Delving deeper into engagement and broader impacts: lessons from across the Network

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Addressing the ‘broader impacts’ of LTER science is both a priority and a challenge. How do we engage stakeholders with LTER science in a way that makes our science usable, useful, and important? How do we as an LTER community best fulfill the LTER Guiding Principle “to reach out to the broader scientific community, natural resource managers, policymakers, and the general public by providing decision support, information, recommendations, and the knowledge and capability to address complex environmental challenges”?

Moving beyond the telling of stories of LTER through press releases, blogs, social media and the like, we will explore models of deeper engagement with stakeholders. During this session four LTER scientists will share examples of how they/their site have engaged in these deeper ways. The examples will cover a diversity of models of engagement and sites across the Network. The panelists will delve into the nuts and bolts of engaging with stakeholders, sharing challenges, opportunities, surprises, and lessons learned.

We will then take a step back and consider broader implications of engagement. AND PI Michael Nelson will guide a discussion that delves deep into the essence of engagement, asking the panel and group as a whole to address topics such as the ethics of engaging with certain groups, when is it better to not engage, do we have a moral obligation to engage, and how do we measure the impact of engagement? There will be time for questions from the audience and small group discussions to flesh out ideas and share experiences.

The panelists are:

• Phil Robertson, Kellogg Biological Station, "Collaborating with the Electric Power Research Institute to influence US carbon markets"
• Tiffany Troxler, Florida Coastal Everglades, "Engaging on the science and regional impact of Everglades restoration"
• David Iwaniec, Central Arizona Phoenix, "Co-developing scenarios with regional decision-makers to explore diverse plausible, desirable, sustainable futures"
• Kathy Fallon Lambert, Harvard Forest, "Engaged Scholarship: One Size Doesn't Fit All"

Working Group Reports

Final reports: 

Stakeholder Engagement working group notes by cmhart.docx

Participant list: 

SKMBT_C25215090911311.pdf