No abstract

Increasingly, scholars engage policy makers around fundamental, complex questions on environmental change in interdisciplinary settings. Researchers attempting to develop robust contributions to knowledge that can support policymaker understandings in this context face significant inferential challenges in dealing with the spatial dimension of their phenomenon of interest. In this paper, we extend an understanding of well‐defined methodological challenges familiar to applied spatial scientists by explicitly articulating the Decision‐Making/Accountability, Spatial Incongruence Problem, or DASIP. Three case studies illustrate how spatial incongruences matter to researchers who work on complex, interdisciplinary problems, while seeking to understand decision‐making or policy‐related phenomenon: urban heat‐island mitigation research in Arizona, water transfer conflicts in Kansas, and hydraulic‐fracturing debates in Texas. With such examples, we aim to evoke a deeper understanding of this problem in applied research and also inspire thinking about how scholars might innovate methods for creating knowledge about environmental change that supports spatially accountable decision making.

This article presents an historical-based analysis of how executive branch actions altered federal domestic energy policies and the effect of that shift on the Bureau of Land Management's (BLM) domestic energy policies and resource allocations. The analysis is supported by interview data collected from among Department of Interior officials who served during the Bush-Cheney administration as well as BLM administrators located in Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico. The analysis and interviews were conducted at the close of President Bush's tenure in office (2008-2009). The article includes an analysis of archival and government documents describing executive branch actions directing the BLM to favor the energy development industry's use of the hydraulic fracturing development process. First, these events are presented chronologically to illustrate how a president and his executive appointees established changes to federal energy policies at the agency level that led to the reallocation of resources favoring domestic energy development. Second, an interpretive analysis of the interview data is presented as a means of validating the initial, document-based analysis. As the article concludes, documents as well as the voices of those most closely involved in the policymaking process confirm that executive branch actions shifted federal domestic energy policies, which then resulted in increased numbers and types of federal development projects using the hydraulic fracturing and directional drilling energy resource development process expanded rapidly across the states of the Rocky Mountain West.

This article presents an historical-based analysis of how executive branch actions altered federal domestic energy policies and the effect of that shift on the Bureau of Land Management's (BLM) domestic energy policies and resource allocations. The analysis is supported by interview data collected from among Department of Interior officials who served during the Bush-Cheney administration as well as BLM administrators located in Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico. The analysis and interviews were conducted at the close of President Bush's tenure in office (2008-2009). The article includes an analysis of archival and government documents describing executive branch actions directing the BLM to favor the energy development industry's use of the hydraulic fracturing development process. First, these events are presented chronologically to illustrate how a president and his executive appointees established changes to federal energy policies at the agency level that led to the reallocation of resources favoring domestic energy development. Second, an interpretive analysis of the interview data is presented as a means of validating the initial, document-based analysis. As the article concludes, documents as well as the voices of those most closely involved in the policymaking process confirm that executive branch actions shifted federal domestic energy policies, which then resulted in increased numbers and types of federal development projects using the hydraulic fracturing and directional drilling energy resource development process expanded rapidly across the states of the Rocky Mountain West.