HR: 08:00h
AN: GC31A-01    [Abstracts]
TI: Climate and Adaptive Management: What Are We Learning While We're Doing?
AU: * Pulwarty, R
EM: Roger.Pulwarty@noaa.gov
AF: NOAA-CIRES Climate Diagnostics Center, 325 Broadway, Boulder, CO 80305
AU: Melis, T
EM: tmelis@usgs.gov
AF: USGS, GCMRC, 2255 N. Gemini Dr., Flagstaff, AZ 86001
AU: Shurts, J
GC31A-01 AF: Northwest Power and Conservation Council, 851 S.W. Sixth Avenue, Suite 1100, Portland, OR 97204
AU: Jain, S
EM: Shaleen.Jain@noaa.gov
AF: NOAA-CIRES Climate Diagnostics Center, 325 Broadway, Boulder, CO 80305
AB: Learning is of strategic importance in the decades-long process of adapting to climatic change and variability and in accumulating lessons from past and current practices. Even when physical effects can be established with fair confidence there usually exist large uncertainties about biological and ecological effects and even greater uncertainties with respect to social consequences. Much work and experience has shown that long-term environmental problems can seldom be dealt with by single discrete actions or policies but respond only to continuing, sustained efforts at learning, supported by steady public attention and visibility. In many cases, the complications of recorded changes in the spatial and temporal distribution of rainfall, temperature soil moisture, runoff, frequency and magnitudes of droughts and floods have not been explicitly included in response planning. The idea of "adaptive management" has been widely advocated as a bridge between science and policy with a specific focus on ecosystems. We discuss this idea in the context of climatic and other uncertainties but ground the discussion in the implementation of actual adaptive management programs. Adaptive management has three key tenets (1) Policies are experiments that should be designed to produce usable lessons; (2) It should operate on scales compatible with natural processes, recognizing social and economic viability within functioning ecosystems; and: (3) Is realized through effective partnerships among private, local, state, tribal and federal interests. In a watershed setting this can mean balancing hydropower production, habitat management, conservation, endangered species recovery, and cultural resources in order to experiment, learn, incorporate learning, and adapt. Each of these carries its sources of uncertainty. The primary focus is on the experience of the Columbia and Colorado River Basins, the longest running explicit efforts at adaptive management. Experience will also be drawn from the Everglades, the CALFED, and similar international efforts. One goal is to identify the strengths and weaknesses of an "adaptive management approach" in the context of changing climatic baselines. Our approach is based on the premise that understanding how effectively society might identify common goals, best use climate and other information, and prepare for the consequences of future variations and surprises, requires identification and evaluation of present systematic efforts (i.e. field-tested alternatives) to experiment, characterize uncertainties, make decisions, and cope with environmental variability across temporal and spatial scales. None of these can be designed optimally, apriori. Designing effective assessments involves a redefinition of interdisciplinary research to one encompassing use-inspired research. We conclude by showing how the evolutionary or learning-based approach to "assessment" enters into regional and local activities in support of the U.S. Climate Change Science Program and the IPCC.
DE: 1630 Impacts of global change (1225)
DE: 6309 Decision making under uncertainty
DE: 6319 Institutions
DE: 6344 System operation and management
SC: Global Climate Change [GC]
MN: Fall Meeting 2005