About

Adena Rissman is a professor in the Department of Forest and Wildlife Ecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her research combines ecology with social science in natural resources management and conservation. She is currently working on a project to better understand new landowners in Wisconsin and to determine the needs and timing for outreach efforts based on real estate transfer patterns on the landscape. Her academic background includes a B.S. in Natural Resources Conservation: Wildlife Ecology and Conservation and a M.S. in Environmental Conservation: Forest Resources and Arboriculture, both from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Her work aims to train the next generation of scholars and leaders through participatory conservation social science and policy analysis, fostering beneficial change for people and ecosystems.

Research topics

• Geography
• Environmental science
• Ecology
• Environmental resource management
• Business
• Environmental planning

Selected publications

• Multiple social and environmental factors affect wildland fire response of full or less-than-full suppression

  Journal of Environmental Management · 2024-01-01 · 15 citations

  articleSenior authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• How Aspects of Collective Action Relate to Implementation of Cooperative Management Among Private Landowners

  Society & Natural Resources · 2023-04-26

  articleSenior author

  Forested land is increasingly owned in small parcels by family forest owners who are becoming less likely to conduct the management which supports ecosystems, economies, and communities. One way to encourage private land management is through group cooperatives. Characteristics of collective action that support group cooperative participation are well understood but how they relate to management implementation is not. Examining Wisconsin's Deer Management Assistance Program as a case, we sought to understand how characteristics associated with collective action relate to cooperative cross-boundary management implementation. Through a member survey, we found elements of trust, social capital, information sharing, and goal alignment to be associated with management action implementation. Significant characteristics and their relationship to implementation varied across land, habitat, and forest management actions. Our results emphasize the need to customize professional assistance to complement the group cooperative's landowner demographics and management goals.

  PublisherDOI

• Grassland and managed grazing policy review

  Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems · 2023-03-03 · 9 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Perennial grasslands, including prairie and pasture, have declined with tremendous environmental and social costs. This decline reflects unequal policy support for grasslands and managed grazing compared to row crops. To create a resource for community partners and decision-makers, we reviewed and analyzed the policy tools and implementation capacity that supports and constrains grasslands and managed grazing in the U.S. Upper Midwest. Risk reduction subsidies for corn and soybeans far outpace the support for pasture. Some states lost their statewide grazing specialist when the federal Grazing Lands Conservation Initiative lapsed. The United States Department of Agriculture, Natural Resources Conservation Service support for lands with prescribed grazing practices declined after 2005 but remained relatively steady 2010–2020. These results reveal the policy disadvantage for grasslands and managed grazing in comparison with row crop agriculture for milk and meat production. Grassland and grazing policies have an important nexus with water quality, biodiversity, carbon and outdoor recreation policy. Socially just transitions to well-managed, grazed grasslands require equity-oriented interventions that support community needs. We synthesized recommendations for national and state policy that farmers and other grazing professionals assert would support perennial grasslands and grazing, including changes in insurance, conservation programs, supply chains, land access, and fair labor. These policies would provide critical support for grass-based agriculture and prairies that we hope will help build soil, retain nutrients, reduce flooding and enhance biodiversity while providing healthy food, jobs, and communities.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Evolving conceptions of silvopasture among farmers and natural resource professionals in Wisconsin, USA

  Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems · 2023-02-03 · 8 citations

