Joint Pilot Activity Objectives
The joint pilot will prototype the use of climate projections in landscape conservation impact models to better inform DOI land management and planning decisions. The overarching goal is for NCPP and NC CSC to collaborate to develop decision-support tools for the landscape conservation community. In the process, we will explore together what is “best available science” for key management questions. Our pilot will also develop a deliberate, ongoing interaction to prototype how NCPP will work with CSCs to develop and deliver needed climate information products. This pilot will build capacity in the NC CSC to use climate projections as inputs to DOI impact models and will facilitate a better understanding by the NCPP about how jointly developed climate products can meet partner needs.
Our pilot will:
- Help land-managers clarify and identify their information needs for climate information at regional scales, including phenomena important to the North Central region.
- Determine the “best available science” for variables and questions relevant to our partners. What is credible and defensible at various time scales? What is the quality of a given data set in a particular application?
- Contribute to the development of NCPP capabilities to support the thoughtful use of climate information as input to ecological models, and provide translational information for climate information, in particular, downscaled data.
- Strengthen the collaboration between NCPP and USGS, which will contribute to the effective development of the NCPP platform.
- Facilitate continuous interaction between NC CSC, as a user of the downscaled climate information, and NCPP as a supplier of information to facilitate its use.
Our pilot program will help refine land-management questions and identify climate variables that can be provided from the climate models, and prototype the use of climate projections in landscape conservation impact models to better inform DOI land management and planning decisions. To facilitate this process, several DOI Landscape Conservation Cooperatives (LCC) and other land and water mangers, associated with the NC CSC, have identified several potential management issues that may be impacted by climate change
The NC CSC is framing this pilot study into three general components: Climate data, Ecological Response Models, and Management Objectives (below). Courtesy Jeffrey Morisette, NC-CSC Director
The NCPP also will work with the NC CSC to better understand what the needs are and how land managers use climate information. These efforts will help clarify needs of land managers for other climate information. Specific activities may include:
- Understand how the partners would use the climate information as part of better defining what climate variables are needed (e.g. the Penman Monteith suite of water/energy variables), and whether global climate models resolve these variables at the scales needed (daily in some cases) in a credible way.
- Determine what climate projections are available at various scales for the North Central region, and whether these are appropriate for their needs.
- Determine whether specific variables identified by the NC CSC can be provided in a scientifically credible manner.
- Work with NC CSC to feed climate projections into a small set of impact models chosen by the NC CSC, (e.g. hydrology, biogeochemistry, vegetation models), and to evaluate how useful the climate science is for their impact analysis.
- Work with NC CSC to connect climate projections to support specific risk analyses (e.g. high resolution downscaled regional water quantity, water temperature and water quality information). This may require working with USGS water cycle modeling expertise or others outside NOAA to provide these data
- Explore other particular topics of interest to NC CSC: Are new CMIP5 simulations of precipitation better than CMIP3 for the region? How do we provide the right spatial and temporal details for management questions?
