how to manage their creative process, and modern academic life is not structured to optimize creativity. Creativity in Research provides concrete guidance on developing creativity for anyone doing or mentoring research. Based on a curriculum developed at Stanford University’s Hasso Plattner Institute of Design, this book presents key abilities that underlie creative research practice through a combination of scientific literature on creative confidence, experiential exercises, and guided reflection. By focusing attention on how research happens as well as its outputs, you can increase your ability to address research challenges and produce the outputs you care about. Simultaneously, you may also transform your emotional relationship with your work, replacing stress and a harsh inner critic with a more open and emotionally empowered attitude. Whatever your background, discipline, or career stage, this book can give you concrete tools to gain clarity, be innovative, and make progress in your research journey.

Environmental managers and planners have become increasingly enthusiastic about the potential of decision support tools (DSTs) to improve environmental decision-making processes as information technology transforms many aspects of daily life. Discussions about DSTs, however, rarely recognize the range of ways software can influence users' negotiation, problem-solving, or decision-making strategies and incentives, in part because there are few empirical studies of completed processes that used technology. This mixed-methods study-which draws on data from approximately 60 semi-structured interviews and an online survey--examines how one geospatial DST influenced participants' experiences during a multi-year marine planning process in California. Results suggest that DSTs can facilitate communication by creating a common language, help users understand the geography and scientific criteria in play during the process, aid stakeholders in identifying shared or diverging interests, and facilitate joint problem solving. The same design features that enabled the tool to aid in decision making, however, also presented surprising challenges in certain circumstances by, for example, making it difficult for participants to discuss information that was not spatially represented on the map-based interface. The study also highlights the importance of the social context in which software is developed and implemented, suggesting that the relationship between the software development team and other participants may be as important as technical software design in shaping how DSTs add value. The paper concludes with considerations to inform the future use of DSTs in environmental decision-making processes.

Marine and coastal ecosystems provide important benefits and services to coastal communities across the globe, but assessing the diversity of social relationships with oceans can prove difficult for conservation scientists and practitioners. This presents barriers to incorporating social dimensions of marine ecosystems into ecosystem-based planning processes, which can in turn affect the success of planning and management initiatives. Following a global assessment of social research and related planning practices in ocean environments, we present a step-by-step approach for natural resource planning practitioners to more systematically incorporate social data into ecosystem-based ocean planning. Our approach includes three sequential steps: (1) develop a typology of ocean-specific human uses that occur within the planning region of interest; (2) characterize the complexity of these uses, including the spatiotemporal variability, intensity, and diversity thereof, as well as associated conflicts and compati...

Environmental conflict resolution practitioners have become increasingly interested in using information technology to work collaboratively across sectors. Discussions to date, however, have focused on specific tools rather than the underlying objectives that software can accomplish. Technology, like any other technique in a practitioner's repertoire, is a solution to a specific challenge identified through reflection-in-action. Explicitly defining the needs one wishes software to meet prevents using technology for technology's sake, provides criteria to choose between similar products or evaluate a tool's success, and helps identify needs for which suitable tools do not currently exist.

Producing quality original research requires advanced analytic skills, but also the creative intelligence to design a project as well as the ability to handle the inevitably ambiguous research process. This study unveils important aspects of how successful interdisciplinary scholars understand their research process and how they mentor students through research. Using interviews with nine faculty members and qualitative analysis of classroom sessions, the study investigates the mindsets and behaviors that experienced scholars bring to their work. Results suggest that innovative faculty see creativity as central to their research and actively seek to balance the creative and analytical aspects of their work, use an iterative “learning by doing” approach to refining questions and methods, and view setbacks as opportunities for further learning. However, faculty varied in the extent to which they made this messiness and comfort with ambiguity explicit for their students. By uncovering the mindsets that scholars bring to their research, we hope to better support doctoral students in building not just their analytical but also their creative capacity.

This paper explores the benefits of design thinking training to enhance doctoral student problemsolving ability, creative confidence, and emotional well-being. Our team adapted the design thinking curriculum taught by Stanford University's Hasso Plattner Institute of Design to the challenges of developing and carrying out original research, and has taught thirteen workshops to over 240 graduate students, research staff, and faculty over two years. Using a design-based research framework, we reflect on our observation of the workshops, student debriefs, and a prepost survey of participants to assess the value of design thinking for doctoral education. We find that participants felt the workshops enhanced creativity, productivity, and confidence, participants appreciated applying the mindsets of a bias toward action and embracing experimentation to their research, participants learned to be mindful of their research process, and participants valued the emotionally supportive, nonjudgmental atmosphere cultivated in the workshops. The research suggests (1) that creative problem solving methods can be adopted by doctoral students and (2) that there is a demand for graduate training to more explicitly treat students' intellectual needs in tandem with their emotional needs to create happy, productive researchers.

Environmental agencies designate certain datasets as "authoritative," or official datasets for use in decision making. Although this is a common administrative term, the notion of certain sources being authoritative has received minimal attention in the social science literature. Science translates into environmental decisions when it is perceived as being salient, credible, and legitimate. But the actual process by which data come to be viewed as credible and legitimate has received little attention. Drawing on 58 semistructured interviews, we examine the mutual negotiation and social learning that occurred during the course of a planning process focused on the development of new marine protected areas in California, under the auspices of the Marine Life Protection Act Initiative. A geospatial decision support tool, MarineMap, was viewed by scientists and state agency staff as an authoritative data source. Stakeholder acceptance of certain data, however, required extended dialogue and trust building over time. Acceptance of the data and tool influenced participant views of the planning process as a whole. This case reveals that the ways in which conversations about ambiguous or missing data are conducted influence stakeholders' trust in scientific analysis, as well as their belief in the legitimacy of decision making.

Humankind and the planet face many thorny environmentally related challenges that require a range of responses, including changing behaviors related to transportation, eating habits, purchasing, and myriad other aspects of life. Using data from a 1201-person survey and 14 Community Listening Sessions (CLSs), we explore people’s perceptions of and actions taken to protect the environment. Our data indicate a striking prevalence of waste management-related actions. Survey respondents described actions and concerns related to trash, recycling, and composting as the most common environmental behaviors; similarly, participants in CLSs discussed waste-related topics, for which we did not prompt, as frequently as those topics for which we specifically prompted. Explanations for this prevalence emerging from the data include (1) the nature of waste-related behaviors (concrete, supported by infrastructure, simple, compatible with lifestyle); (2) norms and social dynamics (family interactions, feelings of belonging/participation, government policy); and (3) internal psychological processes (internalized norms and environmental concern). We also found that many waste-related discussions were relatively superficial, focusing on immediate waste-related issues (e.g., litter or recycling) rather than larger issues such as consumption. Our results may provide insight into future efforts to encourage pro-environmental behavior. Given that most pro-environmental behavior involves tasks more complex and lifestyle-changing than those related to simple aspects of waste management, we suggest focusing on the latter two intertwined categories that our data suggest are important: encouraging social dynamics and related development of norms concerning environmental behavior (category 2), and fostering internalized norms and environmental concern (category 3).