For better or worse, finding workable solutions to significant problems among people who share land, traditions, and values may be easier and more effective than global and national efforts. For the scientific enterprise, the devolution of big policy to small places poses new challenges around establishing spaces for democratic decisionmaking, building knowledge to inform those decisions, and effectively linking the two. As decisionmaking moves toward states and localities, science leaders will need to understand how the landscape of opportunity is shifting and build the capacity to answer questions posed by specific geographic communities.