About
The science usability team, under the leadership of Dr. Maria Carmen Lemos and James Arnott, is learning about strategies that best support the Reserve System in generating usable science for coastal and estuarine resource management. The team is studying how the design of competitive funding programs influence whether/how research project results will be used. They are doing this by examining a variety of datasets related to the evolution of the program from the Cooperative Institute for Coastal and Estuarine Environmental Technology (CICEET) to the NERRS Science Collaborative. They employ a variety of social science techniques to analyze documents and interviews. Their work provides evidence-based guidance to the Science Collaborative, and potentially to other research programs, about how best to nurture the production of usable science and technology. This team has enjoyed strong support from NOAA program staff who provided access to multiple types of documents and NERRS staff who agreed to participate in interviews for the project.
Outputs
- Tool: Characterizing end users - A tool for collaborative projects (Word)
- Tool: Characterizing end users and stakeholders - A tool for integrated assessments (Word)
- Tool: Reflections on engaging end users - A tool with key considerations for engaging end users (Word)
- Webinar brief: Engaging end users webinar summary - Working iteratively to produce usable science (PDF)
- Webinar brief: What Usable Science Means and How It Can Be Achieved: Lessons from NERRS Through the Years
- Dissertation: Accelerating Actionable Sustainability Science: Science Funding, Co-Production, and the Evolving Social Contract for Science
- Article: Advancing Knowledge for Use in Coastal and Estuarine Management: Competitive Research in the National Estuarine Research Reserve System
- Article: Co-producing science for sustainability: Can funding change knowledge use?
Learn More
To learn more about the science usability team's work, please contact Maria at [email protected] or (734) 764-9315.