Session 2 – Challenges and Strategies in Transdisciplinary Research: Bridging the Gap Between Theory and Practice

PowerPoint slide presentations are available for talks in this session. Go to the abstract for the presentation link.

Morning Session: 8:30AM-10:30AM

Cumberland Room (First Floor)

Session Chairs:
Carly Frank: graduate student; Climate Change Institute, One Health, UMaine, Orono, ME
Megan Leach: graduate student; Wildlife, Fisheries & Conservation Biology, Conservation Leadership, UMaine, Orono, ME
Lucy Martin: graduate student; Ecology & Environmental Sciences, Conservation Leadership, UMaine, Orono, ME
Christina McCosker: graduate student; School of Marine Sciences, One Health, UMaine, Orono, ME
Elizabeth Pellecer Rivera: PhD candidate; Ecology & Environmental Sciences, UMaine, Orono, ME
Megan Schierer: graduate student; Ecology & Environmental Sciences, One Health, UMaine, Orono, ME
Alaina Woods: graduate student; Ecology & Environmental Sciences, One Health, UMaine, Orono, ME

Solutions to wicked problems in Maine and beyond require expertise from a diverse range of disciplines. As our global and local worlds undergo rapid change there is a demand for transdisciplinary approaches to solve complex social-ecological and sustainability issues such as climate change, food insecurity, and public health. Multi-faceted issues like these present unique and contextual problems within communities that cannot be approached by typical disciplinary measures or from a single scope of knowledge. Transdisciplinary research benefits from collaboration between scientists, stakeholders, decision-makers, and community leaders to identify research priorities, develop strategies to address problems, and implement solutions.

While transdisciplinary approaches are necessary for stakeholder and community-driven problem solving, there are challenges and barriers to bridging the gap between theory and practice including management, communication, and logistics. The focus of this session will be on experiences of those engaging in transdisciplinary research and their innovative strategies to navigate challenges associated with this kind of highly collaborative work in Maine. Special consideration will be given to proposals highlighting novel approaches, methods and communication for effective transdisciplinary research in the state. This session seeks to provide participants with foundational knowledge for successful transdisciplinary research and new collaborations fostered within Maine and beyond.

Presenters are indicated in bold font.

8:30AM – 8:55AM
Resilience Dialogues Facilitate Solutions Oriented Collaborative Research

Christine Feurt
Wells National Estuarine Research Reserve, Wells, Maine

A PowerPoint slide presentation is available for this talk.

Collaborative science engages scientists from diverse disciplines, practitioners balancing complex management situations, and stakeholders with commitments to resilience grounded in place, local economies, and community wellbeing. As these diverse stakeholders work together on challenging projects, shared goals for resilience can be obscured by conflict. For over a decade, the National Estuarine Research Reserve System has wrestled with approaches to collaborative science – casting a wide net over coastal management issues in every bioregion of the country. While considerable effort has focused on the definition, design and implementation of collaborative science projects, conflict and conflict resolution strategies that arise during a collaborative science project have received less scrutiny. The Wells Reserve in Maine created the Resilience Dialogues project to tap the knowledge and experiences within the NERRS to develop best practices for stakeholder engagement, collaboration, and conflict management in the practice of collaborative science. The Resilience Dialogues curriculum produced by the project provides members of transdisciplinary science teams with training and resources to conduct stakeholder assessments; apply systems thinking; manage conflict using Collaborative Learning and understand the role of mental models in building shared meaning that supports collective action. The Resilience Dialogues resources are being used to build the capacity of boundary spanning organizations, science integrators, project managers and facilitators of collaborative science to support the work of transdisciplinary teams.

9:00AM – 9:25AM
Delivering Climate Services to Coastal & Marine Stakeholders

David Reidmiller, Hannah Baranes, Gayle Bowness
Gulf of Maine Research Institute

A PowerPoint slide presentation is available for this talk.

The Gulf of Maine Research Institute (GMRI) pioneers collaborative solutions to global ocean challenges. We function as a transboundary institution, working strategically across disciplines, markets, and geographies. Our programs address key issues in marine fisheries, sustainable seafood, science education, and climate resilience. Our research programs are led by an interdisciplinary mix of oceanographers, ecologists, economists, and data scientists. This scientific perspective is balanced by decades of practice delivering hands-on learning experiences and convening diverse groups of marine stakeholders to support effective resource management and supply chain decisions.

