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To address sustainable development challenges, transdisciplinary sustainability science (TDSS) requires understanding and managing ecological processes that transcend scientific, geopolitical, and cultural divides. Communication that can bridge these divides is critical for the success of TDSS projects. We describe a communication strategy developed as part of a large, transdisciplinary, multiyear project that aimed to understand the impact of invasive trees (specifically, Prosopis juliflora) on human societies and ecosystems in eastern Africa and to develop and implement sustainable management solutions to mitigate those impacts. The strategy included 17 activities designed to support communication among scientists, students, and stakeholders from the project’s inception to its conclusion. Both the informational and relational dimensions of communication were considered in the design and implementation of these activities. We discuss the effectiveness of this communication strategy, offering it as a guide to enhancing communication and the success of large TDSS projects.

This article discusses a formal evaluation of new curricular materials and activities designed to foster understanding of three key issues-expertise, risk, and sociopolitical constraints-related to values and policy in transdisciplinary environmental science. We begin by describing the three issues, along with current thinking about the most appropriate ways to address them in the context of transdisciplinary environmental science. We then describe how we created curricular materials and activities focusing on these three issues that could be tailored for use in a wide range of graduate environmental science programs. The curriculum was adapted by instructors for use in five graduate classes at two US universities, and we used a pre-test, post-test mixed methods design to evaluate its effects on students' ethical reasoning about values and policy. The results of this evaluation suggest that our semi-structured, dialogue-based curriculum enhances student awareness of and reasoning about values and policy in environmental research. We close with several educational recommendations for transdisciplinary environmental science programs that are grounded in our experience with this curriculum.

Little is known about what the public thinks of tall wood buildings (TWBs), which are structures made primarily from wood that are at least five stories tall. Understanding end-user beliefs can help the industry address public preferences and concerns. An online panel of 502 residents in the Portland, Oregon, and Seattle, Washington, metropolitan areas showed that only 19 percent were familiar with TWBs. The largest percentages of respondents believed that, compared with concrete and steel buildings, TWBs are more aesthetically pleasing, create a positive living environment, and use materials that regrow. However, they also believed that TWBs have greater fire risk and need more maintenance. Sizable percentages of respondents said they did not know about various durability, performance, aesthetic, and environmental attributes of TWBs. There were few meaningful differences between respondents who reported being familiar and unfamiliar with TWBs, but those who were familiar evaluated TWBs slightly more positively.

Recent mandates in the United States require federal agencies to incorporate climate change science into land management planning efforts. These mandates target possible adaptation and mitigation strategies. However, the degree to which climate change is actively being considered in agency planning and management decisions is largely unknown. We explored the usefulness of climate change science for federal resource managers, focusing on the efficacy of potential adaptation strategies and barriers limiting the use of climate change science in adaptation efforts. Our study was conducted in the northern Rocky Mountains region of the western United States, where we interacted with 77 U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management personnel through surveys, semistructured interviews, and four collaborative workshops at locations across Idaho and Montana. We used a mixed-methods approach to evaluate managers’ perceptions about adapting to and mitigating for climate change. Although resource managers incorporate general language about climate change in regional and landscape-level planning documents, they are currently not planning on-the-ground adaptation or mitigation projects. However, managers felt that their organizations were most likely to adapt to climate change through use of existing management strategies that are already widely implemented for other non climate–related management goals. These existing strategies, (e.g., thinning and prescribed burning) are perceived as more feasible than new climate-specific methods (e.g., assisted migration) because they already have public and agency support, accomplish multiple goals, and require less anticipation of the future timing and probability of climate change impacts. Participants reported that the most common barriers to using climate change information included a lack of management-relevant climate change science, inconsistent agency guidance, and insufficient time and resources to access, interpret, and apply current climate science information to management plans.

To assess how the natural environment and social interaction foster emotional outcomes, this study surveyed recreational visitors to the Dalton Highway in northern Alaska (258 guided visitors, 187 independent travelers) about a special experience they had, the factors that influenced it, and the emotions it engendered. Scenery-especially mountains-was the most commonly mentioned feature, with vastness, contrasts, and colors emerging as important dimensions. Seeing wildlife was important in half of the special experiences, especially when it involved being near animals, watching natural behavior, or seeing young animals. Surprising, novel, or unexpected circumstances were explicitly described by nearly one fifth of respondents. The emotions of awe, excitement, and pleasure were strongly associated with special experiences. Experiences in which wildlife and scenery were experienced either as part of a social group or during a recreational activity generated significantly higher levels of positive affect. These findings emphasize the importance of positive emotions as a benefit of recreational activities and provide insight into the nature of extraordinary experiences.

Transdisciplinarity — the inclusion of both the public and scientific community in knowledge construction and policy formation — is increasingly called upon to ameliorate wicked problems associated with social-ecological systems. Informed by previous scholarship, we propose that there is a spectrum from superficial to meaningful ways that public perception and knowledge are incorporated in transdisciplinary approaches to constructing knowledge and developing policy. Further, we argue that students in environmental science graduate programs hold beliefs not compatible with current recommendations related to transdisciplinary research and practice. Thus, the primary purpose of this paper is to describe how students imagine the ways in which transdisciplinarity ought to unfold, which can then serve as the foundation for the development of transdisciplinary curricula that meet them where they are. In this study, we used qualitative interviews to explore environmental science graduate students’ perceptions of how public stakeholders and scientists ought to work together across four phases of transdisciplinary research: (1) conceptualizing the problem, (2) data collection, (3) analyzing and interpreting information, and (4) participating in decision-making. Our findings suggest that students generally believed that public stakeholders should be superficially included differentially across these phases. Using these findings, we suggest that university environmental science programs should utilize curricula that promote more participatory and meaningful transdisciplinarity across all four phases of transdisciplinary processes to train students to address fractious social-ecological issues.