  articleOpen access

  Silvopasture has gained attention as an agroecological practice that may simultaneously meet farmer goals and provide environmental benefits, including climate change mitigation. At the same time there are significant concerns about the potential for livestock to damage trees and forest soils. Like other innovative agroecological systems, silvopasture combines management complexity with limited research knowledge. Unlike annual crops, the effects of silvopasture management can take decades to assess and require forestry as well as agronomic expertise. We conducted mixed-methods research on silvopasture attitudes and knowledge among farmers, agricultural advisors, and foresters in Wisconsin between 2014 and 2019. We asked: (1) How do farmers who practice grazing, agricultural advisors, and foresters perceive silvopasture? and (2) How did coverage of silvopasture change between 2009 and 2019 in a popular grazing publication? Perceptions of silvopasture were influenced by recent weather history, markets for forest and agricultural products, existing land uses, and other contextual factors. Some farmers and agricultural advisors were committed to silvopasture despite significant obstacles to implementing the practice. Over the course of the study period agricultural advisors increased their willingness to provide silvopasture advice to farmers and professional colleagues, and coverage of silvopasture increased in a popular grazing publication. Finally, a multi-county supportive community of practice was associated with greater enthusiasm for the practice. The greater acceptance of silvopasture among resource professionals follows an increase in silvopasture research and outreach in the region. This interest in silvopasture suggests both a need for, and openness to, greater collaboration among forestry and agricultural professionals and farmers to develop sustainable silvopasture standards.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Sustaining land and people over time: Relationships with successor landowners on conservation easements

  People and Nature · 2023-01-23 · 6 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Conservation is increasingly recognized and funded on private lands. Making conservation last despite turnover in people requires maintaining social relationships. For example, conservation easements (CEs), also called conservation covenants, are legal agreements for private land conservation typically expected to last in perpetuity, yet their public benefits depend on successor landowners. We focus on the social relations in stewarding lands held by successor landowners who purchased or inherited a property after the conservation agreement was in place. We conducted 38 semi‐structured interviews with key informants, conservation organization staff and successors who own conserved properties in Wisconsin, USA. These interviews revealed the importance of the relationship between conservation organization staff and landowners and the roles of trust, shared goals, meaning‐making and power. These social relationships can influence the land management choices of landowners and compliance enforcement approaches of conservation organizations. In light of these findings, policymakers and professionals should consider rapid outreach to new owners of conserved properties and greater investments in landowner relationships to build multiple dimensions of trust, connect on shared goals and help landowners find positive meaning in conservation agreements. We recommend documenting these personal dimensions of conservation for future staff, whose effectiveness in the field depends on their ability to make conservation policy salient for particular people and places. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Managed grazing and agroecological transformation in the Midwestern United States

  Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems · 2023-08-03 · 5 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  A growing number of intergovernmental agencies, policymakers, scholars, and farmers are calling to transform the dominant food system so that it better supports farmers, communities, and the environment. The goal of this paper is to identify which actions that support managed livestock grazing and graziers can also promote agroecological transformation in the Midwestern U.S. We conducted 128 semi-structured interviews and 3 participatory workshops with farmers, civil society, and agricultural industry professionals focused on visions for the future and actions that could support managed grazing. We then applied a political agroecology framework to assess the transformative potential of specific actions. Action categories with high transformative potential include addressing industry consolidation and inequities in the distribution of land and capital; providing social supports for farm owners and workers; and shifting the social norms that support the dominant food system. Specific actions within these categories include supporting cooperative models of farming, marketing, and resource-sharing; providing healthcare, living wages, and retirement to farmers; supporting farmer-to-farmer networks; modifying crop insurance and anti-trust legislation; addressing farmland access and consolidation; expanding public education on agroecology; and enacting policies that dismantle and repair colonial and racial violence. The workshops revealed that a disproportionate share of attention within the Midwest sustainable agriculture movement is currently focused on strategies that support sustainable farming practices such as education and conservation assistance but do little to address governance structures that maintain the power of the current agricultural system. While these efforts are important, workshop participants and interviewees concluded that more systemic change is needed to build a food system that works better for people, communities, and the environment.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Building <scp>US</scp> food‐energy‐water security requires avoiding unintended consequences for ecosystems

  Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment · 2023-05-01 · 5 citations

  reviewOpen access

  Food‐energy‐water (FEW) systems are increasingly vulnerable to shocks. Repeated floods, worsening droughts, sudden tariffs, and disease outbreaks all underscore the importance of strengthening production systems during a time of rapid global change. However, the laws, regulations, and incentive programs that govern these sectors were often developed in isolation, creating fragmented and lagged responses to previous crises, ineffective governance of FEW security, and unintended effects even when achieving policy goals. Here, we examine the Mississippi River Basin in the Midwest US to illustrate how policies designed to address one challenge had other unanticipated consequences. We argue for a long view of the future that honors the interconnectedness of FEW sectors with ecosystems (FEWE); values non‐provisioning ecosystem services; and prioritizes incentives that improve FEW production, farm profitability, and ecosystem health. Now is the time for reassessment of how well FEWE provide security to all humans and the environment, and to support integrated policies that avoid unintended future consequences.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Use of latent profile analysis to characterise patterns of participation in crowdsourcing

