The Architecture of Integration: Coordinated Agricultural Projects.

Efforts to solve difficult and complex problems involving interacting ecological, agricultural, social and economic systems need scientific innovation and a convergence of knowledge, sciences and experiences. The scope, scale and context of large societal problems call for a unique, heterogeneous mix of disciplinary, multidisciplinary, and participatory engagement at appropriate levels within and across projects. The transdisciplinary project is an innovation platform; an investment in the architecture of integration to create liquid networks and purposeful opportunities for cross-fertilization of ideas, hunches, sciences, and pragmatic experiences to occur. Three USDA Climate and Agricultural Coordination Projects (CAP) are multi-institutional research, education, and extension investments addressing climate change mitigation and adaptation in US agriculture and natural resource management, each with a unique integration structure developed and self-organized by their teams to meet vision and function goals. In this presentation, CAP project directors illustrate the structural architecture of each project and how the plurality of sciences and stakeholders are integrated to develop new knowledge value chains in support of climate change mitigation and adaptation in agriculture and natural resource management.