Using social-ecological models to explore stream connectivity outcomes for stakeholders and Yellowstone cutthroat trout.

Despite growing interest in conservation and re-establishment of ecological connectivity, few studies have explored its context-specific social-ecological outcomes. We aimed to explore social and ecological outcomes to changing stream connectivity for both stakeholders and native fish species impacted by habitat fragmentation and nonnative species. We (1) investigated stakeholder perceptions of the drivers and outcomes of stream connectivity, and (2) evaluated the effects of stakeholder-identified connectivity and nonnative species scenarios on Yellowstone cutthroat trout (YCT) populations. Our study was conducted in the Teton River, Idaho, USA. We integrated two modeling approaches, mental modeling and individual-based ecological modeling, to explore social-ecological outcomes for stakeholders and YCT populations. Aggregation of mental models revealed an emergent pattern of increasing complexity as more types of stakeholders were considered, as well as gaps and linkages among different stakeholder knowledge areas. These results highlight the importance of knowledge sharing among stakeholders when making decisions about connectivity. Additionally, the results from the individual-based models suggested that the potential for a large, migratory life history form of YCT, in addition to self-preference mating where they overlap with rainbow trout, had the strongest effects on outcomes for YCT. Exploring social and ecological drivers and outcomes to changing connectivity is useful for anticipating and adapting to unintended outcomes, as well as making decisions for desirable outcomes. The results from this study can contribute to the management dialogue surrounding stream connectivity in the Teton River, as well as to our understanding of connectivity conservation and its outcomes more broadly.

Advancing the scholarship and practice of stakeholder engagement in working landscapes: a co-produced research agenda.

Participatory approaches to science and decision making, including stakeholder engagement, are increasingly common for managing complex socio-ecological challenges in working landscapes. However, critical questions about stakeholder engagement in this space remain. These include normative, political, and ethical questions concerning who participates, who benefits and loses, what good can be accomplished, and for what, whom, and by who. First, opportunities for addressing justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion interests through engagement, while implied in key conceptual frameworks, remain underexplored in scholarly work and collaborative practice alike. A second line of inquiry relates to research-practice gaps. While both the practice of doing engagement work and scholarly research on the efficacy of engagement is on the rise, there is little concerted interplay among 'on-the-ground' practitioners and scholarly researchers. This means scientific research often misses or ignores insight grounded in practical and experiential knowledge, while practitioners are disconnected from potentially useful scientific research on stakeholder engagement. A third set of questions concerns gaps in empirical understanding of the efficacy of engagement processes and includes inquiry into how different engagement contexts and process features affect a range of behavioral, cognitive, and decision-making outcomes. Because of these gaps, a cohesive and actionable research agenda for stakeholder engagement research and practice in working landscapes remains elusive. In this review article, we present a co-produced research agenda for stakeholder engagement in working landscapes. The co-production process involved professionally facilitated and iterative dialogue among a diverse and international group of over 160 scholars and practitioners through a yearlong virtual workshop series. The resulting research agenda is organized under six cross-cutting themes: (1) Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion; (2) Ethics; (3) Research and Practice; (4) Context; (5) Process; and (6) Outcomes and Measurement. This research agenda identifies critical research needs and opportunities relevant for researchers, practitioners, and policymakers alike. We argue that addressing these research opportunities is necessary to advance knowledge and practice of stakeholder engagement and to support more just and effective engagement processes in working landscapes. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s42532-022-00132-8.

Social Vulnerability to Irrigation Water Loss: Assessing the Effects of Water Policy Change on Farmers in Idaho, USA.

In the Eastern Snake Plain of Idaho, increasing rates of groundwater extraction for irrigation have corresponded with the adoption of more efficient irrigation technologies; higher use and lower incidental recharge have led to increasing groundwater scarcity. This paper assesses farmer vulnerability to a water resource policy that responds to that scarcity by reducing availability of groundwater for irrigation by 4-20%. Using results from a household survey of impacted farmers, we examine vulnerability in two stages, contributing to theorization of farmer vulnerability in a changing climate as well as producing important regional policy insights. The first stage, multimodel selection and inference, analyzes the primary predictors of two forms of vulnerability to groundwater scarcity among this population of farmers. The second stage, a segmentation analysis, highlights policy-relevant variation in adaptive capacity and in vulnerability predictors across the population. Individual-level results indicate that key indicators of vulnerability include several dimensions of adaptive capacity and sensitivity. At the population level, we find that reductions in sensitivity may play an important role in reducing farmer vulnerability. Accelerating global environmental change will require agriculture in arid and semi-arid regions to adapt to shifts in water availability. As water resources shift, institutional contexts and policy landscapes will shift in parallel, as seen with the reduction in groundwater availability in our case study. These institutional shifts may change the face of adaptation and farmer vulnerability in unexpected ways. Our results indicate that such institutional shifts could lean on efforts to enhance farmer adaptive capacity or reduce farmer sensitivity as mechanisms for reducing farmer vulnerability to adaptation policy changes.

Climate Change Perceptions of NY State Farmers: The Role of Risk Perceptions and Adaptive Capacity.

Climate change is expected to severely impact agricultural practices in many important food-producing regions, including the Northeast United States. Changing climate conditions, such as increases in the amount of rainfall, will require farmers to adapt. Yet, little is known with regard to farmers' perceptions and understandings about climate change, especially in the industrialized country context. This paper aims at overcoming this research limitation, as well as determining the existing contextual, cognitive, and psychological barriers that can prevent adoption of sustainable practices of farmers in New York State. The study is framed within the adaptive capacity and risk perception literature, and is based on a qualitative analysis of in-depth interviews with farmers in 21 farms in two counties in Central New York. The results reveal diverging views about the long-term consequences of climate change. Results also reveal that past experience remains as the most important source of information that influences beliefs and perceptions about climate change, confirming previous research.

Evaluating the coupling effects of climate aridity and vegetation restoration on soil erosion over the Loess Plateau in China.

In this study, the coupling effects of climate aridity and vegetation restoration on runoff and sediment yield over the Loess Plateau were examined and characterized. To take into consideration the complexity of drought, as well as the varied strengths and weaknesses of different drought measures, two drought indices are selected to identify and evaluate drought variability. The Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) data were obtained to monitor and express spatiotemporal variations in vegetation cover. The results show that most regions of the Loess Plateau experienced increasingly severe droughts over the past 40years, and these regions comprise the major source of the Yellow River sediment. Climatic drying initially occurred in the 1990s, and became statistically significant in 2000s. The increasingly severe droughts could negatively impact surface and groundwater supplies as well as soil water storage, but may also minimize surface runoff yield, which is one of the major causes of soil erosion on the Loess Plateau. Vegetation cover on the Loess Plateau was significantly improved after the implementation of "Grain for Green" project, which were helpful for controlling severe soil erosion. With the impacts of the construction of check dams, terraces and large reservoirs, runoff and sediment yield over the Loess Plateau initially exhibited downward trends between 1970 and 1990. After 1990, with the effects of the climate warming and drying, a second sharp reduction in runoff and sediment yield occurred. The coupling effects of climate aridity and vegetation restoration have led to a third significant decrease in runoff and sediment yield over the Loess Plateau after 2000.