Lessons learned from a co‐produced field experiment comparing aquatic vegetation removal methods in recreational waters

Freshwater ecosystems are facing many complex stressors, from climate change to invasive species, and addressing these issues requires an interdisciplinary, collaborative approach to understand them and develop strategies to mitigate ecosystem harm. Knowledge co‐production is an increasingly common approach, where researchers, practitioners and local collaborators (e.g. community members) co‐develop a research project that produces actionable outcomes.

Here, we demonstrate how this approach was applied to a current ecological and management issue in waterways in Ontario, Canada. Researchers from four academic institutions, practitioners from two agencies and local community collaborators co‐developed the Trent‐Severn Aquatic Plant Experimental Removal (TAPER) project in the Trent‐Severn Waterway, Ontario, Canada, to better understand the ecosystem impacts of aquatic plant removal methods.

We identified and applied guiding principles from previous environmental co‐production research, which were grouped into six themes: funding, trust building and power sharing, communication, flexibility, skill development and reflection. In this paper, we evaluated the importance of each theme and provided examples of challenges faced regarding each theme and our approach to overcome them.

We found that building on pre‐existing relationships, consistent communication and having a flexible research team resulted in the ability to overcome many of the major challenges that were encountered during this community‐engaged, co‐production project. Including community collaborators contributed to a more robust study design because of the inclusion of place‐based knowledge.

Practical implication . This work builds on previous co‐production literature and provides a case study that reveals how challenges were overcome while yielding best practices for future work. We recommend that future projects apply these practices, including building on existing relationships, appointing a designated communication facilitator and setting realistic project expectations early.