D1: Outreach and User Engagement

The goal of this WP is to assess knowledge systems that link scientific and user communities. Social factors and relationships play a significant role in the uptake of new knowledge (Crona and Parker, 2011), particularly when new knowledge is perceived as credible (the scientific adequacy of technical arguments and evidence), legitimate (the evidence has been collected in a way that is respectful of stakeholders’ divergent perspectives and beliefs), and salient (relevance to the needs of decision makers) (Cash et al. 2003). We use longitudinal surveys and a social network analysis (SNA) to examine the relationships between participants in the research project, their perspectives and key characteristics of our network, with particular attention paid to how the research program balances trade-offs between credibility, salience and legitimacy criteria. As an in-depth case study, we examine the perspectives, knowledge pluralism and uptake, and conflict (Andrews et al. 2016) in communities of the Saskatchewan River Delta. Through WP B2, D1 and D2, we work with indigenous community members of Cumberland House to understand how their perspectives of river health and environmental flows can be incorporated into quantitative modelling. In six years, the objective is to understand how groups in conflict over water can use and respond to different kinds of evidence, and the role academia plays in a conflict context. The knowledge gained from community engagement feeds into C1.