Climate Change and Land Management: Social Network Analysis

This webinar was held as a part of the Climate Change Science and Management Webinar Series, a partnership between the USGS National Climate Change and Wildlife Science Center and the FWS National Conservation Training Center.

Webinar Description: Many federal agencies are currently striving to plan for climate change adaptation. Researchers for this project explored 1) the degree to which federal resource managers believe that climate change adaptation is important in their work and 2) the degree to which these managers are connected to each other and to a broader research community that can provide a scientific basis for climate change adaptation actions. The project consisted of a social network analysis of federal resource managers in the regions encompassed by the Southwest and North Central CSCs. Methods for this project included an online survey targeting resource managers from the Bureau of Land Management, Forest Service, National Park Service and Fish and Wildlife Service, as well as a snowball survey to garner opinions from people within academic, nongovernmental and federal research organizations (e.g., USGS), as well as from state resource managers. This study resulted in a number of different findings, including an overall strong concern for climate change impacts on natural resources among resource managers and a varying degree of connectedness between resource management agencies and research units.