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Scenarios of landscape change have the capacity to address spatial and temporal issues, current and future trends, and solutions that increase capacity and/or resilience in social-ecological systems and their networks. In this study, we present a resilience framework for food–energy–water systems and demonstrate it with a case study in Magic Valley, Idaho. We formulated scenarios of change based on stakeholder input (qualitative data), researcher-developed models (quantitative data), and validation of plausibility through impact and indicator evaluation. The stakeholder engagement process identified key issues, critical uncertainties, and plausible and viable solutions to future challenges. Specifically, we analyzed cross-scenario futures and their solutions to address water quality issues in the face of climate change, land-use change conflicts, and population shifts in the region. The process activates stakeholder and research-based models to create geospatial alternative futures and their associated timesteps, with embedded solutions, which broadens and improves conventional scenario-based research. The process intends to provide policy-makers, researchers, and scenario facilitators with a strategic framework to activate solutions temporally with a stakeholder-defined suite of scenarios.

Contemporary landscape planning challenges require an increasingly diverse ensemble of voices, including regional stakeholders, physical scientists, social scientists, and technical experts, to provide insight into a landscape’s past trends, current uses, and desired future. To impactfully integrate these disparate components, stakeholder-driven research must include clear lines of communication, share data transparently, and slowly develop trust. Alternative future scenario representations aim to generate conversations through discourse, evoke scenario-based stakeholder input, and ensure stakeholder-based revisions to research models. The current literature lacks a metric for gauging effectiveness and a framework for optimal evaluation for future scenario representations. We have developed and applied a metric for a ranked set of compelling scenario representations using stakeholder input from an active research project. Researchers surveyed stakeholders through a case study in Idaho’s Magic Valley to gauge the effectiveness of each representational approach. To improve future stakeholder-driven geodesign projects and gaps in the research literature, this project provides a ranking of graphic strategies based on the stakeholder survey. Additionally, we provide examples and evaluate graphic representation strategies that can stimulate meaningful conversations, create common understandings, and translate research processes and findings to a variety of audiences. The results of this study intend to provide landscape architects, landscape planners, and geodesign specialists with a framework for evaluating compelling future scenario representations for a stakeholder group.