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In the face of the "crisis of reproducibility" and the rise of "big data" with its associated issues, modeling needs to be practiced more critically and less automatically. Many modelers are discussing better modeling practices, but to address questions about the transparency, equity, and relevance of modeling, we also need the theoretical grounding of social science and the tools of critical theory. I have therefore synthesized recent work by modelers on better practices for modeling with social science literature (especially feminist science and technology studies) to offer a "modeler’s manifesto": a set of applied practices and framings for critical modeling approaches. Broadly, these practices involve 1) giving greater context to scientific modeling through extended methods sections, appendices, and companion articles, clarifying quantitative and qualitative reasoning and process; 2) greater collaboration in scientific modeling via triangulation with different data sources, gaining feedback from interdisciplinary teams, and viewing uncertainty as openness and invitation for dialogue; and 3) directly engaging with justice and ethics by watching for and mitigating unequal power dynamics in projects, facing the impacts and implications of the work throughout the process rather than only afterwards, and seeking opportunities to collaborate directly with people impacted by the modeling.

Colonialism has devastated the lifeways, more-than-human relations, and collective stewardship practices of Indigenous people. Decolonial restoration may be assisted by collaborative methods like participatory modeling, but further careful evaluation is needed to ensure that these methods that have the potential to connect ways of knowing actually do secure long-term benefit for Indigenous life and land. In this study, we engage in a mixed-methods analysis to assess our participatory modeling of a Zimbabwean agropastoral system. The Muonde Trust, a community-based research organization, partnered with international researchers from outside the community to create an agent-based model (ABM) representing the dynamics of land use in Mazvihwa Communal Area, Zimbabwe. Using interviews and participant observation during modeling workshops, Muonde and their allies assessed the immediate increases in confidence and self-efficacy for members of the research team (during workshops), intermediate-term changes in local land-use policy and management discussions (months to years later), and long-term changes in on-the-ground land use (up to four years later). We find that the model successfully assisted the Muonde Trust in working with local leaders to create policies allowing recultivation of fallow fields rather than further deforesting woodland grazing areas. This success is due to the involvement of the community at key times in the modeling process, resulting in a model that felt accessible and that Muonde (as a key information broker) could use to bring the community together to discuss collective management. Though aspects of our process still relied on colonial tools and power structures, the community in Mazvihwa finds the model useful and feels ownership over it.

Indigenous peoples are experiencing a wide range of negative impacts due to climate change and should have the right to determine for themselves how to adapt to these changes and define successful adaptation. These adaptations can then be culturally appropriate and grounded in Indigenous knowledge systems; however, the accelerating rate of change in social-ecological systems can be a challenge for traditional knowledge. Appropriate participatory modeling tools such as agent-based models (ABMs) may be of assistance to Indigenous groups in thinking through how systems may change in the future. Using the Zimbabwe Agro-Pastoral Management Model (a community-based ABM cocreated with farmer-researchers in Mazvihwa Communal Area), we explored how different definitions of sustainability affected the conclusions from the model, including average annual harvest and the persistence of resources (livestock, harvest, and woodland biomass) in the modeled system above minimum thresholds. For very low persistence thresholds, these two measures of success traded off against each other (with higher cropland proportions favoring harvest success and lower cropland proportions favoring persistence success); and different combinations of management interventions favored one or the other definition of sustainability. New insights came from community suggestions of higher persistence thresholds for livestock, crops, and woodland, whereby the model suggested that an intermediate proportion of cropland could be most successful. In all cases, higher year-to-year rainfall variation reduced sustainability success, regardless of the definition or thresholds used. Cocreating, cotesting, and coadaptation of the model and the use of multiple definitions rendered the findings more relevant for local application. The community in Mazvihwa has many ways to adapt to challenging circumstances, and local nongovernmental organization The Muonde Trust has used the model to work with local leaders to support collective action on land use planning to protect woodland from deforestation.

In development engineering, practitioners often strive to empower local communities through technology. Empowerment, however, is typically not well-defined and rarely assessed, leading to an erosion of its meaning. In this study, we define empowerment as capacity building through technology transfer, which we evaluate by assessing skill transfer, skill application, increased individual confidence, and community support. We test the usefulness of these assessments for participatory mapping as a form of technology transfer, using a Participatory Action Research approach. Our case is a digital mapping team embedded in the long-term community-based participatory research agenda of The Muonde Trust in Mazvihwa, Zimbabwe. We taught and evaluated mapping by conducting workshops and engaging in a variety of mapping projects (including measuring access to basic services, land-use planning, and cultural and historical preservation projects), demonstrating dramatically increased mapping skills and individual confidence, and the creation of a community of practice able to teach the skills. Our peer-based learning techniques used adult education principles and could be applied in creating other local communities of practice to support the use of medium-tech mapping methods (basic GPS units and computer mapping software). In poverty reduction and sustainability initiatives, participatory mapping can be complementary to cutting-edge big data approaches and necessary for true improvements in the well-being of the most vulnerable populations on our planet. Development engineers would benefit from incorporating participatory action research principles into their work, learning to co-labor with communities to define and solve problems. Keywords: GPS, QGIS, Participatory Action Research, Participatory GIS, Rural development, Community of practice, Adult education

