Today’s applied ecology must take into effect the historical human impact that has generated today’s environmental challenges. Ecologists are faced with an urgency to broadly engage community stakeholders in their research, including making effective use of diverse ecological knowledge databases to develop and implement solutions to existing disparities in access to essential natural resources. The ESA 2022 Montreal annual meeting focuses on the need to consider how best to adapt our discipline to meet the environmental challenges caused by rapid change in climate, biodiversity and human impact on the communities we study. In response to the ESA DEIJ Task Force recommendations, ESA developed and implemented in 2021 the Excellence in Ecology (EEE) Scholars program. In this symposium, the 2021 ESA Excellence in Ecology Scholars will be highlighting best practices and innovation in their applied ecological research in urban and rural environments, to provide the broad perspective needed to increase the effectiveness of ecological predictions, models and implementation of solutions to increasingly urgent environmental problems. The speakers will be providing information on successful ways to integrate community stakeholders into their applied research to improve the effectiveness of their findings in generating environmental solutions that are doable in their communities of practice. They will also be providing analysis on their success in integrating this collaborative process in their career development as applied ecologists. The symposium will generate and overview of current interdependence between biological and cultural diversity, provide best practices in socioecological constructions of community to enhance environmental problem solving, cover urban water management issues that lead to health disparities and provide ecological research guidance to improve human-environment interactions at a variety of ecological scales. Their presentations will highlight how the discipline of ecology must adapt in order to address current and emerging environmental challenges in human-environment interactions due to rapid environmental change.