Revisiting the Freshwater Imperative: Harnessing Team Science to Face Emerging Challenges to Freshwaters

Abstract

Freshwater ecosystems face ever increasing environmental and ecological challenges. Recognition of those challenges is not new—over 30 years ago, a series of workshops convened to develop a research agenda (The Freshwater Imperative) to address those challenges. It was recognized that a critical component of solving the problems that freshwater ecosystems face would require greater interdisciplinary collaboration. Here, we discuss the context for the “Revisiting the Freshwater Imperative” workshop and describe how a small-workshop model can be used effectively to seed longer term collaborative partnerships in support of meeting the challenges freshwater ecosystems face. Some key recommendations include: (1) engage with participants prior to the workshop to maximize efficient use of time and prime divergence-convergence thinking; (2) promote a bottom-up participant driven structure; (2) develop an agenda with enough flexibility to accommodate participant driven changes (i.e., a “live” agenda); (3) utilize best practices for facilitating team science; and (4) provide coordinating structure for post-workshop working group activities.