Co-Produced Research Supports Pastoralists to Pursue Transformative Social and Ecological Change in Rangelands

Over the last two decades, pastoralists and researchers have formed powerful alliances to transform how we think about and do research-with-action in rangelands. These alliances promote faster learning about problems and their potential solutions by bringing together diverse partners and their different ways of understanding important issues. They also ensure research is fully relevant to real problems, so it supports pastoralists to act on both old and new issues that they face. While these approaches can be contentious when perspectives and experiences do not align, team members are finding them transformative, if they commit to working together over the long term. Based on a long history of participatory research approaches in the social sciences, these alliances are now inter- and trans-disciplinary, spread throughout the sciences. This paper uses six case studies to explore the experience of teams who have used this research-with-action approach in the rangelands of Kenya, Tanzania, Mongolia, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Spain and the US. These teams developed and implemented this approach not in halls of academia, but in equal pastoralist-researcher partnerships by creating full co-learning and democratized processes together. These teams then purposely built the capacity of all stakeholders to act together to promote desired change. The case studies integrate diverse knowledges at multiple scales into collective ‘learning and doing’ teams composed of pastoral peoples, policy makers, scientists, business people, and others. This process ensures a broad range of understandings and interpretations form the foundation of the actions and adaptations taken by actors across landscapes and scales. The approach contributes to the resilience of place-based social-ecological systems in rangelands by avoiding top-down, one-size-fits-all approaches. Uniting these ideas and practices has allowed research-with-action to become truly transformative, by accelerating the capacity of all stakeholders to learn and act more effectively

MHC class I A region diversity and polymorphism in macaque species

The HLA-A locus represents a single copy gene that displays abundant allelic polymorphism in the human population, whereas, in contrast, a nonhuman primate species such as the rhesus macaque (Macaca mulatta) possesses multiple HLA-A-like (Mamu-A) genes, which parade varying degrees of polymorphism. The number and combination of transcribed Mamu-A genes present per chromosome display diversity in a population of Indian animals. At present, it is not clearly understood whether these different A region configurations are evolutionarily stable entities. To shed light on this issue, rhesus macaques from a Chinese population and a panel of cynomolgus monkeys (Macaca fascicularis) were screened for various A region-linked variations. Comparisons demonstrated that most A region configurations are old entities predating macaque speciation, whereas most allelic variation (>95%) is of more recent origin. The latter situation contrasts the observations of the major histocompatibility complex class II genes in rhesus and cynomolgus macaques, which share a high number of identical alleles (>30%) as defined by exon 2 sequencing

An Assessment of State-and-Transition Models: Perceptions Following Two Decades of Development and Implementation

State-and-transition models (STMs) are being developed for many areas in the United States and represent an important tool for assessing and managing public and private rangelands. Substantial resources have been invested in model development, yet minimal efforts have been made to evaluate the utility of STMs for rangeland assessment and management. We interviewed 47 rangeland professionals, equally divided between managers and researchers, in four ecoregions to determine their perceptions of the purpose, development, and strengths and weaknesses of STMs to assess the status of the STM framework. Our analysis identified three primary perspectives regarding the purpose of STMs: a decision-making tool for land managers, a means to represent the complex dynamics of rangeland ecosystems, and an effective communication tool. These diverse views of STM purposes were associated with differing perspectives concerning model development that identified five major issues in need of further development and refinement: 1) the relative importance of management practices and ecological processes in driving transitions, 2) the criteria used to define thresholds, 3) the appropriate level of model complexity, 4) the respective roles of expert knowledge and ecological data in model development, and 5) processes for model review and revision. We recommend greater dialogue among researchers and managers to further clarify STM terminology and develop standard protocols for model development and validation. Mechanisms are critically needed to assure peer review and revision of existing models so that STMs are continually updated to reflect current understanding of rangeland dynamics.The Rangeland Ecology & Management archives are made available by the Society for Range Management and the University of Arizona Libraries. Contact [email protected] for further information.Migrated from OJS platform August 202

Expanding vulnerability assessment for public lands: The social complement to ecological approaches

In recent years, federal land management agencies in the United States have been tasked to consider climate change vulnerability and adaptation in their planning. Ecological vulnerability approaches have been the dominant framework, but these approaches have significant limitations for fully understanding vulnerability in complex social-ecological systems in and around multiple-use public lands. In this paper, we describe the context of United States federal public lands management with an emphasis on the Bureau of Land Management to highlight this unique decision-making context. We then assess the strengths and weaknesses of an ecological vulnerability approach for informing decision-making. Next, we review social vulnerability methods in the context of public lands to demonstrate what these approaches can contribute to our understanding of vulnerability, as well as their strengths and weaknesses. Finally, we suggest some key design principles for integrated social-ecological vulnerability assessments considering the context of public lands management, the limits of ecological vulnerability assessment, and existing approaches to social vulnerability assessment. We argue for the necessity of including social vulnerability in a more integrated social-ecological approach in order to better inform climate change adaptation

Parks, people, and change: the importance of multistakeholder engagement in adaptation planning for conserved areas

