Diagnosing and navigating scale mismatches in a social-ecological system: cross-scale feedbacks and cross-level interactions enable regime shift management in the Great Plains

Institutional fit is a prerequisite for governance of sustainable social-ecological systems. Scale mismatches, which occur when institutional fit is lacking, are common, sometimes leading to irreversible shifts in social-ecological regimes. In the American Great Plains, encroachment of eastern redcedar (Juniperus virginiana) threatens to shift the system from grasslands to woodlands, a shift potentially exacerbated by scale mismatches in social-ecological systems governance. We diagnosed this mismatch by examining how ecological change at interacting spatial extents influences management responses and asked whether individual livestock producers attempted to improve institutional fit by elevating management responses from the individual to the collective level. We used Bayesian logistic regression with questionnaire and landcover data to predict whether producers use prescribed burning to manage encroachment. Prescribed burning was most likely when: regional-level encroachment was high and local-level encroachment was low, local-level encroachment was high and regional-level encroachment was low, or producers engaged in local groups. Individuals here navigate scale mismatch by engaging in collective action, leveraging existing individual behaviors while enabling higher-level institutional changes to better align woody encroachment management with its driving processes. Diagnosing scale mismatches and understanding how they are navigated may reveal leverage points for better aligning management with relevant environmental conditions.