Alison M. Meadow

• PhD Environmental Anthroplogy
• Professor (Associate) at University of Arizona

Universities, researchers and funders are increasingly asking how research contributes to positive changes in society and the environment, and seeking ways to document and describe impacts consistently across diverse disciplines and organisational scales. The societal impacts framework presented in this pilot study uses a combination of impact goal...

Climate and weather-related disasters in California illustrate the need for immediate climate change action - both mitigation to reduce impacts and adaptation to protect our communities, relatives, and the ecosystems we depend upon. Indigenous frontline communities face even greater threats from climate impacts due to historical and political legac...

Climate change presents huge challenges to the already-complex decisions faced by U.S. agricultural producers, as seasonal weather patterns increasingly deviate from historical tendencies. Under USDA funding, a transdisciplinary team of researchers, extension experts, educators, and stakeholders is developing a climate decision support Dashboard fo...

Natural resource management intertwines with cultural practices and health outcomes for Indigenous peoples. Indigenous communities have managed and contributed to knowledge on ecosystems and sustainability since time immemorial. However, Indigenous communities in California face significant institutional constraints when implementing practices such...

Despite the rapid and accelerating rate of global environmental changes, too often research that has the potential to inform more sustainable futures remains disconnected from the context in which it could be used. Though transdisciplinary approaches (TDA) are known to overcome this disconnect, institutional barriers frequently prevent their deploy...

Natural resource researchers have long recognized the value of working closely with the managers and communities who depend on, steward, and impact ecosystems. These partnerships take various forms, including co-production and transdisciplinary research approaches, which integrate multiple knowledges in the design and implementation of research obj...

The limited application of science to environmental management has been termed the “science‐management knowledge gap.” This gap is widely assumed to be a consequence of inefficient knowledge transfer from science to application. However, this metaphor misrepresents knowledge as a “thing” that can be readily exchanged in complex systems, rather than...

A major barrier to achieving wide-spread progress on planning for impacts from climate change is the lack of trained scientists skilled at conducting societally-relevant research. Overcoming this barrier requires us to transform the way we train scientists so they are equipped to work with a range of different societal partners and institutions to...

The earth’s climate is changing. Global average temperatures have risen 1.8° F since 1901. Warming temperatures are driving other environmental changes such as melting glaciers, rising sea levels, changes in precipitation patterns, and increased drought and wildfires.The magnitude of future changes will depend on the amount of greenhouse gases (GHG...

There is increasing interest among scholars in producing information that is useful and usable to land and natural resource managers in a changing climate. This interest has prompted transitions from scientist- to stakeholder-driven or collaborative approaches to climate science. A common indicator of successful collaboration is whether stakeholder...

What makes knowledge relevant to environmental sustainability actionable, and how can its societal impacts be evaluated? Scholars and practitioners have increasingly advocated that the traditional linear model of knowledge production, with its unidirectional flow of information from researchers to policy-makers, be replaced by a new approach in whi...

Producing actionable science to inform decisions on sustainability is an important opportunity for science to serve society and fulfill expectations that come along with public financial support. In turn, how public science funding is managed may help spur different ways of doing science that are better suited to linking kscience with sustainabilit...

Research practice, funding agencies and global science organizations suggest that research aimed at addressing sustainability challenges is most effective when ‘co-produced’ by academics and non-academics. Co-production promises to address the complex nature of contemporary sustainability challenges better than more traditional scientific approache...

The Pueblo of Laguna, a federally recognized tribe, seeks to enhance its resilience to changing climate conditions and extreme weather events and their associated impacts. Through adaptation planning, the Pueblo wishes to reduce the ways that extreme heat, drought, heavy rainfall and other extreme precipitation, extreme winds, and associated events...

Climate change adaptation planning is the process of planning to adjust to new or changing environments in ways that reduce negative effects and take advantage of beneficial opportunities. Climate change adaptation strategies can be integrated into existing community plans, such as landscape or infrastructure management plans or can be stand-alone...

Participatory research approaches are increasingly advocated as an effective means to produce usable climate adaptation science, and increase the likelihood that it will be beneficially incorporated into decision-making processes. However, while the implementation of participatory research approaches, such as those associated with knowledge co-prod...

