To identify community-defined research priorities at the intersection of land access, climate change, and rural community health, we conducted a needs assessment in Montana. Through interviews and listening sessions with key informants working on land, climate, and health issues—including agricultural advisors, climate scientists, and rural service practitioners—we developed an understanding of research needs. Research priorities identified include: disparate impacts of federal funding cuts across rural and tribal communities; barriers to public climate disaster relief funding for farmers of tribal trust land; and the effects of Make America Healthy Again movements and policy on democracy and rural livelihoods. Land Lab graduate students participated in this project in collaboration with UM’s Natural Resource Conflict Resolution Certificate program, learning key community engagement and group facilitation skills.

​In September 2024, we convened a multi-day roundtable at the University of Montana's Flathead Biological Station bringing together 22 scholars studying rural change from across the United States. This gathering was designed to advance understanding of the critical intersection between climate change and farmland transition in the Intermountain West. Participants represented diverse social science disciplines including political ecology, environmental policy, rural sociology, law, and public health. Through structured presentations and facilitated group sessions, we worked collaboratively to identify key research gaps, develop shared methodologies, and forge new research partnerships. The roundtable built on insights gathered from earlier listening sessions with farmers and ranchers across Montana, ensuring that scholarly inquiry remained grounded in the lived experiences and needs of agricultural communities navigating climate impacts and land insecurity.

In collaboration with the Montana Climate Office, Land Labbers have been exploring how the United States Department of Agriculture’s emergency relief programs for farmers and ranchers are operating on the ground. We have focused on the Livestock Forage Program, which provides US ranchers relief payments during extreme climate events like drought. We are currently working on developing our findings into articles that show how the land-based barriers socially disadvantaged farmers face in accessing public climate relief funding, such as lack of formal land leases; and how treating drought as an acute disaster rather than an ongoing trend limits adaptation.

Critical scholarship has focused on how private companies profit from proprietary data, yet public property records hold potential to reshape the politics and practices of land governance. In the US, deeds and mortgages must be publicly recorded, but in practice these are difficult to access, often available only through individual requests to county offices or expensive third-party vendors. This makes it difficult to map land ownership and access, even as it creates barriers to mobilizing for more effective policies. This project explores the practice, pedagogy, and research opportunities afforded by digitizing property. Working with the Montana Land Cadaster and Missoula County’s Property Information System, we are exploring possibilities of digital property to analyze changes in land ownership and the historical growth of conservation easements in the context of a growing housing affordability crisis.