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  5. Evaluating Current Projects to Inform Future Development of Actionable Science in the Southwest

Evaluating Current Projects to Inform Future Development of Actionable Science in the Southwest

Evaluation of SW CSC-funded Research: Evaluation for Learning and Innovation in Actionable Science for Climate Adaptation
Principal Investigator
Alison Meadow

Dates

Start Date
2017-09-01
End Date
2019-05-31
Release Date
2017

Summary

The impacts of climate change are already being observed and felt in our ecosystems and communities. Land and resource managers, planners, and decision-makers are looking for the best scientific information to guide their decisions about adapting to and mitigating the effects of climate change now and in the future. To address this need, a primary goal of the Southwest Climate Science Center is to develop actionable science – scientific information that can be easily used to inform these decisions. Evidence shows that more collaborative forms of knowledge development and exchange between scientists and decision makers tend to produce information that is considered more trusted and usable, and lead to higher-quality decisions about [...]

Child Items (3)

Contacts

Principal Investigator :
Alison Meadow
Co-Investigator :
Tamara Wall
Funding Agency :
Southwest CSC
CMS Group :
Climate Adaptation Science Centers (CASC) Program

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LaSalMountains_AlanCressler.jpg
“La Sal Mountains, Credit: Alan Cressler” 		thumbnail 1.07 MB image/jpeg

Project Extension

parts
typeTechnical Summary
valueThe impacts of climate change are already being observed in our ecosystems and communities. Decision makers at all scales are looking for the best scientific information to guide their decisions about adapting to and mitigating the negative effects of climate change. Development of actionable science – scientific information that can be easily used to inform these decisions – is the goal of the Southwest Climate Science Center (SW CSC) and the CSC network as a whole. There is evidence that more collaborative forms of knowledge development and exchange between researchers and decision makers (and between policy makers and the public) tend to produce information that is more trusted (Cash et al. 2006), considered more usable (Carbone and Dow 2005; Jasanoff and Wynne 1998; Lemos et al. 2012), and lead to higher-quality decisions about environmental management (Beierle 2002). Collaborative forms of knowledge production appear to be particularly effective when dealing with questions that can be described as “wicked” (Rittel and Webber 1973) – involving not just the need for scientific information, but also decisions about resource allocation and policy that bring values into the decision-making discussion (Hegger et al. 2012; Mauser et al. 2013; Walter et al. 2007). This evidence of the benefits of collaboratively produced science knowledge has led to a focus on the co-production of knowledge (Jasanoff and Wynne 1998) as a desirable approach to the development of actionable science within the CSC network (Advisory Committee on Climate Change and Natural Resource Science 2015). However, as a community, we continue to search for effective ways to integrate practices that promote collaboration and co-production of knowledge into our established research programs and organizational frameworks. (Fazey et al. 2014; A. M. Meadow et al. 2015; Reed et al. 2014) and to effectively evaluate projects that no longer resemble standard academic research projects because they integrate decision-makers in a full and collaborative manner (Bell et al. 2011; Roux et al. 2010; Wall et al. 2017). We (Meadow and Wall) have developed a framework for the evaluation of collaboratively produced climate science that specifically addresses the process of producing and outcomes of actionable science (Wall et al. 2017) (see Appendix A). We propose to apply the framework to a sample of projects funded by the SW CSC to assess the degree to which SW CSC-funded research has met (or is likely to meet) the expectations of “actionability” as well as identifying those factors that either facilitate or inhibit the production of usable information. We propose to evaluate a sample of projects funded by the SW CSC to determine: 1. To what extent the science is being applied to management decisions in the SW CSC region. 2. What the barriers are to use of science (form/content of science itself or barriers within agency decision-making structure, for example). 3. Which practices or strategies are most associated with the production of actionable science.
projectStatusCompleted

Budget Extension

annualBudgets
year2017
totalFunds99859.98
parts
typeAward Type
valueGrant
typeAward Number
valueG17AP00100
totalFunds99859.98

La Sal Mountains, Credit: Alan Cressler
La Sal Mountains, Credit: Alan Cressler

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Type Scheme Key
RegistrationUUID NCCWSC e7f44738-ff1a-41c0-ab40-aa6e68c50fd7
StampID NCCWSC SW17-PH1281

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