Progress 07/01/18 to 06/30/22
Outputs
Target Audience: We designed and implemented a field course focused on climate change and conservation targeted towards graduate students in Human-Environment Systems and related fields at Boise State University and Idaho State University. We delivered this week-long intensive course in late summer 2018 to 8 students. We presented findings from the research project at the annual meetings of the American Geophysical Union (winter 2018), the American Association of Geographers (spring 2019), the annual Research Computing workshop at Boise State University (spring 2019), the USGS National Climate Adaptation Science Center (fall 2020), and the Graduate Climate Conference (fall 2021 and fall 2022). These poster and oralpresentations targeted students and scientistsconducting related research in academia, government agencies, and NGOs. We held informal meetings and discussions with agricultural producers and other relevant stakeholders from rural communities in the High Divide region of eastern Idaho and western Montana, at the High Divide Collaborative Annual Workshop in April 2019 and April 2020. These meetings aim to educate stakeholders about the research agenda. All of our semi-structured interviews that we conduct with agricultural producers and other stakeholders in our study system function not only to collect data but also to co-produce and transfer knowledge regarding the research program. We conducted 6 interviews with ranchers in eastern Oregon, 5 with ranchers in northeastern Wyoming, 9 with ranchers in central and eastern Idaho, and 2 with ranchers in western Montana. Similarly, our quantitative survey functions partly as an informational tool in the same way. We delivered our climate policy survey experiment to over 4000 agricultural producers in Oregon, Idaho, and Montana and received over 800 completed survey responses. Our target audience also included potential stakeholder collaborators at a variety of organizations and agency departments. We held a number of virtual and in-person meetings with these stakeholders. Specific organizations include the Western Landowner's Alliance, the Nature Conservancy, USDA-NRCS, the High Divide Collaborative, The American Farmland Trust, and the Heart of the Rockies Initiative. In particular we met a number of times with individuals representing the last three organizations. Because the nature of these meetings is co-production of research, the focus of the meetings is not necessarily communication of findings per se, but rather shared development and design of the research. That said, we always do spend time in each meeting communicating the motivation for the research and the objectives of the research before turning to a discussion of how the research can potentially serve the stakeholder collaborator. As such, these interactions do serve to inform this target audience about the importance of the research topic (climate change adaptation) and its relevance to local and regional issues of importance. We developed educational curricula that integrate aspects of this research project, targeted towards undergraduates in formal classroom instruction. This activity is described in more detail in the research accomplishments section.? Changes/Problems: We modified and adapted our plans for a pilot behavioral field experiment associated with Objective 2 of the proposal. A primary challenge of this aspect of the research is that the field experiment requires close collaboration with a stakeholder group willing to modify the delivery of their own programming in some way that will accommodate the research. We explored this collaboration with a number of non-profit organizations and government agency organizations. In certain instances this process involved between 5-10 meetings with a specfiic organization. Unfortunately, none of these attempts paid off as in each instance, the collaborating organization pulled out of the process for one reason or another. The emergence of COVID-19 beginning in spring of 2020 exacerbated the challenge, as it has made establishing rapport with collaborators via in-person meetings more difficult or impossible, and limited the ways in which an eventual experiment might actually be carried out. Ultimately, we opted to design and conduct a conjoint survey experiment to assess climate policy and program preferences among agricultural producers in the western US. This survey was conducted in 2022 and was highly successful. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided? Graduate students received training during the week-long intensive field course in climate change and conservation with respect to ranching. Undergraduate and graduate studentswho have worked on this project have all received close one-on-one mentoring from the project directors based at Boise State. In particular, the primary graduate student employed on this project received close, on-on-one mentoring from the project PD and co-PDs as well as other faculty members with knowledge and expertise relevant to this project's focus. Lastly, the project PD has also integrated material from this project into his undergraduate course on Systems Thinking and Sustainability (HES 220). This course aims to help students address sustainabillity challenges by employing systems thinking. The material developed for the course relevant to this project focuses on the fact that climate change is neither an environmental problem nor a social problem in isolation, but rather that in order to effectively address climate change, we need to understand the linkages and feedbacks between the environmental and social components of this coupled system. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest? We have presented findings from this research with posters and oral presentations at a variety of venues listed previously in this report. We also disseminatedaspects of the research via collaborative meetings with potential stakeholder collaborators. This type of interaction focuses on co-production of research as opposed to conducting reseach by academic scientists and only subsequently disseminating findings to communities of interest. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?