Originally marginal, participatory research has become an increasingly important methodology in the social, biophysical, and interdisciplinary sciences. The overall increase in publications based on participatory research has raised questions about crediting the contributions of nonacademic collaborators. Using qualitative and quantitative methods, we analyzed trends and patterns in authorship and acknowledgment practices in a sample of 262 journal articles reporting on participatory research on rural livelihoods published from 1975 to 2013. Six percent of the researchers recognized the intellectual contributions of their nonacademic collaborators with coauthorship and 51 percent with acknowledgment. Through interviews with lead authors of coauthored articles, we analyzed factors that shaped whether authorship was shared with nonacademic collaborators. Despite facing numerous barriers, researchers were motivated to coauthor in order to recognize intellectual contributions, practice research ethics, and work toward epistemic decolonization. We argue that coauthorship can be an important component of epistemic justice in participatory research and encourage participatory researchers to discuss authorship with their nonacademic collaborators as a routine component of engaged scholarship. We also note that nonacademics’ contributions to scientific knowledge need to be taken into account in understandings of the practice of science.

Agricultural activity, urban development and habitat alteration have caused the disappearance of the western spadefoot (Spea hammondii) from 80% of its geographic range in southern California. Despite the western spadefoot's continuing decline, little research has been conducted on its natural history. The home range of adult spadefoots is unknown, and their use of upland habitat is poorly understood. Both factors are important for the long-term conservation of the species because adult spadefoots spend the majority of their lives away from breeding pools in self-excavated burrows. Between January 2012 and January 2013, we surgically implanted radio transmitters in 15 spadefoots at two locations and recorded their movements and habitat use. The mean distance moved between burrow locations was 18 m (SD ± 24.1 m, range1-204 m). The mean distance of burrows from the breeding pools was 40 m (SD ± 37.42 m, range 1-262 m). Rain was a significant predictor of spadefoot movement, with more rain predicting higher probability of movement and larger distances moved. At remote sensing scale (1 m) spadefoots selected grassland habitat for their burrow locations. At the microsite scale (< 1 m) spadefoots strongly selected duff over grass or shrub cover. Spadefoots burrowed in friable, sandy/loam soil with significantly less clay than random pseudoabsence points. This research enhances our understanding of a little-studied species and will contribute to the development of effective management plans for the western spadefoot.

Complex social-ecological systems can be difficult to study and manage. Simulation models can facilitate exploration of system behavior under novel conditions, and participatory modeling can involve stakeholders in developing appropriate management processes. Participatory modeling already typically involves qualitative structural validation of models with stakeholders, but with increased data and more sophisticated models, quantitative behavioral validation may be possible as well. In this study, we created a novel agent-based-model applied to a specific context: Zimbabwean non-governmental organization the Muonde Trust has been collecting data on their agro-pastoral system for the last 35 years and had concerns about land-use planning and the effectiveness of management interventions in the face of climate change. We collaboratively created an agent-based model of their system using their data archive, qualitatively calibrating it to the observed behavior of the real system without tuning any parameters to match specific quantitative outputs. We then behaviorally validated the model using quantitative community-based data and conducted a sensitivity analysis to determine the relative impact of underlying parameter assumptions, Indigenous management interventions, and different rainfall variation scenarios. We found that our process resulted in a model which was successfully structurally validated and sufficiently realistic to be useful for Muonde researchers as a discussion tool. The model was inconsistently behaviorally validated, however, with some model variables matching field data better than others. We observed increased model system instability due to increasing variability in underlying drivers (rainfall), and also due to management interventions that broke feedbacks between the components of the system. Interventions that smoothed year-to-year variation rather than exaggerating it tended to improve sustainability. The Muonde trust has used the model to successfully advocate to local leaders for changes in land-use planning policy that will increase the sustainability of their system.

