Oregon Sea Grant

This guide discusses collaboration among scientific disciplines and extending that collaboration to include participants outside of the academic world. It outlines various types of collaboration, both among researchers of diverse disciplines and among researchers and stakeholders. It explores collaborations seeking to achieve different goals in natural-resource research and management (sustainability, climate change adaptive management, decision-making tool development, alternative futures exploration).

With the deluge of information coming at all of us all the time, attention is limited, distractions abound, and other interests call.

This summary report makes use of two separate data sources and addresses topics relating to community resilience, including current phases of climate-­change planning (Moser Eckstrom, 2010), reported hurdles to planning, current information needs, community-­specific perceptions of the cost of climate change, and risks of most concern.

Professionals, such as Extension personnel, who communicate with a range of non-specialists about scientific or technical information face particular challenges. A common goal of all such professionals is to effect at least some change in their audiences' understanding and perhaps in their actions.