Brief Summary of Minutes of Annual Meeting

Brief summary of minutes of annual meeting: We recapped the and summarized the NIFA proposal, identified tasks and milestones for the coming year.  We identified potential individuals to serve on the oversight committee.  Specifically, representation from BLM, USDA, NGOs and State Wildlife Agency(s).  We identified the need for bi-weekly calls to discuss data needs for sage-grouse demographic model development. Dr. Wulfhorst sought guidance on sampling strategy both geographically as well as direct social connections for his surveying of sociological impacts. Dr. Perry Williams and his Ph.D. student have made excellent progress on demographic modelling.  There was considerable conversation on which datasets were best to use for modelling breeding populations (i.e., lek counts). In the end, the team suggested to approach the US Geologcial Survey to acquire the data they had already cleaned and filtered for the entire western US and included all the data collected by state agencies.  Dr. Christian Hagen agreed to lead the effort to aquire those data.   

Accomplishments: The W1188 successfully applied and received funding from USDA-AFRI NIFA for a proposal titled “Sustaining rural livelihoods, livestock grazing, and sage-grouse habitat in western sagebrush systems” ($650,000) and was awarded through University Nevada-Reno, with Perry Williams as Lead Investigator.  Two proposals were submitted to the National Science Foundation 1) “Socioeconomic Resilience and Transformation in the New Rural West-the Convergence of Energy Development, Exurban Development, and Climate Change”.NSF-DISES for $1.6 mill submitted through Montana State Univeristy, with Lance McNew, as lead investigator, and 2) “Developing Transferability and Fluency in a Transdisciplinarian Effort to Disentangle Socioeconomic-Ecological Resilience in the Sagebrush Biome” NSF-MCA ($250,000) was submitted by Christian Hagen, Oregon State University, with  JD Wulfhorst and Katherine Lee University of Idaho, as co-investigators and as host institution for Hagen’s activities. Neither of these NSF grant proposals were funded.

Impacts:

The human and economic dimensions of sagebrush communities have an unprecedented scope, and there is a need for resilience-based management of the sagebrush biome. Our approach will provide a holistic view of agroecosystem sustainability as it pertains to quantifiable economics related to livestock production, energy development and qualitative sociological components such as sense of place, community security, and anxiety from contemporary threats of climate change. 

In addition to improving our basic understanding of rural SESs, our project will address critical knowledge gaps in resource dependent rural communities for community corridors in our study area, which allows for testing specific hypotheses about the correlations and dynamics between socio-economic, ecological resilience, and ecosystem health. Policy initiatives such as President Biden’s 30×30 conservation plan and transition to renewable energy necessitates understanding how these changes may affect resource dependent rural communities. The structure of our models, from micro (livestock production) to macro (regional development model) scale, will inform a vector of socioeconomic resilience measures that will be linked directly to ecosystem health (sage-grouse populations). This approach will allow for variation in environmental socio-economic inputs and assumptions to represent key attributes of rural communities. 

Our proposed work will assist in informing resource dependent communities in planning and negotiating with and between multiple institutions, private landowners and resource managers in the western United States. As mentioned above, the sagebrush biome is exposed to several stressors due to climate change, invasive species, and human development, all of which also affect human dimensions. It is our hope that this work will contribute significantly to improving delivery of conservation actions that will mutually benefit rural communities, the ecosystem, and wildlife therein.

The models developed in this project will be part of the tools and information needed for ranchers, agency personnel, and local policymakers to make better and more secure decisions about future economic growth. Students and faculty will work with agencies and local citizen representatives to use the decision support systems to create more economically and socially resilient communities. Scientists will have a better sense of how local residents think about the environment around them and the science that is produced. The framework proposed here will be transferable to other biomes that share natural resource based economies. The multi-attribute decision model will provide a framework to serve as a decision tool for planners and scientists alike to assess socio-ecological interactions and outcomes both in a planning sense but also as a management tool that can serve adaptive management in intervening years.