Longtemps marginale, la recherche participative est devenue une approche de plus en plus repandue dans les sciences sociales, biophysiques et les etudes interdisciplinaires. L’augmentation generale du nombre de publications tirees d’une recherche participative a souleve la question de la reconnaissance des contributions de collaborateurs et collaboratrices non universitaires. Au moyen de methodes qualitatives et quantitatives, nous avons analyse les tendances et modeles des pratiques d’autorat et de reconnaissance a partir d’un echantillon de 262 articles de revue restituant les resultats de recherches participatives sur les moyens d’existence en milieu rural, publies entre 1975 et 2013. Seuls 6 % des chercheuses et chercheurs reconnaissent les contributions intellectuelles de leurs collaborateurs·trices non universitaires en leur attribuant un statut de coauteur·trice, tandis que 51 % se contentent de remerciements. En nous appuyant sur les entretiens menes avec les auteurs·trices principaux des articles coecrits, nous avons examine les facteurs expliquant les cas ou la qualite d’auteur etait partagee avec les collaborateurs·trices non universitaires. Malgre un certain nombre d’obstacles, les chercheuses et chercheurs ayant opte pour le coautorat justifient ce choix par un souci d’ethique scientifique, la volonte de reconnaitre toutes les contributions intellectuelles et un effort de decolonisation epistemique. Notre propos est non seulement de montrer que la cosignature peut etre un vecteur important de justice epistemique dans la recherche participative, mais aussi d’encourager ses praticien·ne·s a faire des discussions sur les enjeux d’autorat avec leurs collaborateurs·trices une partie integrante de la recherche-action participative [engaged scholarship]. Nous soulignons egalement que les contributions non universitaires au savoir scientifique doivent etre prises en consideration dans la comprehension des pratiques de recherche.

Much can be at stake depending on the choice of words used to describe citizen science, because terminology impacts how knowledge is developed. Citizen science is a quickly evolving field that is mobilizing people’s involvement in information development, social action and justice, and large-scale information gathering. Currently, a wide variety of terms and expressions are being used to refer to the concept of ‘citizen science’ and its practitioners. Here, we explore these terms to help provide guidance for the future growth of this field. We do this by reviewing the theoretical, historical, geopolitical, and disciplinary context of citizen science terminology; discussing what citizen science is and reviewing related terms; and providing a collection of potential terms and definitions for ‘citizen science’ and people participating in citizen science projects. This collection of terms was generated primarily from the broad knowledge base and on-the-ground experience of the authors, by recognizing the potential issues associated with various terms. While our examples may not be systematic or exhaustive, they are intended to be suggestive and invitational of future consideration. In our collective experience with citizen science projects, no single term is appropriate for all contexts. In a given citizen science project, we suggest that terms should be chosen carefully and their usage explained; direct communication with participants about how terminology affects them and what they would prefer to be called also should occur. We further recommend that a more systematic study of terminology trends in citizen science be conducted. Publisher's Note: There has been an amendment to the acknowledgements section of this article.

We explore the challenges of educating interdisciplinary thinkers who can address the management of complex socio-ecological systems, such as forests, by sharing our experiences from several perspectives. Five contexts for interdisciplinarity are explored along with examples related to: the department, advising, integrated research collaborations, a graduate working group, an interdisciplinary class, and trans-academic research. These experiences demonstrate the importance of safe space and patience, the need for adequate time to build trust and respect, and the recognition that interdisciplinary thinking is developed and reinforced in multiple contexts. Interdisciplinarity is always a work in progress that differs in its particulars according to the research or management question at hand and the kinds of specializations involved. Thus, there are no hard and fast rules for its creation but only guiding principles that must be adapted in the course of their implementation.

Over the last decade, several research and opinion pieces have challenged the tenets of restoration ecology but a lack of centralized data has impeded assessment of how scientific developments relate to on-the-ground restoration. In response, the Society for Ecological Restoration (SER) launched the Global Restoration Network (GRN) to catalog worldwide restoration efforts. We reviewed over 200 GRN projects to identify the goals governing restoration and the frequency with which they are measured. We used the SER Primer on Ecological Restoration to frame our analysis, categorizing goals by SER’s attributes of restored ecosystems. We developed additional attributes to characterize goals not encompassed by the SER-defined attributes. Nearly all projects included goals related to ecosystem form, namely similarity to reference conditions and the presence of indigenous species, and these goals were frequently measured. Most projects included goals related to ecosystem function, and many highlighted interactions between abiotic and biotic factors by either modifying abiotic conditions to support focal species or manipulating species to achieve desired ecosystem functions. Few projects had goals related to ecosystem stability, whereas the majority of projects had goals related to social values. Although less frequently measured, social goals were described as important for long-term project success. In conclusion, science and practice frequently aligned on goals related to ecosystem composition and function, but scientific guidelines on resilience and self-sustainability appear insufficient to guide practice. In contrast, the common inclusion of goals for human well-being indicates that, if intended to advise practice, restoration guidelines should give direction on social goals.

