Integrating team science into interdisciplinary graduate education: an exploration of the SESYNC Graduate Pursuit

Complex socio-environmental challenges require interdisciplinary, team-based research capacity. Graduate students are fundamental to building such capacity, yet formal opportunities for graduate students to develop these capacities and skills are uncommon. This paper presents an assessment of the Graduate Pursuit (GP) program, a formal interdisciplinary team science graduate research and training program administered by the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center (SESYNC). Quantitative and qualitative assessment of the program’s first cohort revealed that participants became significantly more comfortable with interdisciplinary research and team science approaches, increased their capacity to work across disciplines, and were enabled to produce tangible research outcomes. Qualitative analysis of four themes—(1) discipline, specialization, and shared purpose, (2) interpersonal skills and personality, (3) communication and teamwork, and (4) perceived costs and benefits—encompass participants’ positive and negative experiences and support findings from past assessments. The findings also identify challenges and benefits related to individual personality traits and team personality orientation, the importance of perceiving a sense of autonomy and independence, and the benefit of graduate training programs independent of the university and graduate program environment

Navigating to new frontiers in behavioral neuroscience: traditional neuropsychological tests predict human performance on a rodent-inspired radial-arm maze

We constructed an 11-arm, walk-through, human radial-arm maze (HRAM) as a translational instrument to compare existing methodology in the areas of rodent and human learning and memory research. The HRAM, utilized here, serves as an intermediary test between the classic rat radial-arm maze (RAM) and standard human neuropsychological and cognitive tests. We show that the HRAM is a useful instrument to examine working memory ability, explore the relationships between rodent and human memory and cognition models, and evaluate factors that contribute to human navigational ability. One-hundred-and-fifty-seven participants were tested on the HRAM, and scores were compared to performance on a standard cognitive battery focused on episodic memory, working memory capacity, and visuospatial ability. We found that errors on the HRAM increased as working memory demand became elevated, similar to the pattern typically seen in rodents, and that for this task, performance appears similar to Miller's classic description of a processing-inclusive human working memory capacity of 7 ± 2 items. Regression analysis revealed that measures of working memory capacity and visuospatial ability accounted for a large proportion of variance in HRAM scores, while measures of episodic memory and general intelligence did not serve as significant predictors of HRAM performance. We present the HRAM as a novel instrument for measuring navigational behavior in humans, as is traditionally done in basic science studies evaluating rodent learning and memory, thus providing a useful tool to help connect and translate between human and rodent models of cognitive functioning

Institutions, Voids, and Dependencies: Tracing the Designs and Robustness of Urban Water Systems

Urban water systems across the United States are facing a variety of challenges to existing supply and demand dynamics. Responding to these challenges in complex socio-environmental systems (SES) requires integrating various types of information – ranging from hydrologic data to political considerations and beyond – into policy and management decisions. However, the design of institutions, i.e., the formal rules in which urban water utilities are embedded, impact the flow of information, especially across diverse actor groups critical to developing and implementing policy or programmatic responses to signal error. This study develops a Bayesian application of the Robustness of Coupled Infrastructure Systems (CIS) Framework to analyze how the institutional design of a major U.S. urban water system impacts information flow and, ultimately, the goal of resource-delivery robustness. We utilize process-tracing along with an institutional analysis approach called the Institutional Grammar Tool (IGT) to parse formal institutions into their semantic and syntactic components and assess how they may influence a system’s capacity to respond to changing stressors. Our findings have important implications for the (re)design of institutions that better facilitate information flow among key policy actors and support policy changes that promote sustainable long-term urban water supply

The Essential Role of Local Context in Shaping Risk and Risk Reduction Strategies for Snowmelt‐Dependent Irrigated Agriculture

Abstract Climate change‐induced shifts in snow storage and snowmelt patterns pose risks for adverse impacts to people, the environment, and irrigated agriculture. Existing research primarily focuses on evaluating these risks to irrigated agriculture at large scales, overlooking the role of local context in shaping risk dynamics. Consequently, many “at‐risk” areas lack insight into how adaptation strategies for managing risk through water supply augmentation or water conservation vary across contexts and over time. To address this gap, we develop a comprehensive index for evaluating irrigated agriculture's risk and adaptation potential to changes in snow at local scales and apply it throughout the western US. Results confirm trends toward escalating risk for changes in snow storage and snowmelt patterns over the century. However, substantial heterogeneity in the extent and drivers of risk exists due to variability in localized interactions between declines in water supply (approximately −9% ± 13% by 2100) and increased agricultural demand (approximately 7% ± 5% by 2100). Despite an existing focus on supply augmentation as a critical adaptation strategy to reduce risk, we show its effectiveness diminishes for many areas over time, declining to an average of −54% of historical augmentation potential by 2100. Conserving water through historical changes in crop acreage and type emerges as a more stable adaptation measure, reducing demand by 7%–8% regardless of time. While particularly relevant for higher elevation, less intensive agricultural settings in snowmelt‐dependent regions, findings underscore the need for strategies that support local‐scale, context‐appropriate adaptation to effectively manage escalating risk as snow changes