Fostering Resilience and Adaptation to Drought in the Southern High Plains: Using Participatory Methods for More Robust Citizen Science

Jacqueline Vadjunec,Brian Birchler,Nicole Colston,Todd Fagin,Austin Boardman

doi:10.3390/su14031813

Abstract

Citizen science holds the potential and capacity to change the role of science in the face of current and impending environmental sustainability challenges. However, the sustainability science community must also address the ethical challenges inherent in the nature and outcomes of citizen participation and inclusion. In this article, we provide a brief history of Participatory Action Research (PAR), long popular in the social sciences, and explain how participatory methods can inform the process and products of citizen science to meet the dueling ideals of ethically engaging communities and producing more robust science. Our decade of human-environment research on drought resilience and adaptation in the Southern High Plains of the United States illustrates how PAR complements formal science and can contribute to community resilience and adaptation efforts. Synthesized into 10 entry points for more ethical and participatory science, our semi-chronological narrative offers concrete strategies informed by PAR principles and values, at various stages of research, and highlights the place-based, ethical, and methodological contexts for applying each strategy.

Highlights

The incorporation of everyday people into the scientific process, or “citizen science,”was first proposed by sociologist Alan Irwin in 1995
Challenges notwithstanding, we argue that Participatory Action Research (PAR) approaches offer a complementary and much needed way to “humanize research” [45], which is especially important in tandem with the increasing tech savviness of application-based citizen science approaches and the resultant challenges discussed above
Taken together, PAR and citizen science approaches can make socioecological studies more robust

Summary

Introduction

The incorporation of everyday people into the scientific process, or “citizen science,”was first proposed by sociologist Alan Irwin in 1995. A comparative study regarding socioecological resilience and adaptation to drought in the Southern High Plains, took place in and around the Oklahoma Panhandle, previously called No Man’s Land, starting with two counties (Cimarron County, OK, USA, and Union County, NM, USA) and expanding over time in various capacities to the “Five States Area”: Oklahoma, New Mexico, Colorado, Kansas, and Texas (See Figure 1) This region is largely agricultural with a long history of recurrent drought Research began in 2008, when the lead author started working in the to the “Five States Area”: Oklahoma, New Mexico, Colorado, Kansas, and Texas (See Fig of 23 ure 1) This region is largely agricultural with a long history of recurrent drought (such as the Dust Bowl of the 1930s) and a complex web of local, regional, state, and federal land and water policies [46]. Research began in 2008, when the lead author started working in region recording oral oral histories withwith Dust Bowl survivors.

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Conclusion