FOLLOWING DECISION PATHWAYS: A TRANSDISCIPLINARY FRAMEWORK FOR RESEARCH AND APPLICATIONS IN ADAPTIVE RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

The capacity of society to adapt to global change will depend on the ability to integrate complex information and implement feasible management strategies. The anticipated acceleration of human-induced impacts on earth and environmental resource systems requires science to take multi- inter-, and even transdisciplinary perspectives in order to advance our abilities for identifying and implementing effective solutions.

John Wesley Powell once said, “When research is properly organized every man’s work is an aid to every other man’s.” Decision Pathways research is a framework that can aid development of tractable, transparent, and adaptive solutions. This approach to organizing research provides a unifying framework with nodes of interaction that are delineated by components of decision processes.

Elements of the framework are presented in the context of case-based examples from water resource allocation in the southwest and emerging issues with energy-water interdependencies. Using a Decision Pathways approach provides a whole systems perspective that can serve to generate new insights and understanding of complex science-based issues.

The next generation of scientists can expect to be called upon to incorporate scientific information into the social process of decision-making. Using a Decision Pathways approach converts amorphous problems into a more structured format. This format is capable of producing a progressively cohesive body of research cooperatively across disciplines while incorporating both quantitative and qualitative aspects of knowledge about earth and environmental resource problems.