Usable science is “science that meets the changing needs of decision makers.†To conduct usable science, it is therefore critical for scientists to understand and regularly monitor the needs of decision makers. For rangelands, there are different levels of decision-making depending on the management or policy context. Decision makers can include ranchers and grazing permittees, government agency personnel from the field level to Washington, DC, elected officials, and interest group representatives – the needs of each should be considered when determining what is usable science. To do so, we joined other range scientists as well as ranchers and livestock industry professionals, government agency land managers, and NGO representatives for a workshop on usable science, convened in Ardmore, Oklahoma, in June 2014. Participants convened in teams organized around general topics. This presentation reports on the outcomes of the socio-economics team. Team members first identified issues they believed were relevant to decisions and worthy of scientific inquiry. The entire group then ranked all 142 issues. Four issues proposed by the socio-economics team were among the top 20 identified overall. From these issues, the socio-economics team then identified four multi-faceted research questions as having the greatest potential to produce usable science: (1) How do rural communities best prepare for, adapt to, and recover from impacts of increased environmental and socio-economic variability? (2) What motivates land owners to cooperate across boundaries for environmental stewardship, and how do we use that information to create and/or improve incentives and reduce disincentives for stewardship? (3) Who needs what sorts of information about rangelands, and what are the barriers and opportunities for information transfer? (4) What are the barriers and opportunities for new people to enter and persist in rangeland occupations, and how can we use that information to increase numbers of adults who choose such careers?
Oral presentation and poster titles, abstracts, and authors from the Society for Range Management (SRM) Annual Meetings and Tradeshows, from 2013 forward.