Bridging the research-management gap: landscape science in practice on public lands in the western United States

Abstract

Context Landscape science relies on foundational concepts of landscape ecology and seeks to understand the physical, biological, and human components of ecosystems to support land management decisionmaking. Incorporating landscape science into land management decisions, however, remains challenging. Many lands in the western United States are federally owned and managed for multiple uses, including recreation, conservation, and energy development. Objective We argue for stronger integration of landscape science into the management of these public lands. Methods We open by outlining the relevance of landscape science for public land planning, management, and environmental effects analysis, including pertinent laws and policies. We identify challenges to integrating landscape science into public land

Impacts of climate change on multiple use management of Bureau of Land Management land in the Intermountain West, USA

“…The science–management gap identified in our study is problematic (Carter et al 2020), as our results support previous findings that climate change will likely increase land use conflicts on public land (Johnson and Becker 2015) and that most human land uses and/or values are fundamentally threatened by climate change (Chambers and Wisdom 2009). In particular, intrinsic values, which are identified as threatened by extractive uses in the literature, are under‐prioritized by BLM RMPs due to an institutional focus on more active, extractive, and anthropocentric uses (Loomis 2002).…”

“…Yet, the stark disparity between the literature and management plans highlights a disconnect between academics, managers, and policymakers. To bridge this gap, scientists need to make their research more accessible and could make greater efforts to include more explicit and thorough management recommendations (Carter et al 2020). Increasingly, boundary‐spanning organizations have emerged to assist in translating science for land managers (e.g., the U.S. Joint Fire Science Program’s fire science exchange network; Kocher et al 2012).…”

“…This is hardly surprising considering that predictions from the scientific community are often provided on spatial and temporal scales that differ from the scales at which public land management policies and procedures are enacted (Wyborn et al 2015). Furthermore, disconnects between land manager awareness and the most up‐to‐date academic research (Archie 2014, Carter et al 2020), as well as institutional constraints and limited resources, make it difficult to plan for climate change (Cheng and Randall‐Parker 2017, Morisette et al 2017). The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) manages more public land in the IMW than any other natural resource management agency (Hardy Vincent et al 2020).…”

Unfamiliar Territory: Emerging Themes for Ecological Drought Research and Management

“…As scientists turn their focus toward addressing the scientific uncertainties inherent to 21 st century drought, recognizing how scientific support can target decision-making is key. 112,159 In practice, management uncertainty comes into play when confronting decisions about when to act (action thresholds), decisions involving existing action alternatives, and decisions to identify new opportunities in this unfamiliar territory. 160 Further, managers dealing with ecological transformation are working in a new management paradigm, to resist, accept, or direct the new ecological states.…”

Provoking a Cultural Shift in Data Quality

“…Data availability and new ecosystem research approaches are also facilitating an increase in transdisciplinary, interagency, and remote collaborations (e.g., Webb et al 2016 ) and new subdisciplines such as macroecosystem ecology and ecological forecasting are developing rapidly (Poisot et al 2016 , Dietze et al 2018 ). Advances in data integration and modeling in collaboration with community scientists and land managers provide new opportunities to synthesize, predict, test, and revise our understanding of ecosystems across spatial and temporal scales (Campbell et al 2016 , Dietze et al 2018 , Peters et al 2018 , Carter et al 2020 ). Specific advances include integrating community science phenology observations into models seeking to understand vegetation responses to climate change (Taylor et al 2019 ) and broadscale standardized rangeland monitoring programs that inform land management decisions at local and national scales (Toevs et al 2011 ).…”