From transdisciplinary projects to platforms: expanding capacity and impact of land systems knowledge and decision making

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cosust.2019.04.001Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Experience with transdisciplinary science for land systems has grown through both short-term projects and training.

  • There remains limited experience with durable, transdisciplinary land system science platforms.

  • Transdisciplinary platforms can be effective at addressing a range of wicked problems, including pulse and press events, and crises.

  • Frameworks for transdisciplinary land system science platforms include opportunistic activities, strategic functions, and desired outcomes.

Land system science can inform decision making to address societally important issues, including food, energy, and water security, livelihoods and lifestyles, biodiversity loss, and climate change. There is growing experience among scientists and practitioners with land systems as a transdisciplinary science. Most often, this experience has accumulated through short-term projects. However, there is a need for durable, long-term land system science platforms to address diverse types of complex, wicked problems, from immediate crises and emergencies over days and weeks; to sudden events over months and years; to extensive, pervasive, and subtle changes occurring over decades. In this paper, we offer a strategic framing of the issues and features for transdisciplinary land system science platforms that can be adapted and applied to local conditions.

Introduction

Land use change is a key process affecting societies’ ability to meet sustainability and resiliency challenges at multiple scales. Although land use change may seem primarily to be about temporal patterns of how people structure and exploit the terrestrial surface of the Earth, understanding land use change, in fact, requires knowing the motivations, behaviors, and systems with which people interact with terrestrial ecosystems. These interactions have diverse effects on societally important issues including food, energy, and water security, livelihoods and lifestyles, biodiversity loss, and climate change [1]. Land use change can be conceived of as complex, adaptive social-ecological systems [2] with dynamic interactions among different types of actors, practices, and technologies. The feedback between land use and environmental dynamics are important aspects of the interaction of people and ecosystems [3,4].

Land system science addresses these dynamic interactions by monitoring and describing patterns of land-cover change, explaining drivers of land-use change, and understanding interactions between land-cover and land-use change. Land system science produces data and knowledge in several ways, including deductive approaches, abductive reasoning, and syntheses of existing knowledge [1]. Land system science often employs these approaches in collaboration with decision makers [5,6] to identify questions, collect data, interpret findings, and co-produce actionable science. Such co-production approaches are seen as fundamental to transdisciplinary science [7]. In addition to co-production, transdisciplinary science combines interdisciplinary approaches, working in teams [8], and the production of actionable science [9,10].

Scientists ‘and practitioners’ experience with transdisciplinary science for land systems is growing [5,6,11]. Short-term projects have generated valuable experience and training programs have been developed for current professionals and students [12,13]. Major funding sources at regional, national, and international levels are expanding their portfolios to support transdisciplinary land system science [14,15]. An important question remains, however: what is the best way to create durable networks of people, organizations, and data to make the transition from individual, short-term projects to persistent, long-term platforms for transdisciplinary land system science. This question is important because too often scientists and practitioners find the duration of project funding to be inadequate. Often, just as a transdisciplinary project begins to work well, the project funding ends. The team might try to find new funding for their existing project. They might pursue new funding opportunities for new projects. In either case, researchers and practitioners are faced quite frequently with significant ‘start-up’ costs to establish new transdisciplinary projects and organizing new teams. This is frustrating, inefficient, and often ineffective for scientists and practitioners alike. In this paper, we propose that it is important to strategize the transition from short-term projects to long-term platforms, which includes features and infrastructure to support on-going multi-sectoral and transdisciplinary collaborations to address and adapt to short-term crises and long-lasting wicked problems in land systems.

While this transition may avoid the feeling and costs of ‘déjà vu all over again’ from starting a new, similar to the last, transdisciplinary project; we also propose that transdisciplinary land system science platforms can inform co-produced sustainability pathways to more resilient socio-ecological systems in ways that cannot be achieved on a project by project basis.

This paper does not attempt to offer detailed prescriptions for how to build long-term, transdisciplinary land science platforms. Rather, it offers a strategic framing of the issues and features for such a platform. In essence, we identify key features to keep in mind in developing durable platforms for transdisciplinary research and problem solving. Thus, this paper identifies (1) what are some of the challenges to be solved; (2) what are some existing building blocks; (3) what are some of the desired outcomes; and (4) what strategic features might be installed to take advantage of existing building blocks to achieve the desired outcomes (Figure 1). Our intent is that this framing and identification of features can be adapted and applied to fit the local conditions that scientists and practitioners face in their own context.

Section snippets

Challenges

It is increasingly clear that understanding and acting upon land systems are ineffective with limited datasets and simplified models of land-use and land-cover change [16]. Land system changes are characterized by complex interactions and multi-causality at multiple scales [1]. Further, land system science needs to address the simultaneity of land systems, which are “a biophysical entity, a territory, a commodity, a habitat for nonhuman species, a resource for productive activities, and a

From projects to platforms

The expansion from short-term land system projects to long-term platforms has three main elements: (1) existing opportunistic activities; (2) desired outcomes; and (3) strategic features (Figure 1). A critical insight from this diagram is to recognize that in any locale there are numerous, existing opportunistic activities related to land system science and decision making. Decision makers are likely to have support from trained technical staff, consultants and firms, professional

Teams versus teams of teams

Just as boundary objects can be used to build cooperation to wicked, complex problems, McChrystal et al. [34] distinguish between the social organization and teamwork needed to solve complicated versus complex problems (Figure 3).

There are several critical features for teams, or teams of teams, to solve wicked, complex problems. These include a shift from emphasizing efficiency to adaptability as a core competency [34]. This requires changes to organizational structure, culture, and their

What are the differences between a transdisciplinary project and platform?

We propose that the contrast between short-term projects and long-term platforms falls along four dimensions: boundary objects; organizational structures; types and number of projects; and time. This list may not be exhaustive and the differences for each dimension are in degree and not categorical. Projects and platforms will both develop and use boundary objects and employ teams, or teams of teams, to tackle wicked, complex problems. However, the maintenance, reuse, and adaptation of boundary

Conclusion

Land system science can play a critical role in informing and negotiating shared sustainability pathways to more resilient socio-ecological systems. We argue that transdisciplinary science projects are not enough. We need durable platforms to solve wicked, complex land system problems from immediate crises and emergencies over days and weeks; to sudden events over months and years; to extensive, pervasive, and subtle changes occurring over decades.

It is important to recognize that the

Conflict of interest statement

Nothing declared.

Acknowledgements

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grants # DEB-1637661, DBI-1052875, DBI-1639145, the USDA Forest Service, and the University of Maryland. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation, the USDA Forest Service, and the University of Maryland.

Drs. Margaret Palmer, Jonathan Kramer, and Cynthia Wei shared

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