Nothing Reported
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
Evaluate rancher perceptions of climate change, and identify alternative ways of promoting climate change adaptation practices. We conducted 22 semi-structured interviews with ranchers in Oregon, Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming to better understand the challenges they face, how they are managing those challenges, whether they are concerned about climate change and whether this concern (if they have it) impacts their decision making. We have found that while many ranchers are comfortable stating that they believe the climate changes, relatively few are comfortable with the idea that a long-term change in air temperature is occurring as a result of human activity. Ranchers aim to manage flexibly to handle environmental variation, but very few ranchers we interviewed are consciously adapting to anticipated climate change. That said, ranchers are very concerned with environmental stressors such as drought, invasive species, wildfire, and changes to the timing of availability of water. Quite a few ranchers agreed that their experience of these stressors has changed over recent years and decades. Based on these interviews, we obtained a better understanding of how ranchers perceive the environmental challenges they are facing. This understanding directly informed the field experimental work to be conducted inorder to meet objective 2. 2. Prototype a behavioral field experiment to assess the relative merit of the different approaches identified in Objective 1. We designed and implemented a conjoint survey experiment measuring agricultural producer preferences for climate change programs and preferences. We mailed the survey to over 4000 agricultural producers in Oregon, Montana, and Idaho and collected over 800 complete responses. 3. Design and pilot a rancher workshop to effectively promote climate adaptation using the most effective approaches identified in Objective 2. Because of timing constraints created by Covid, we designed and piloted a rancher workshop informed by our findings in Objective 1 (semi-structured interviews) rather than by our findings in Objective 2. We worked with the Heart of the Rockies initiative to conduct the pilot workshop in the Spring of 2020. 4. Develop and implement a graduate-level field course focused on climate change and conservation with students from the Human-Environment Systems center at Boise State University. We designed and conducted this field course in 2018 with 8 students from Boise State and Idaho State University. 5. Assemble an interdisciplinary team of scientists, ranchers, and other stakeholders to develop and submit a standard proposal to a USDA climate-relevant program. We are planning this for completion / submission in Summer / Fall 2023.
Publications
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2019
Citation:
Hunt, L. G. and V. Hillis. Building Capacity Among Ranchers to Adapt to Climate Change Using Interviews, Focus Groups and Experiments. Research Computing Days. Boise State Student Union Building, Boise State University. 12 February 2019. (Poster presentation)
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2020
Citation:
Hunt, L., V. Hillis and M. Williamson. Quantifying misalignment between climate change hazards and risk perceptions. Science-to-Action Fellowship Meeting. USGS National Climate Adaptation Science Center, Reston, VA 19 August 2020.
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2021
Citation:
Hunt, L. and V. Hillis. Co-benefits framing to increase climate change engagement among Western agricultural landowners: a survey experiment approach. Graduate Climate Conference (held virtually) 29 October 2021. (Poster presentation)
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2022
Citation:
Hunt, L. and V. Hillis. Highlighting the co-benefits of climate action to increase climate change engagement among Western agricultural landowners: a survey experiment approach. Graduate Climate Conference. University of Washington Pack Forest Conference Center 28 October 2022. (Poster presentation)
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Other
Year Published:
2023
Citation:
L. Hunt, H. Wilmer, M. Burnham and V. Hillis. Climate change beliefs, perceptions and adaptations among Western US ranchers. Global Environmental Change, in prep
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Other
Year Published:
2023
Citation:
L. Hunt and V. Hillis. Highlighting the co-benefits of climate action to increase climate change engagement among Western agricultural landowners: a survey experiment approach. PNAS, in prep
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Progress 07/01/20 to 06/30/21
Outputs
Target Audience:In this time period our target audience included potential stakeholder collaborators at a variety of organizations and agency departments. We focused in particular on an emerging collaboration with The American Farmland Trust, and a new project they are developing: "Advancing Climate Resilience with Women Ranchers in Northeast Oregon". We held a number of virtual meetings with this stakeholder in particular.Because the nature of these meetings is co-production of research, the focus of the meetings is not necessarily communication of findings per se, but rather shared development and design of the research. That said, we always do spend time in each meeting communicating the motivation for the research and the objectives of the research before turning to a discussion of how the research can potentially serve the stakeholder collaborator. As such, these interactions do serve to inform this target audience about the importance of the research topic (climate change adaptation) and its relevance to local and regional issues of importance. Furthermore, because a major objective of this project on the part of AFT is outreach and education, we expect that conducting our pilot experiment in the context of this project will also allow us a number of opportunities for outreach and education in the next 12-month period. Changes/Problems:Our changes / problems are as described in our previous report. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?The primary graduate student employed on this project has continued to receive close, on-on-one mentoring from the project PD and co-PDs as well as other faculty members with knowledge and expertise relevant to this project's focus. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?