Climate change challenges the traditional goals and conservation strategies of protected areas, necessitating adaptation to changing conditions. Denali National Park and Preserve (Denali) in south central Alaska, USA, is a vast landscape that is responding to climate change in ways that will impact both ecological resources and local communities. Local observations help to inform understanding of climate change and adaptation planning, but whose knowledge is most important to consider? For this project we interviewed long-term Denali staff, scientists, subsistence community members, bus drivers, and business owners to assess what types of observations each can contribute, how climate change is impacting each, and what they think the National Park Service should do to adapt. The project shows that each type of long-term observer has different types of observations, but that those who depend more directly on natural resources for their livelihoods have more and different observations than those who do not. These findings suggest that engaging multiple groups of stakeholders who interact with the park in distinct ways adds substantially to the information provided by Denali staff and scientists and offers a broader foundation for adaptation planning. It also suggests that traditional protected area paradigms that fail to learn from and foster appropriate engagement of people may be maladaptive in the context of climate change

Tools for Resilience Management: Multidisciplinary Development of State-and-Transition Models for Northwest Colorado

Building models is an important way of integrating knowledge. Testing and updating models of social-ecological systems can inform management decisions and, ultimately, improve resilience. We report on the outcomes of a six-year, multidisciplinary model development process in the sagebrush steppe, USA. We focused on creating state-and-transition models (STMs), conceptual models of ecosystem change that represent nonlinear dynamics and are being adopted worldwide as tools for managing ecosystems. STM development occurred in four steps with four distinct sets of models: (1) local knowledge elicitation using semistructured interviews; (2) ecological data collection using an observational study; (3) model integration using participatory workshops; and (4) model simplification upon review of the literature by a multidisciplinary team. We found that different knowledge types are ultimately complementary. Many of the benefits of the STM-building process flowed from the knowledge integration steps, including improved communication, identification of uncertainties, and production of more broadly credible STMs that can be applied in diverse situations. The STM development process also generated hypotheses about sagebrush steppe dynamics that could be tested by future adaptive management and research. We conclude that multidisciplinary development of STMs has great potential for producing credible, useful tools for managing resilience of social-ecological systems. Based on this experience, we outline a streamlined, participatory STM development process that integrates multiple types of knowledge and incorporates adaptive management

Socio-Environmental Systems (SES) Research: What have we learned and how can we use this information in future research programs

The call for integrated social-environmental science, complete with outreach to applications and solutions, is escalating worldwide. Drawing on several decades of experience, researchers engaged in such science, completed an assessment of the design and management attributes and impact pathways that lead to successful projects and programs and to understand key impediments to success. These characteristics are delineated and discussed using examples from individual projects and programs. From this, three principal lessons leading to successful efforts emerge that address co-design, adaptive or flexible management, and diversity of knowledge. In addition, five challenges for this science are identified: accounting for change, addressing sponsorship and timelines, appreciating different knowledge systems, adaptively communicating, and improving linkages to policy.Fil: Turner, B.L.. University of Arizona; Estados UnidosFil: Esler, Karen J.. University of Arizona; Estados UnidosFil: Bridgewater, Peter. The Australian National University. Centre for Museums and Heritage; AustraliaFil: Tewksbury, Joshua. University of Colorado; Estados UnidosFil: Sitas, J. Nadia. Stellenbosch University. Council for Scientific and Industrial Research. Department of Conservation Ecology and Entomology; SudáfricaFil: Abrahams, Brent. Stellenbosch University. Council for Scientific and Industrial Research. Department of Conservation Ecology and Entomology; SudáfricaFil: Chapin, F. Stuart. University Of Alaska; Estados UnidosFil: Chowdhury, Rinku Roy. Clark University. Graduate School of Geography; Estados UnidosFil: Christie, Patrick. University of Washington. School of Marine and Environmental Affairs; Estados UnidosFil: Díaz, Sandra Myrna. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Córdoba. Instituto Multidisciplinario de Biología Vegetal. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas Físicas y Naturales. Instituto Multidisciplinario de Biología Vegetal; ArgentinaFil: Firth, Penny. National Science Foundtion; Estados UnidosFil: Knapp, Corrine N.. Western State Colorado University. Environment and Sustainability; Estados UnidosFil: Kramer, Jonathan. National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center; Estados UnidosFil: Leemans, Rik. Wageningen University. Environmental Systems Analysis Group; Alemania. National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center; Estados UnidosFil: Palmer, Margaret. National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center; Estados UnidosFil: Pietri, Diana. Blue Earth Consultants; Estados UnidosFil: Pittman, Jeremy. University of Waterloo. School of Environment, Resources and Sustainability; CanadáFil: Sarukhán, José. Comisión Nacional para el Conocimiento y Uso de la Biodiversidad; MéxicoFil: Shackleton, Ross. Stellenbosch University. Department of Botany; SudáfricaFil: Seidler, Reinmar. University of Massachusetts Boston. Department of Biology; Estados UnidosFil: van Wilgen, Brian. Stellenbosch University. Department of Botany; SudáfricaFil: Mooney, Harold. Stellenbosch University. Department of Botany; Sudáfric