Practical considerations for adaptive strategies by US grazing land managers with a changing climate

Authors: Derner, Justin; Wilmer, Hailey; STACKHOUSE-LAWSON, K - Colorado State University; PLACE, SARA - Colorado State University; Boggess, Mark

Submitted to: Agrosystems, Geosciences & Environment
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 1/31/2023
Publication Date: 3/16/2023
Citation: Derner, J.D., Wilmer, H.N., Stackhouse-Lawson, K., Place, S., Boggess, M.V. 2023. Practical considerations for adaptive strategies by US grazing land managers with a changing climate. Agrosystems, Geosciences & Environment. 6. Article e20356. https://doi.org/10.1002/agg2.20356.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/agg2.20356

Interpretive Summary: Practical considerations for grazing land adaptations with a changing climate include adaptive strategies emphasizing flexibility and learning under uncertainty at the ranch-scale to adapt to directional climate changes and increased climate variability. Strategic collaborations among managers and scientists – co-production of knowledge and understanding - across landscapes and over time can increase adaptive capacity, with resulting impacts including the development of communities of practice and associated learning opportunities, and high uptake adoption of emergent tools and technologies by ranch managers. Due to climate diverging from historical baselines and managers lacking experiential knowledge of these new climates, including more frequency extreme events, new frameworks are needed to structure conversations, influence research relevancy and impact, and drive imaginative solutions among researchers, managers, and local communities for socio-ecological systems. We present simplified frameworks for systems-scale knowledge needs and adaptation with an increasingly uncertain and complex change at multiple scales that will help guide conversation, future research, and new imaginative solutions.

Technical Abstract: We outline practical considerations for grazing land adaptations with a changing climate, with an emphasis on the ranch operation scale and specific attention to directional climate changes and increased climate variability. These adaptive strategies fall into two themes: flexibility and learning under uncertainty. Ranches and livestock operations with greater land, social, or other capital resources may have more flexibility, and risk can be reduced for managers (ranchers, farmers, operators, and livestock managers) through participation in conservation or farm policy programs and/or market-based approaches. Bolstering adaptive capacity across landscapes and time can originate from social capital of operators and strategic collaborations among managers and scientists. As climate diverges from historical baselines and the realm of managers’ experiential knowledge, new conceptual frameworks are needed to structure conversations, influence research relevancy and impact, and drive imaginative solutions among researchers, managers, and local communities for socio-ecological systems. We provide simplified frameworks to help guide conversation, future research, and new imaginative solutions for systems-scale knowledge needs and adaptation to address increasingly uncertain and complex change at multiple scales. Practical considerations for adaptive strategies by grazing land managers with a changing climate will be accelerated through 1) collaborative efforts among managers and explicitly with science-management partnerships becoming more mainstream, 2) co-produced research with managers and researchers at ranch-scales, 3) development of communities of practice and associated learning opportunities, and 4) continued co-development and advancement of technologies and tools that result in high uptake adoption by ranch managers.