Researchers, stakeholders and funding organizations have embraced co-production of knowledge to solve sustainability problems. Research focusing on the practice of co-production can help us understand what works in what contexts and how to avoid potentially undesirable outcomes.

This review paper addresses the challenging question of “how to” design and implement co-production of knowledge in climate science and other environmental and agricultural sciences. Based on a grounded theory review of nine (9) published case studies of transdisciplinary and collaborative research projects, the paper offers a set of common themes...

The earth’s climate is changing. Global average temperatures have risen 1.8°F since 1901 (Wuebbles et al. 2017). Warming temperatures are driving other environmental changes such as melting glaciers, rising sea levels, changes in precipitation patterns, and increased drought and wildfires. The magnitude of future changes will depend on the amount o...

The U.S. Department of the Interior Climate Science Centers (CSCs) work with natural and cultural resource managers and scientists to gather information and build tools needed to help fish, wildlife, and ecosystems adapt to the impacts of climate change. The CSCs prioritize the delivery of actionable science products (e.g., synthesized scientific i...

Monitoring drought conditions in arid and semiarid regions characterized by high levels of intra- and interannual hydroclimatic variability is a challenging task. Typical drought-monitoring indices that are based on monthly-scale data lack sufficient temporal resolution to detect hydroclimatic extremes and, when used operationally, may not provide...

Resource managers and decision-makers are increasingly tasked with integrating climate change science into their decisions about resource management and policy development. This often requires climate scientists, resource managers, and decision-makers to work collaboratively throughout the research processes, an approach to knowledge development th...

Indigenous peoples in North America have a long history of understanding their societies as having an intimate relationship with their physical environments. Their cultures, traditions, and identities are based on the ecosystems and sacred places that shape their world. Their respect for their ancestors and ‘Mother Earth’ speaks of unique value and...

Drought monitoring and drought planning are complex endeavors. Measures of precipitation or streamflow provide little context for understanding how social and environmental systems impacted by drought are responding. Here the authors report on collaborative work with the Hopi Tribe-a Native American community in the U.S. Southwest-to develop a drou...

The National Research Council (NRC) proposed six principles for effective decision support in its 2009 report Informing Decisions in a Changing Climate. We structured a collaborative project between the Federal Emergency Management Agency Region R9 (FEMA R9), the Western Region Headquarters of the National Weather Service (WR-NWS), and the Climate...

There is an increasing demand for climate science that decision makers can readily use to address issues created by climate variability and climate change. To be usable, the science must be relevant to their context and the complex management challenges they face and credible and legitimate in their eyes. The literature on usable science provides g...

Coproduction of knowledge is believed to be an effective way to produce usable climate science knowledge through a process of collaboration between scientists and decision makers. While the general principles of coproduction - establishing long-term relationships between scientists and stakeholders, ensuring two-way communication between both group...

Based on a shared interest to better understand the impacts of drought and the potential utility of using drought impacts reporting as a tool for monitoring conditions, researchers from the Carolinas RISA (Dow, Lackstrom, and Brennan), the Climate Assessment for the Southwest (Crimmins and Ferguson), and the Southwest Climate Science Center (Meadow...

To make decisions about drought declarations, status, and relief funds, decision makers need high-quality local-level drought impact data. In response to this need in Arizona the Arizona DroughtWatch program was created, which includes an online drought impacts reporting system. Despite extensive and intensive collaboration and consultation with th...

Alternative food system initiatives are often advocated as ways to meet goals of food security, environmental security, and community well-being. This paper presents data on one form of alternative food system initiative, a community garden, specifically regarding current and potential contributions to food security and social integration. Related...

Local food system initiatives are an increasingly popular attempt to address environmental and social-equity problems that seem to be inherent in the conventional global food system. However, relatively few studies have been undertaken to assess the ability of local food system initiatives to ameliorate these concerns. This study focuses on a commu...

Severe climate change is one of multiple stressors capable of impacting migration in Alaska. This paper uses a scenario of climate change and rising energy costs to explore potential changes in Interior Alaska that may contribute to higher rates of rural-to-urban migration over the next twenty years in Fairbanks, Alaska. While Fairbanks is planning...