UW Professor Contributes to Special Issue of BioScience

A University of Wyoming assistant professor recently contributed to a special issue of the journal BioScience that explores a new paradigm for managing natural resources in the context of rapid ecological transformations.

Corrie Knapp, an assistant professor of environment and society in the UW Haub School of Environment and Natural Resources, is a co-author of two papers in the issue. Other contributors to the issue are from the National Park Service, the U.S. Geological Survey, and other federal agencies and academic institutions around the country.

The issue’s interdisciplinary set of papers addresses how land managers can most effectively respond to ecological transformations that are becoming increasingly frequent.

One of the papers Knapp contributed to is titled “A Science Agenda to Inform Natural Resource Management Decisions in an Era of Ecological Transformation.” The paper is meant to inspire new research focused on ecological and social science that will explore questions managers face as they decide whether and how to resist, accept or direct environmental changes.

The second paper, titled “Responding to Ecological Transformation: Mental Models, External Constraints, and Manager Decision-Making,” provides a conceptual framework for how to think about the ecological and social decision space natural resource managers must navigate in the face of unfamiliar ecological changes.

“It has been really exciting and rewarding to work with such an interdisciplinary team of scholars,” Knapp says. “We hope that this special issue helps land managers when thinking about how to manage natural resources in contexts of rapid change.”

The papers from the special issue are available to download -- free -- for a limited time at https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/advance-articles.

For more information, email Knapp at corrie.knapp@uwyo.edu.

About BioScience 

BioScience is a peer-reviewed, heavily cited, monthly journal. It presents readers with timely and authoritative overviews of current research in biology, accompanied by essays and discussion sections on education, public policy, history and the conceptual underpinnings of the biological sciences.

About the UW Haub School of Environment and Natural Resources

The Haub School advances the understanding and resolution of complex environmental and natural resource challenges through education, research and outreach.