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The Rural Initiative: Ensuring the Future of Rural Oklahoma

The future of many rural communities in Oklahoma, as well as elsewhere in the U.S. and around the world, is jeopardized by natural resource degradation, climate change, drought and sociocultural trends. Those threats are draining away human talent, expanding a technology gap between rural and urban society and leading to rural population losses. This initiative will identify and create ways to enhance the natural, human and technological capital in rural areas by bringing together interdisciplinary research teams to conduct community engaged, solution-oriented research on behalf of rural Oklahoma. The resulting solutions are likely to have global applicability.