Transdisciplinary Research in Practice: Lessons from Participatory, Folklore and Community-Supported Approaches in the Greater American West

Transdisciplinary Research in Practice: Lessons from Participatory, Folklore and Community-Supported Approaches in the Greater American West

Rapid social and ecological changes on global rangelands amplify the challenges to achieving biodiversity conservation, rural economic viability and social well-being, and rangeland sustainability. These dynamics create a need for transdisciplinary science that is inclusive of ecological, sociological, and participatory approaches in order to rebuild meaningful working relationships between scientists, ranchers and managers, and other rangeland stakeholders. In real application, however, transdisciplinary science faces numerous social, ethical, and logistical challenges, including the question of how the work might benefit rangeland stakeholders. Our objective is to advance rangeland researchers’ toolbox for meaningful engaged research by describing three lessons from transdisciplinary projects in the rangeland contexts of the United States. These include the need for 1) ranch-scale, long-term participatory management experiments; 2) folklore and oral history methods and 3) community-supported social-ecological research that creates credible science that can be communicated out to non-ranching decision-makers. These examples illustrate the nuances of transdisciplinary research, reciprocity, and useable knowledge creation in complex rangeland social-ecological contexts.