Climate change poses unprecedented challenges to agricultural production globally and in the United States; it is both vulnerable to the impacts of a changing climate and a contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. Because farmers need to quickly adapt to reduce their risks and emissions, there is a pressing need to better understand the process by which they make decisions. This complex decision‐making process includes many factors, such as farmers’ beliefs; knowledge and capacity to make changes; the information they receive from Extension, industry, and social networks (e.g., family and peers); economics and regulations; and farm‐scale and environmental issues (including personal experience with extreme weather). This study assesses the published literature on U.S. agricultural stakeholder views and decisions on climate change, focusing on farmers and ranchers from different regions. We identify key themes that emerge from the literature on how stakeholder views about extreme weather and climate change relate to decisions about adaptation and mitigation practices. This review finds that although the majority of U.S. farmers believe the climate is changing, many remain skeptical of the issue and uncertain about the anthropogenic causes of climate change. Farmers’ climate change mitigation and adaptation decisions also vary widely and are often correlated with belief or other factors such as personal experience with extreme weather, costs of change, or fear of regulation. We conclude with the implications of the research, including the importance of understanding farmers’ view and actions and issue framing, and implications for researchers, Extension and policy makers, both nationally and globally. WIREs Clim Change 2017, 8:e469. doi: 10.1002/wcc.469 This article is categorized under: Perceptions, Behavior, and Communication of Climate Change > Perceptions of Climate Change

Community gardens have historically played an important role in the social-ecological resilience of New York City (NYC). These public-access communal gardens not only support flora and fauna to enhance food security and ecosystem services, but also foster communities of practice which nurture the restorative and communal aspects of this civic ecology practice. After NYC communities were devastated by Hurricane Sandy in 2012, the topic of resilience has surfaced to the top of the city's disaster planning and policy agenda. This paper explores the role of community gardens in coastal "red zones" of NYC by analyzing the meaning and relevance of community garden spaces in the resilience and recovery of local residents and community garden members post-Sandy. From April 2013 to February 2014, ethnographic analyses, including participant observation, exploratory and in-depth interviews, and archival research, was undertaken at five community gardens post-Sandy. Our findings indicate that community gardens functioned as multipurpose community refuges which hosted meaningful and restorative greening practices, and developed supportive communities. This paper seeks to add to our knowledge of post-disaster greening, public spaces, and social-ecological resilience.

ABSTRACT. Although several frameworks for assessing the resilience of social-ecological systems (SESs) have been developed, some practitioners may not have sufficient time and information to conduct extensive resilience assessments. We have presented a simplified approach to resilience assessment that reviews the scientific, historical, and social literature to rate the resilience of an SES with respect to nine resilience properties: ecological variability, diversity, modularity, acknowledgement of slow variables, tight feedbacks, social capital, innovation, overlap in governance, and ecosystem services. We evaluated the effects of two large-scale projects, the construction of a major dam and the implementation of an ecosystem recovery program, on the resilience of the central Platte River SES (Nebraska, United States). We used this case study to identify the strengths and weaknesses of applying a simplified approach to resilience assessment. Although social resilience has increased steadily since the predam period for the central Platte River SES, ecological resilience was greatly reduced in the postdam period as compared to the predam and ecosystem recovery program time periods.

This article draws on concepts from social-ecological resilience and a case study conducted in Lincoln, Nebraska, USA to explore the social-ecological functions of community gardening. Through semi-structured interviews with 20 community garden participants and staff, we find that community gardening provides opportunities for participants to foster resilience to the personal, cultural, and economic challenges of displacement and resettlement resulting from urban migration. Specifically, community gardens and community gardening helped participants in our sample develop a sense of belonging and connection with cultural identity, social community, and local environment. Additionally, the process and products of growing one's own food was associated with a sense of empowerment, especially for those coping with poverty, food insecurity, and a lack of healthy, culturally appropriate foods. The practice of community gardening can cultivate resilience by serving as what we term “social-ecological refuges”—safe, restorative community places that not only enable community gardeners to reconnect with themselves, each other, and the local environment, but also function as biocultural refugia, fostering community food security by preserving and transmitting adaptive cultural and ecological memories, skills, and resources related to growing food and managing local urban environments.

Findings from this study provide insight into the delivery methods that land-grant university research and Extension personnel in the Northeast perceive as most effective to disseminate information as well as to change practices or behaviors related to climate change. The respondents of this study represented research faculty, Extension specialists, and Extension educators from the 16 land-grant universities in the Northeastern U.S.