  Behaviour and Information Technology · 2022-07-07 · 4 citations

  articleSenior author

  Crowdsourced applications are plagued by participation inequality. Only a small number of individuals are responsible for the majority of contributions, while most are engaged at the periphery. Early efforts to understand participation inequality used a percentile approach and a single measure of engagement to describe participants, usually the number of activities completed. With the advent of increasingly sophisticated web analytics, methods for characterising patterns of participation have also become more sophisticated. More recent research uses multiple metrics and clustering algorithms to understand both intensity and duration of participation. We extend research on this topic by applying a model-based approach to analyse multiple metrics of participation. Specifically, we demonstrate the use of latent profile analysis to understand the underlying structure of crowdsourcer participation data from a citizen science project. We make comparisons between latent profile analysis and more traditional methods of characterising participation. We find that considering multiple metrics of engagement provides a more nuanced view of participation inequality, useful in generating both theoretical and applied research questions. We also find that a model-based approach offers several advantages over clustering algorithms including the ease with which results can be integrated in downstream analyses and the ability to report on model fit.

  PublisherDOI

• Conservation and privatization decisions in land reform of New Zealand’s high country

  Environmental Conservation · 2021-03-16 · 6 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Summary Neoliberal land reforms to increase economic development have important implications for biodiversity conservation. This paper investigates land reform in New Zealand’s South Island that divides leased state-owned stations (ranches) with private grazing leases into state-owned conservation land, private land owned by the former leaseholder and private land under protective covenant (similar to conservation easement). Conserved lands had less threatened vegetation, lower productivity, less proximity to towns and steeper slopes than privatized lands. Covenants on private land were more common in intermediate zones with moderate land-use productivity and slope. Lands identified with ecological or recreational ‘significant inherent values’ were more likely to shift into conserved or covenant status. Yet among lands with identified ecological values, higher-threat areas were more likely to be privatized than lower-threat areas. This paper makes two novel contributions: (1) quantitatively examining the role of scientific recommendations about significant inherent values in land reform outcomes; and (2) examining the use of conservation covenants on privatized land. To achieve biodiversity goals, it is critical to avoid or prevent the removal of land-use restrictions beyond protected areas.

  PublisherDOI

• Adapting Conservation Policy and Administration to Nonstationary Conditions

  Society & Natural Resources · 2020-08-18 · 10 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  False assumptions of stationarity, the idea that natural systems fluctuate within a set and predictable range, are common in conservation policies and public expectations developed since the late 1800s. With examples from United States national forest and water quality policy, we discuss the challenges of nonstationarity for planning and policy. We also raise questions about how resilience is becoming institutionalized. One central problem of managing for resilience is that it does not address the nuances and tradeoffs of managing nonstationary systems, such as keeping some components stable while transforming others. We recommend four paths forward: address root causes of change, increase adaptive capacity, develop science for nonstationarity, and enhance pragmatic flexibility without lowering environmental standards. Dealing effectively with nonstationarity in resource management and science, within our legal and management system of overlapping authorities and capacities, is critical for the intertwined future of people and nature.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Chloe B. Wardropper

  19 shared

• Jessica Owley

  University of Miami

  19 shared

• Adina M. Merenlender

  University of California, Berkeley

  15 shared

• Sean Gillon

  Oregon Health & Science University

  13 shared

• Richard J. Reiner

  9 shared

• Andrew W. L’Roe

  6 shared

• M. Rebecca Shaw

  Austin Hospital

  6 shared

• Stephen R. Carpenter

  University of Wisconsin–Madison

  6 shared