There are a huge number of projects, each trying to work at it from different standpoint. You might have rural sociologists working on it, you might have soil scientists working on it, maybe somebody from wildlife. So people do bring different aspects of the project together. So you have to select something that's doable. If we just look at it as one problem, no one person, or team of people could possibly attack the problem as a whole.
People can work on the parts of it.
They can measure systems to try to look at what's happening as those parts interact. You have to go get the background to find out if anyone else has done work that might be useful. Maybe someone from another state, someone from another country has already got some work you can use as your basis to get started. Then you plan the attack and that's not an easy job. Planning the attack can involve all sorts of questions in what kind of data will we have, where are we going with it, who will be the collaborator, what time of year are we going to do it, find the resources.