Rangelands across the world are facing rapid and unprecedented social and ecological change. In the US West, sustaining the ecological and economic integrity of rangelands across both public and private lands depends largely on ranchers who make adaptive decisions in the face of variability and uncertainty. In this study, we build on previous conceptualizations of adaptive decision making that situate individual-level decisions within complex rangeland social-ecological systems. We surveyed 450 (36% response rate) Montana ranchers to gain insight into how key factors influenced adaptive decision making, specifically in the context of ongoing drought and climate-related change affecting rangeland ecology and productivity. We predicted that ranchers’ management goals, their use of information sources, and their use of monitoring would significantly influence the use of adaptive practices, with monitoring mediating the relationship between the explanatory and response variables. We tested these predictions using a path model analysis and found that management goals related to both stewardship and profit/production, the number of information sources used, and monitoring were all significantly and positively related to ranchers’ use of adaptive management practices. Interestingly, we found that these factors were hierarchical with monitoring and the use of information was the strongest predictor while management goals were secondary. The significant, mediating effect of monitoring on the use of adaptive practices suggests that monitoring may be an important means for providing ranchers with useful and timely information about rangeland condition that is needed to adjust their actions, meet their management goals, and adapt to drought and climate-related change. We argue there is a need to better understand the efficacy of monitoring designs—of what, by whom, and how—for adaptive decision making, and we discuss other considerations related to the provision of useful drought and climate information for adaptive decision making based on our findings.

世界各地的牧场正面临着快速且前所未有的社会和生态变化。在美国西部，维持公共和私人土地牧场的生态和经济完整性在很大程度上取决于牧场主在面对变化和不确定性时做出适应性决策。在这项研究中，我们建立在先前的适应性决策概念的基础上，将个体层面的决策置于复杂的牧场社会生态系统中。我们调查了 450 名蒙大拿州牧场主（回复率为 36%），以深入了解关键因素如何影响适应性决策，特别是在持续干旱和气候相关变化影响牧场生态和生产力的背景下。我们预测牧场主的管理目标、他们对信息源的使用、他们对监测的使用将显着影响适应性实践的使用，监测调节解释变量和响应变量之间的关系。我们使用路径模型分析测试了这些预测，发现与管理和利润/生产相关的管理目标、使用的信息源数量以及监控都与牧场主使用适应性管理实践显着且正相关。有趣的是，我们发现这些因素与监控是分层的，信息的使用是最强的预测因素，而管理目标是次要的。重要的是，监测对适应性实践使用的中介效应表明，监测可能是为牧场主提供有关牧场状况的有用且及时的信息的重要手段，这些信息是调整他们的行动、实现管理目标以及适应干旱和气候相关问题所需的。改变。我们认为，有必要更好地了解监测设计的有效性——监测内容、监测对象和监测方式——以进行适应性决策，并且我们讨论了与为适应性决策提供有用的干旱和气候信息相关的其他考虑因素。我们的发现。