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Abstract The concept of adaptive capacity has received significant attention within social-ecological and environmental change research. Within both the resilience and vulnerability literatures specifically, adaptive capacity has emerged as a fundamental concept for assessing the ability of social-ecological systems to adapt to environmental change. Although methods and indicators used to evaluate adaptive capacity are broad, the focus of existing scholarship has predominately been at the individual- and household- levels. However, the capacities necessary for humans to adapt to global environmental change are often a function of individual and societal characteristics, as well as cumulative and emergent capacities across communities and jurisdictions. In this paper, we apply a systematic literature review and co-citation analysis to investigate empirical research on adaptive capacity that focus on societal levels beyond the household. Our review demonstrates that assessments of adaptive capacity at higher societal levels are increasing in frequency, yet vary widely in approach, framing, and results; analyses focus on adaptive capacity at many different levels (e.g. community, municipality, global region), geographic locations, and cover multiple types of disturbances and their impacts across sectors. We also found that there are considerable challenges with regard to the ‘fit’ between data collected and analytical methods used in adequately capturing the cross-scale and cross-level determinants of adaptive capacity. Current approaches to assessing adaptive capacity at societal levels beyond the household tend to simply aggregate individual- or household-level data, which we argue oversimplifies and ignores the inherent interactions within and across societal levels of decision-making that shape the capacity of humans to adapt to environmental change across multiple scales. In order for future adaptive capacity research to be more practice-oriented and effectively guide policy, there is a need to develop indicators and assessments that are matched with the levels of potential policy applications. 

Forests face accelerating threats due to increases in the severity and frequency of drought and heat stress associated with climate change. In particular, changing patterns of forest regeneration after disturbance will be important in predicting future forest distribution across the western United States, where patterns of recurring fire and regrowth are important in establishing landscape dynamics. To predict shifting landscape patterns, it will be important to identify environmental boundaries for forest regeneration using environmental variables with clear consequences for seedling survival. Here, we explore soil surface temperature as an environmental variable with direct consequences for seedling survival and forest regeneration potential. We conducted a literature search to identify five previous laboratory experiments, spanning a period of 1924 to 1986, that exposed conifer seedlings to elevated soil surface temperatures for varying durations. We then synthesized the data from these studies to explore the survival of western U.S. conifer species in response to differing surface temperature levels. We found mortality thresholds consistent with previously reported measurements in field and lab studies, but found that as surface temperatures reach these lethal thresholds the duration of exposure matters greatly to survival outcomes. This work leverages an intuitive climate metric with clear consequences for seedling survival as an indicator of forest regeneration potential. 

Addressing the challenges of wildland fire requires that fire science be relevant to management and integrated into management decisions. Co-production is often touted as a process that can increase the utility of science for management, by involving scientists and managers in knowledge creation and problem solving. Despite the documented benefits of co-production, these efforts face a number of institutional barriers. Further research is needed on how to institutionalise support and incentivise co-production. To better understand how research organisations enable and constrain co-production, this study examined seven co-produced wildland fire projects associated with the US Department of Agriculture Forest Service Rocky Mountain Research Station (RMRS), through in-depth interviews with scientists, managers and community members. Results provide insights into how organisational structures and cultures influence the co-production of fire science. Research organisations like RMRS may be able to institutionalise co-production by adjusting the way they incentivise and evaluate researchers, increasing investment in science delivery and scientific personnel overall, and supplying long-term funding to support time-intensive collaborations. These sorts of structural changes could help transform the culture of fire science so that co-production is valued alongside more conventional scientific activities and products.