Infusing ‘long-term’ into social science rangelands research

•Social science rangelands research has advanced substantively in the last few decades as a multidisciplinary endeavor, and notably through increased capacity to integrate with ecologically centered approaches.•The diversity of social science-related contributions to rangelands research continues to expand with both breadth and depth of approaches, perspectives, and backgrounds of participating scholars.•The USDA Long-term Agroecosystem Research (LTAR) Network advances a unique long-term and large-scale effort to incorporate social science research into a long-term “common experiment” across multiple sites within varied rangelands contexts of the United States.