Nothing Reported
What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?Objective 1: Previously completed Objective 2: Finalize design of behavioral experiment in collaboration with American Farmland Trust and implement experiment. Objective 3: Previously completed. Objective 4: Previously completed. Objective 5: Once findings from Objective 2 are in hand, we will continue the process of assembling and finalizing a collaborative team to write and submit a proposal following up on those findings.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
Evaluate rancher perceptions of climate change, and identify alternative ways of promoting climate change adaptation practices. Previously completed and described in previous reporting period Prototype a behavioral field experiment to assess the relative merit of the different approaches identified in Objective 1. We have explored a number of potential collaborative relationships with different stakeholder groups to implement the behavioral field experiment planned for this objective. In the end, we have identified and developed a promising collaboration with The American Farmland Trust and their project, "Advancing Climate Resilience with Women Ranchers in Northeast Oregon." We are now working with AFT to finalize the design of our pilot behavioral experiment in the context of that project. Design and pilot a rancher workshop to effectively promote climate adaptation using the most effective approaches identified in Objective 2. Previously completed and described in previous reporting period Develop and implement a graduate-level field course focused on climate change and conservation with students from theHuman-Environment Systems center at Boise State University. Previously completed. Assemble an interdisciplinary team of scientists, ranchers, and other stakeholders to develop and submit a standard proposal to USDA Resilient Agroecosystems in a Changing Climate in FY 2019. To be completed in the upcoming reporting period as it relies critically on findings from Objective 2 above, still in progress.
Publications
|
Progress 07/01/19 to 06/30/20
Outputs
Target Audience:In this time period our target audience included potential stakeholder collaborators at a variety of organizations and agency departments. We held a number of virtual and in-person meetings with these stakeholders. Specific organizations include the Western Landowner's Alliance, the Nature Conservancy, USDA-NRCS, the High Divide Collaborative, and the Heart of the Rockies Initiative. In particular we met a number of times with individuals representing the last three organizations. Because the nature of these meetings is co-production of research, the focus of the meetings is not necessarily communication of findings per se, but rather shared development and design of the research. That said, we always do spend time in each meeting communicating the motivation for the research and the objectives of the research before turning to a discussion of how the research can potentially serve the stakeholder collaborator. As such, these interactions do serve to inform this target audience about the importance of the research topic (climate change adaptation) and its relevance to local and regional issues of importance. We developed educational curricula that integrate aspects of this research project,targeted towards undergraduates in formal classroom instruction. This activity is described in more detail in the research accomplishments section. Changes/Problems:We continue to modify and adapt our plans for a pilot behavioral field experiment associated with Objective 2 of the proposal. A primary challenge of this aspect of the research is that the field experiment requires close collaboration with a stakeholder group willing to modify the delivery of their own programming in some way that will accommodate the research. We have explored this collaboration with a number of non-profit organizations and government agency organizations. In certain instances this process has involved between 5-10 meetings with a specfiic organization. Unfortunately, none of these attempts have paid off as in each instance, the collaborating organization has pulled out of the process for one reason or another. The emergence of COVID-19 beginning in spring of 2020 has exacerbated the challenge, as it has made establishing rapport with collaborators via in-person meetings more difficult or impossible, and has also limited the ways in which an eventual experiment might actually be carried out. Nevertheless, apart from requiring a no-cost extension, we remain hopeful that we can satisfy our objective 2 as originally conceived, as soon as we identify an appropriate collaborating stakeholder group. Therefore, there are no major changes to our approach or objectives at this time. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?The primary graduate student employed on this project has continued to receive close, on-on-one mentoring from the project PD and co-PDs as well as other faculty members with knowledge and expertise relevant to this project's focus. The project PD has also integrated material from this project into his undergraduate course on Systems Thinking and Sustainability (HES 220). This course aims to help students address sustainabillity challenges by employing systems thinking. The material developed for the course relevant to this project focuses on the fact that climate change is neither an environmental problem nor a social problem in isolation, but rather that in order to effectively address climate change, we need to understand the linkages and feedbacks between the environmental and social components of this coupled system. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?The primary method of dissimenation of aspects of the research in this time period has been through collaborative meetings with potential stakeholder collaborators. This type of interaction focuses on co-production of research as opposed to conducting reseach by academic scientists and onlysubsequently disseminating findings to communities of interest. As our primary anticipated findings are not yet complete, we plan for more robust efforts of information dissemination in the upcoming reporting period. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?Objective 1: Previously completed Objective 2: Identify a new stakeholder group to collaborate with on this aspect of the project. Discussions with various organizations are currently ongoing. Once a stakeholder partner is confirmed, we will work to finalize the research design and implement a pilot experiment in 2020-2021. Objective 3: We are continuing our close collaboration with stakeholders in the Heart of the Rockies Initiative and the High Divide Collaborative. Once our findings from objective 2 are in hand, we will develop a workshop in tandem with our collaborators in these organizations with the aim of communicating and validating these findings with stakeholders who are directly impacted by the issue we are studying - climate change in rangeland systems of the western US. Objective 4: Previously completed Objective 5: Once preliminary findings from the behavioral experiment are in hand, we will convene a second team meeting of interested collaborators to discussion proposal direction, finalize team membership, identify and recruit a proposal advisory board from among non-academic stakeholders in our study system, and prepare a proposal for submission in 2021.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
Evaluate rancher perceptions of climate change, and identify alternative ways of promoting climate change adaptation practices. Previously completed. Prototype a behavioral field experiment to assess the relative merit of the different approaches identified in Objective 1. We have explored a number of potential collaborative relationships with different stakeholder groups to implement the behavioral field experiment planned for this objective. These groups include the Western Landowner's Alliance, the Nature Conservancy, the Natural Resource Conservation Service of UDSA, the Heart of the Rockies Initiative, and the High Divide Collaborative among others. In particular we spent over six months in a series of meetings with employees of the Idaho state office of USDA-NRCS developing a research design, protocol, and documents that would support a behavioral experiment conducted in collaboration with that organization. Unfortunately, in the end the organization decided that it was not able to collaborate with us on the research as we would have liked. Despite these setbacks, these interactions have helped us communicate with a variety of audiences about the benefits of co-production of research with stakeholders, the objectives of our research and the different approaches that might be used to achieve those objectives. Design and pilot a rancher workshop to effectively promote climate adaptation using the most effective approaches identified in Objective 2. To be completed in the upcoming reporting period. Develop and implement a graduate-level field course focused on climate change and conservation with students from the Human-Environment Systems center at Boise State University. Previously completed. Assemble an interdisciplinary team of scientists, ranchers, and other stakeholders to develop and submit a standard proposal to USDA Resilient Agroecosystems in a Changing Climate in FY 2019. To be completed in the upcoming reporting period.
