This paper is the outcome of a community initiative to identify major unsolved scientific problems in hydrology motivated by a need for stronger harmonisation of research efforts. The procedure involved a public consultation through online media, followed by two workshops through which a large number of potential science questions were collated, prioritised, and synthesised. In spite of the diversity of the participants (230 scientists in total), the process revealed much about community priorities and the state of our science: a preference for continuity in research questions rather than radical departures or redirections from past and current work. Questions remain focused on the process-based understanding of hydrological variability and causality at all space and time scales. Increased attention to environmental change drives a new emphasis on understanding how change propagates across interfaces within the hydrological system and across disciplinary boundaries. In particular, the expansion of the human footprint raises a new set of questions related to human interactions with nature and water cycle feedbacks in the context of complex water management problems. We hope that this reflection and synthesis of the 23 unsolved problems in hydrology will help guide research efforts for some years to come. ARTICLE HISTORY

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Despite the increasing interest in policy agenda research in recent years, very few studies have focused their attention on the relevant processes at the local level. Drawing on agenda‐setting research, particularly Kingdon's multiple‐streams framework, this study examines the key forces and factors, as well as their relative importance, in local agenda setting, problem identification, and alternative policy selection. Data are collected from 271 in‐depth interviews with local policy stakeholders in three U.S. Gulf Coast areas. Interview materials are coded using a protocol focused on capturing stakeholders' perceptions of the key elements and forces in local policy dynamics. Our interview data indicate that (i) governmental actors and various interest groups have relatively more influence in shaping local agendas than the general public, experts, and election‐related actors, while the mass media are found to have little agenda‐setting power in local policy processes; (ii) budgetary consideration and various forms of feedback to local government are more important than objective problem indicators and focusing events in setting local policy priorities; (iii) policy alternatives that are deemed compatible with existing policies and regulations are more likely to be selected than those relying on other criteria such as technical feasibility, value acceptability, and future constraints; and (iv) consensus and coalition building is perceived as the most important political factor in local policy processes. Limitations of our study and recommendations for future research are discussed in the concluding section.

ABSTRACT. We distill complex frameworks for stakeholder engagement into five main principles that scientists and natural resource managers can use in planning stakeholder engagement efforts. Many natural resource management professionals, including practitioners and scholars, increasingly recognize the need for, and potential benefits of, engaging stakeholders in complex decision-making processes, yet the implementation of these efforts varies wildly, reflecting great methodological and conceptual diversity. Given the dynamic and diverse natural resource management contexts in which engagement occurs and the often significant stakes involved in making decisions about natural resources, we argue that stakeholder engagement would benefit from a theoretical framework that is both agile and robust. To this end, five essential elements of stakeholder engagement are evaluated and organized to form the Five-Feature Framework, thereby providing a functional and approachable platform with which to consider engagement processes. Aside from introducing and developing the Five-Feature Framework, we apply the framework as a measure to evaluate the empirical case study literature involving stakeholder engagement in natural resource management in an effort to better understand the obstacles facing robust and genuine engagement in natural resource management. Our results suggest that the most basic principles of engagement are often absent from stakeholder engagement projects, which confirms the need for a functional framework. The Five-Feature Framework can be used to plan flexible, adaptable, and rigorous engagement projects in a variety of contexts and with teams that have varying backgrounds and experience. By virtue of its simplicity and functionality, the framework demystifies stakeholder engagement in order to help natural resource professionals build opportunities for collaborative decision-making and integrate citizen values and knowledge into complex management issues.

Agenda theories suggest that problem indicator, focusing event, and information feedback enhance issue attention. However, few studies have systematically tested this. This study, using time series data and vector autoregression (VAR), examines how climate problem indicator, high-profile international event, and climate science feedback influence media and congressional attention to global warming and climate change. The findings confirm that these attention-grabbing factors indeed generally promote issue salience, but these factors may work differently across agenda venues. Attention inertia, interagenda interaction, and partisan advantage on agenda setting are also included and analyzed in the VAR modeling. Implications of the study and recommendations for future research are discussed in conclusion.

Climate change has become a more salient issue on the US policy agenda at all levels of government. Increasing empirical evidence and identification of its potential risks to human populations have increased media, public, and policy-maker interest. There is a gap, however, in our knowledge of sub-national decision-making which suggests several questions: Are community leaders deciding to take action in response to climate change action, and, if so, what is the solution focus -mitigation or adaptation? Our study addresses this gap in the literature by reporting the results of a national survey of local, regional, and state decision-makers whose organisations will be addressing community responses to the threat of climate change. We find that, in general, these agencies are not engaged in climate change policy, nor is the issue on their agendas. Among organisations considering policy responses, there is variation between types of agency and type of solution, mitigation versus adaptation.

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Natural resource and wildlife managers must balance the disparate priorities of a diversity of stakeholders. To manage these priorities, a firm understanding of topics salient to the public is needed. The media often report on issues of importance to the public; therefore, these reports may be a useful measure of public interest. However, efficient methods for distinguishing diverse topics related to a wildlife management issue reported in the media and changes in the salience of those topics have been lacking. We used latent Dirichlet allocation, a Bayesian mixture model, to quantitatively assess the salience of topics surrounding the gray wolf (Canis lupus), which was reintroduced to Idaho (U.S.A.) in 1995. We analyzed articles published from 1960 to 2015 in an Idaho newspaper. We identified 6 distinct topics associated with gray wolves: policy, hunting, biological status, implementation of management, recovery, and human‐wolf conflict. The salience of topics pre‐ and postreintroduction of wolves (1995) and pre‐ and postdelisting of wolves from the U.S. Endangered Species Act (2009) differed significantly, underscoring that these events were turning points in how issues were being publicly discussed and framed. Articles written by the local reporters were more likely to report on topics regarding conflict between humans and wolves, whereas articles sourced from a national outlet reported more on topics pertaining to wolf policy and biological status. In the context of managing a contentious, far‐ranging, and long‐lived wildlife species, our methods can help guide the location and timing of a suite of management strategies (e.g., media relation plans and stakeholder engagement) that promote human‐wildlife coexistence across different landscapes.