As climate change may be the most “wicked problem” of our time, GMRI recently launched a Climate Center to support the region’s coastal communities and marine businesses in addressing climate risks to ensure livelihoods can continue to thrive in a warmer world. GMRI’s Climate Center uses a holistic “science-engagement-solutions” framework to bring cutting-edge research insights to bear on emergent issues facing resource-constrained and expertise-limited partners. This talk will lay out the vision for the Climate Center and its transdisciplinary approach for designing and implementing user-driven climate solutions. From Sea Level Science, the Blue-Economy and Decision Science to Policy, Engineering, and Finance Expertise to Municipal and Business Climate Engagement, we will provide examples of how we are taking an inclusive, stakeholder-driven approach to building resilience into the region’s marine economy and preparing the region to be a model nationally for climate-smart decision making.

9:30AM – 9:55AM
An Engaged and Ethnographic Approach to Transdisciplinary Communication

Kaitlyn Haynal1, Bridie McGreavy1, Heather M. Leslie1, Jennifer Smith-Mayo1, Jessica Reilly-Moman2, Michael T. Kinnison1, Darren Ranco1

  1. University of Maine
  2. Aspen Global Change Institute

A PowerPoint slide presentation is available for this talk.

The Maine-eDNA Project is a transdisciplinary collaboration aimed at addressing the wicked problems of climate change in Maine coastal ecosystems and communities using environmental-DNA (hereafter e-DNA) science. The project involves more than 100 participants from 9 core partner institutions to focus on capacities for eDNA data collection; processing and analysis; education and workforce development; communication and team science research; and diverse partnerships among academic and research institutions, Wabanaki Tribal Nations, state and municipal governments, businesses, and non-profit organizations. Large transdisciplinary collaborations like the Maine-eDNA Project require multiple, inclusive, and equitable approaches to communication. In this proposed presentation, we share our engaged, ethnographic approach to studying how communication shapes and is shaped by transdisciplinary collaboration in this project. We identify definitions of eDNA, perspectives about communication, and constructions of audience and expertise as significant communicative practices that shape the ways in which collaborators co-produce knowledge across disciplines and with diverse partners. Articulating connections among strategic communication, knowledge co-production, and power facilitate development of strategic collaborative praxis. In our case, such praxis strategies include creating spaces for collaborators to negotiate differences in definition and approaches for defining eDNA, communication, and knowledge in more just and inclusive ways. These engaged and adaptive practices, approached through methods such as posing questions, knowledge mapping, and centering ethical questions, have enabled us to conduct research in a responsive manner and to find meaningful connections between theory and practice. Our research suggests that an engaged communication-focused praxis approach would also benefit other large, epistemologically diverse transdisciplinary collaborations.

10:00AM – 10:25AM
More Than Just Polar Bears: A system-wide interdisciplinary approach to connecting Maine with the Arctic

Katie Westbrook (student)1, Michael Curran2, Kaisa Holloway Cripps2, Leo Trudel2, Younes Iggoute (student)2, Jamal Khan (student)2

  1. School of Earth and Climate Sciences, University of Maine
  2. University of Maine at Fort Kent

A PowerPoint slide presentation is available for this talk.

No place on the globe is experiencing more rapid change and encountering wicked problems than the Circumpolar Region of the Arctic. The Arctic is experiencing multifaceted and complex changes across the fields of environment, people, economic development, and security brought about primarily by environmental change and the opening of the waters and land. And these changes are having a direct influence on Maine. In 2021, the Fort Kent campus launched the interdisciplinary Arctic Studies undergraduate program which connects with the UMaine Arctic Initiative and provides novel research and learning experiences to meet the economic and workforce needs of the state of Maine and beyond. This oral presentation shares the inaugural research by a team of cross campus students and faculty on the findings of their initial inquiry into program design and how it will inform research priorities, develop strategies to address structural changes in the Arctic, and implement solutions to benefit both Maine and the polar region of the Arctic. The research benchmarked existing Arctic and Circumpolar programs across the globe, identified knowledge, skills and abilities needed to work and engage in field work and careers in the circumpolar region, and inventoried UMS and global opportunities to build a transdisciplinary collaborative learning model for students and professionals to understand, evaluate and create solutions to engage in various fields of study in the Arctic region. This research was funded by the University of Maine System Office of Research Development Research Reinvestment Fund Planning Grant.