Publications
|
Progress 07/01/18 to 06/30/19
Outputs
Target Audience:We designed and implemented a field course focused on climate change and conservation targeted towards graduate students in Human-Environment Systems and related fields at Boise State University and Idaho State University. We delivered this week-long intensive course for the first time in late summer 2018 to 8 students. The primary graduate student funded in this project, Lauren Hunt, a PhD student in Human-Environment Systems at Boise State presented preliminary findings from the research project at the annual meetings of the American Geophysical Union (winter 2018) and the American Association of Geographers (spring 2019). These poster presentations targeted scientists conducting related research. We held informal meetings and discussions with agricultural producers and other relevant stakeholders from rural communities in the High Divide region of eastern Idaho and western Montana, at the High Divide Collaborative Annual Workshop in April 2019. These meetings aim to educate stakeholders about the research agenda. All of our semi-structured interviews that we conduct with agricultural producers and other stakeholders in our study system function not only to collect data but also to co-produce and transfer knowledge regarding the research program. We conducted six interviews with ranchers in eastern Oregon, 5 with ranchers in northeastern Wyoming, 9 with ranchers in central and eastern Idaho, and 2 with ranchers in western Montana. Changes/Problems:
Nothing Reported
What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Graduate students received training during the week-long intensive field course in climate change and conservation with respect to ranching. Undergraduate, graduate students, and the postdoc who have worked on this project have all received close one-on-one mentoring from the project directors based at Boise State. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?We have presented findings from this research with posters at two national society conferences (AAG and AGU). These results largely target academic audiences. We have also presented a poster presentation at a regional undergraduate research conference, which again targets a primarily academic audience. Community-oriented dissemination is slated for the upcoming year. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?Objective 1: Completed. Objective 2: Continue to work closely with Western Landowners Alliance to finalize research design and implement pilot experiment in late winter 2020. Objective 3: Continue to work closely with High Divide Collaborative to finalize plans for rancher workshop following experiment in spring 2020. Objective 4: Completed. Objective 5: Convene second team meeting to discuss proposal direction, finalize team membership, finalize proposal advisory board, and begin to prepare proposal for submission in 2020.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
Increasing impacts of climate change continue to threaten the resilience of rangelands in the US. While various adaptation strategies exist, a number of potential barriers exist to ranchers adopting them, and programs that aim to work with ranchers to promote resilience are not as effective as they might be. In this project a team of interdisciplinary scientists, agricultural producers, and other stakeholders are working together to better understand how to work with ranchers to promote climate change adaptation. Scientists have thus far interviewed 22 ranchers to learn about the social-ecological challenges that they face, and how they manage them, whether they are concerned about climate change, and if so, whether this concern impacts their management decisions. At the same time, we have developed and implemented a graduate-level intensive field course on the topic of climate change and conservation in western rangelands. 1. Evaluate rancher perceptions of climate change, and identify alternative ways of promoting climate change adaptation practices. We conducted 22 semi-structured interviews with ranchers in Oregon, Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming to better understand the challenges they face, how they are managing those challenges, whether they are concerned about climate change and whether this concern (if they have it) impacts their decision making. We have found that while many ranchers are comfortable stating that they believe the climate changes, relatively few are comfortable with the idea that a long-term change in air temperature is occurring as a result of human activity. Ranchers aim to manage flexibly to handle environmental variation, but very few ranchers we interviewed are consciously adapting to anticipated climate change. That said, ranchers are very concerned with environmental stressors such as drought, invasive species, wildfire, and changes to the timing of availability of water. Quite a few ranchers agreed that their experience of these stressors has changed over recent years and decades. Based on these interviews, we have a better understanding of how ranchers perceive the environmental challenges they are facing, and therefore have preliminary ideas about how to frame environmental stressors so that they are well received by ranchers. This understanding will directly inform the field experimental work to be conducted in the upcoming year, in order to meet objective 2. 2. Prototype a behavioral field experiment to assess the relative merit of the different approaches identified in Objective 1. We developed and fostered very carefully a close collaborative relationship with the Western Landowners Alliance. This relationship will be critical to implementing the field experiment planned to assess the relative merit of different ways of framing climate challenges identified during our semi-structured interviews. 3. Design and pilot a rancher workshop to effectively promote climate adaptation using the most effective approaches identified in Objective 2. We developed and fostered very carefully a close collaborative relationship with the High Divide Collaborative. This relationship will be critical to implementing the workshop planned during this objective. This workshop will put into action the knowledge gained in the course of carrying out objectives 1 and 2. 4. Develop and implement a graduate-level field course focused on climate change and conservation with students from the Human-Environment Systems center at Boise State University. We designed and conducted this field course in 2018 with 8 students from Boise State and Idaho State University. 5. Assemble an interdisciplinary team of scientists, ranchers, and other stakeholders to develop and submit a standard proposal to USDA Resilient Agroecosystems in a Changing Climate in FY 2019. We have conducted one meeting with preliminary team members for this proposal effort and are continuing team formation and proposal formulation for submission in 2020.
Publications
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2018
Citation:
Hunt, Lauren, and V. Hillis. "Building Capacity Among Ranchers to Adapt to Climate Change Using Interviews, Focus Groups and Experiments." American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting Abstracts. 2018.
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2019
Citation:
Hunt, Lauren, and V. Hillis. "Climate Change Adaptation in the West." American Association of Geographers Annual Meeting. 2019.
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2019
Citation:
Mueller, Jessica, and V. Hillis. "Implications of Grazing Usage Over Time and Space in the Thunder Basin National Grassland." Northwest Undergraduate Research Conference. 2019.
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