Maintaining and restoring freshwater ecosystem services in the face of local and global change requires adaptive research that effectively engages stakeholders. However, there is a lack of understanding and consensus in the research community regarding where, when, and which stakeholders should be engaged and what kind of researcher should do the engaging (e.g., physical, ecological, or social scientists). This paper explores stakeholder engagement across a developing network of aquatic research sites in North and South America with wide ranging cultural norms, social values, resource management paradigms, and eco-physical conditions. With seven sites in six countries, we found different degrees of engagement were explained by differences in the interests of the stakeholders given the history and perceived urgency of water resource problems as well as differences in the capacities of the site teams to effectively engage given their expertise and resources. We categorized engagement activities and applied Hurlbert and Gupta's split ladder of participation to better understand site differences and distill lessons learned for planning comparative socio-hydrological research and systematic evaluations of the effectiveness of stakeholder engagement approaches. We recommend research networks practice deliberate engagement of stakeholders that adaptively accounts for variations and changes in local socio-hydrologic conditions. This, in turn, requires further efforts to foster the development of well-integrated research teams that attract and retain researchers from multiple social science disciplines and enable training on effective engagement strategies for diverse conditions.

面对局部和全球变化，维持和恢复淡水生态系统服务需要进行有效的利益相关方参与的适应性研究。但是，研究界对于应在何处，何时何地与哪些利益相关者进行接触以及应由哪种类型的研究人员（例如，物理，生态或社会科学家）缺乏理解和共识。本文探讨了北美和南美一个正在发展的水生研究站点网络中利益相关者的参与情况，涉及广泛的文化规范，社会价值，资源管理范例和生态物理条件。在六个国家/地区拥有七个站点，我们发现，参与程度的不同是由于考虑到水资源问题的历史和紧迫性，以及利益相关者利益的差异，以及他们的专业知识和资源，现场团队有效参与的能力也不同。我们对参与活动进行了分类，并应用了Hurlbert和Gupta的参与式阶梯，以更好地了解站点差异，并吸取经验教训，以计划进行社会水文比较研究和对利益相关者参与方法的有效性进行系统评估。我们建议研究网络实践利益相关者的有意参与，以适应性考虑当地社会水文状况的变化。反过来，