Restoration ecology is a deepening and diversifying field with current research incorporating multiple disciplines and infusing long-standing ideas with fresh perspectives. We present a list of 10 recent pivotal papers exemplifying new directions in ecological restoration that were selected by students in a cross-disciplinary graduate seminar at the University of California, Berkeley. We highlight research that applies ecological theory to improve restoration practice in the context of global change (e.g. climate modeling, evaluation of novel ecosystems) and discuss remaining knowledge gaps. We also discuss papers that recognize the social context of restoration and the coupled nature of social and ecological systems, ranging from the incorporation of cultural values and Traditional Ecological Knowledge into restoration, to the consideration of the broader impacts of markets on restoration practices. In addition, we include perspectives that focus on improving communication between social and natural scientists as well as between scientists and practitioners, developing effective ecological monitoring, and applying more integrated, whole-landscape approaches to restoration. We conclude with insights on recurrent themes in the papers regarding planning restoration in human-modified landscapes, application of ecological theory, improvements to restoration practice, and the social contexts of restoration. We share lessons from our cross-disciplinary endeavor, and invite further discussion on the future directions of restoration ecology through contributions to our seminar blog site http://restecology.blogspot.com.

Vegetated buffers are a well-studied and widely used agricultural management practice for reducing nonpoint-source pollution. A wealth of literature provides experimental data on their mitigation efficacy. This paper aggregated many of these results and performed a meta-analysis to quantify the relationships between pollutant removal efficacy and buffer width, buffer slope, soil type, and vegetation type. Theoretical models for removal efficacy (Y) vs. buffer width (w) were derived and tested against data from the surveyed literature using statistical analyses. A model of the form Y = K x (1-e(-bxw)), (0Kor = 100) successfully captured the relationship between buffer width and pollutant removal, where K reflects the maximum removal efficacy of the buffer and b reflects its probability to remove any single particle of pollutant in a unit distance. Buffer width alone explains 37, 60, 44, and 35% of the total variance in removal efficacy for sediment, pesticides, N, and P, respectively. Buffer slope was linearly associated with sediment removal efficacy either positively (when slopeor = 10%) or negatively (when slope10%). Buffers composed of trees have higher N and P removal efficacy than buffers composed of grasses or mixtures of grasses and trees. Soil drainage type did not show a significant effect on pollutant removal efficacy. Based on our analysis, a 30-m buffer under favorable slope conditions (approximately 10%) removes more than 85% of all the studied pollutants. These models predicting optimal buffer width/slope can be instrumental in the design, implementation, and modeling of vegetated buffers for treating agricultural runoff.

By applying the noise cross-correlation technique to Apollo 17 Lunar Seismic Profiling Experiment (LSPE) data, we discovered temporal changes in Rayleigh-wave group velocity within a diurnal cycle (29.53 d). Assuming that this phenomenon is caused by density and seismic parameter changes due to temperature, we formulated an inverse problem. Thermal diffusivity serves as the key parameter for this problem because it controls the depth penetration of temperature change. The results of inversion indicate that a typical number for the thermal diffusivity of terrestrial rocks (κ ≈ 10 -6 m 2 /s) is too large to fit the data. Our preferred value is about κ ≈ 10 -7 (m 2 /s), although the inversion alone cannot discriminate among the values below this number. Differences between this estimate and a lower estimate (κ ≈ 10 -8 m 2 /s) by Langseth et al. may indicate the significance of radiation for thermal transfer in the upper-most lunar crust. We also find a direct correlation between the Rayleigh-wave amplitudes and the statistics of thermal moonquakes, both of which change with the diurnal periodicity and peak at sunset. This implies that thermal moonquakes are the source of valuable seismic noise, lending strong support to an idea proposed by Larose et al. This is in contrast to the terrestrial situation where the ocean-generated noise plays a critical role in the cross-correlation approach. The noise correlation approach is potentially useful for many planets which undergo wide swings in surface temperature and thus potentially have thermal quakes.

Forest decline is a widespread, well-recognized problem, but studies reporting decreases in tree survival have been largely limited to relatively rare old-growth forests or low-diversity systems, and to models which are species-aggregated or cannot easily accommodate yearly climate variables. We created survival models for a multispecies second-growth forest in the Sierra Nevada of California using a hierarchical state-space framework. We accounted for a mosaic of measurement intervals and random plot variation, and we directly included yearly stand development variables alongside climate variables and topographic proxies for nutrient, water, and light availability. Our model captured the expected dependence of survival on tree size, but revealed different relationships between size and survival for each species. At the community level, including stand development variables accounted for decreasing survival time trends, but species-specific models demonstrated a diversity of factors influencing survival, including time trends, fundamental niche limitations, and the impact of competition. Our results on time trends and competitive performance showed local exceptions to existing theories of Sierran forest dynamics, with some shade-tolerant species increasing in survival over time and others performing better than expected under more crowded conditions. Within species, low survival was concentrated in susceptible subsets of our population and single estimates of annual survival rates did not reflect this heterogeneity in survival.