Water research beyond academia: Maximizing intellectual, cultural, social, environmental and economic impact
Abstract
Water quality and availability are critical in food production, human health, economic vitality, and recreation among other areas. We face unprecedented water-related challenges with mounting pressure from climate change, population growth and agricultural intensification. It is crucial we connect hydrology and water quality research to knowledge users to adequately prepare for an era of global change and mitigate impacts of human activity on ecosystems. The Global Water Futures (GWF) program aims to do this by delivering risk management solutions for water management in Canada. Forty projects fall under GWF, administered through a multi-university partnership between the University of Saskatchewan, University of Waterloo, Wilfrid Laurier University and McMaster University. Science engagement is crucial to the program. As such, a team of knowledge mobilization specialists are working with GWF researchers to promote best-practices and innovation in researcher-practitioner co-creation.
In this session, we present our knowledge mobilization framework, describe implementation strategies and tactics, and discuss real-world benefits and challenges for two GWF projects: Lake Futures and Agricultural Water Futures. Lake Futures will deliver adaptive watershed and lake management solutions to address the causes, impacts and mitigation of re-eutrophication of the Great Lakes. Agricultural Water Futures will determine how Canadian agriculture and food production systems can best respond to risk and uncertainty associated with current and future climatic and socioeconomic stressors. The knowledge mobilization framework engages with end users to characterize the current situation and scope research questions, goals, and desired outcomes. End users remain involved throughout and help determine and interpret results. They help define meaningful knowledge transfer mechanisms to deliver results according to a timeframe and format that is useful to end users as well as capture and communicate research impacts widely. The final step is joint evaluation of impact and effectiveness. Although the context for the current project revolves around hydrology and biogeochemistry research, these knowledge mobilization principles can be broadly applied to academic research.- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2019
- Bibcode:
- 2019AGUFMPA54C..18G
- Keywords:
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- 1630 Impacts of global change;
- GLOBAL CHANGE;
- 1999 General or miscellaneous;
- INFORMATICS;
- 6319 Institutions;
- POLICY SCIENCES;
- 6620 Science policy;
- POLICY SCIENCES & PUBLIC ISSUES