PARENT SESSION
Symposium #6: The next generation: Applications of the LTER framework for integrated social and ecological research.
Sponsored by the LTER Network
Organized by: P. Nowak and B. Kahn.
Monday, August 6, 2001. 1:00 PM to 4:00 PM. Madison Ballroom B

The role of scientists and scientific information in the natural resource and environmental policy process.

Shindler, Bruce¹, Steel, Brent¹, Lach, Denise¹, List, Peter¹, ¹

ABSTRACT- Recent "science wars" challenging the primacy of scientific authority in technical decision-making, increasingly complex policy problems, and expanding demands for public participation have created tension among both the producers and users of science, especially in the highly visible policy arenas of natural resource management. This paper uses survey data collected in 2000 from four populations associated with the HJ Andrews LTER (Central Cascade Range). Scientists, natural resource professionals, leaders of NGO's, and the attentive public were surveyed to investigate perspectives on the potentially conflicting roles for science and scientists in the natural resource and environmental policy process. Determinants of support for involving scientists in policy making are characterized and measured. The paper identifies similarities and differences among groups and concludes that the public is most likely to approve of Kai Lee's concept of civic science, in which research scientists are more actively integrated into natural resource decision processes. This paper helps set the context for the model of integrated social and ecological research developed by the LTER social science committee. Scientists always have had a primary role in evaluating ecological processes; this research examines changing expectations about scientists' role in linking natural systems with human systems, including social patterns, information provision, and institutional decision-making.

KEY WORDS: human ecosystems