Existing social science has indicated that wildfires can affect the short- and long-term functioning of social systems. Less work has focused on how wildfire events affect the physical and psychological well-being of individual residents impacted by such events. In this study, we explore the extent to which personal- or community-level impacts, biophysical characteristics of a wildfire, and resident expectations about wildfire influence residents' self-reported well-being following such events. In fall 2013, we surveyed residents who were potentially impacted by 25 wildfires in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Montana. Multivariate regression was used to determine the influences on wildfire impact to resident well-being, and hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) was used to test for variance in impacts to resident well-being across the 25 fires selected. The results suggest that a loss of connection to the landscape postfire, personal impacts such as damage to property, residents' expectations about wildfire impact in their locality, and disruption of resident routines were highly correlated with self-reported well-being after fires. Results of the HLM analysis suggest a high level of consistency in the relationships that influenced well-being across the 25 fires. Our findings indicate that common metrics could be used to help establish baselines for measuring impacts to well-being from fires.

There is a growing professional and public perception that ‘extreme’ wildland fires are becoming more common due to changing climatic conditions. This concern is heightened in the wildland–urban interface where social and ecological effects converge. ‘Mega-fires’, ‘conflagrations’, ‘extreme’ and ‘catastrophic’ are descriptors interchangeably used increasingly to describe fires in recent decades in the US and globally. It is necessary to have consistent, meaningful and quantitative metrics to define these perceived ‘extreme’ fires, given studies predict an increased frequency of large and intense wildfires in many ecosystems as a response to climate change. Using the Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity dataset, we identified both widespread fire years and individual fires as potentially extreme during the period 1984–2009 across a 91.2×106-ha area in the north-western United States. The metrics included distributions of fire size, fire duration, burn severity and distance to the wildland–urban interface. Widespread fire years for the study region included 1988, 2000, 2006 and 2007. When considering the intersection of all four metrics using distributions at the 90th percentile, less than 1.5% of all fires were identified as potentially extreme fires. At the more stringent 95th and 99th percentiles, the percentage reduced to <0.5% and 0.05%. Correlations between area burnt and climatic measures (Palmer drought severity index, temperature, energy release component, duff moisture code and potential evapotranspiration) were observed. We discuss additional biophysical and social metrics that could be included and recommend both the need for enhanced visualisation approaches and to weigh the relative strength or importance of each metric.

Understanding how setting attributes influence the nature of the visitor experience is crucial to effective recreation management. Highly influential attributes are useful indicators to monitor within a planning framework, such as Limits of Acceptable Change. This study sought to identify the setting attributes perceived to have the most profound effect on the ability to have “a real wilderness experience” and to assess the degree to which attribute importance varied with situational context and visitor characteristics. To this end, exiting hikers were surveyed at moderate and very high use trailheads in Alpine Lakes Wilderness, WA (USA), and Three Sisters Wilderness, OR (USA). They were asked about the degree to which encountering varying levels of different setting attributes would add to or detract from their experience. Attributes with the largest range of effect on experience, based on evaluations of different levels, were considered most important. The most influential attributes were litter and several types of campsite interaction--people walking through camp and number of other groups camping close by. The perceived importance of setting attributes did not vary much between wilderness locations with substantially different use levels, suggesting that conclusions are robust and generalizable across wilderness areas. There also was little difference in the perceptions of day and overnight visitors. In contrast, we found substantial variation in the perceived importance of setting attributes with variation in wilderness experience, knowledge, attachment, and motivation. Our results validate the emphasis of many wilderness management plans on indicators of social interaction, such as number of encounters.

Professionals in environmental fields engage with complex problems that involve stakeholders with different values, different forms of knowledge, and contentious decisions. There is increasing recognition of the need to train graduate students in interdisciplinary environmental science programs (IESPs) in these issues, which we refer to as “social ethics.” A literature review revealed topics and skills that should be included in such training, as well as potential challenges and barriers. From this review, we developed an online survey, which we administered to faculty from 81 United States colleges and universities offering IESPs (480 surveys were completed). Respondents overwhelmingly agreed that IESPs should address values in applying science to policy and management decisions. They also agreed that programs should engage students with issues related to norms of scientific practice. Agreement was slightly less strong that IESPs should train students in skills related to managing value conflicts among different stakeholders. The primary challenges to incorporating social ethics into the curriculum were related to the lack of materials and expertise for delivery, though challenges such as ethics being marginalized in relation to environmental science content were also prominent. Challenges related to students’ interest in ethics were considered less problematic. Respondents believed that social ethics are most effectively delivered when incorporated into existing courses, and they preferred case studies or problem-based learning for delivery. Student competence is generally not assessed, and respondents recognized a need for both curricular materials and assessment tools.