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The importance of climate change lies mainly in its impacts on natural resources, the economy, and human health. Some regions and assets will be more vulnerable to climate change than others, and taking steps to enhance the resilience of assets that may be unacceptably vulnerable will help ensure economic productivity and the well being of the citizens of the United States and other nations. The regional impacts research component is designed to focus on sensitivity and adaptation, to integrate research on changes in climate with other environmental conditions, and to develop this integrated perspective as a series of decision-making tools. This will not only increase the salience of research, but also identify which unknowns are most important to address from a societal point of view, and thus to help refine the research agenda.

The environmental-society interactions research includes a focus on the regional scale for several reasons. "Regions" - particular places and decision contexts - are the analysis units in which different manifestations of climate change will be integrated with other changes, both environmental and socio-economic. Their scale and characteristics are defined by the problem being addressed. Understanding how multiple environmental forces will interact with economic and social conditions is necessary in order to develop realistic options for managing risks or opportunities that will arise from climate change.

The recommended initiatives build on the foundation of the USGCRP and set the goal of providing information for increasing the resilience of systems threatened by global change.

Regional research has been found to be one of the most effective ways to investigate multiple environmental stresses directly connected with decision makers. In a "place", whether a watershed, urban center, national park, or agricultural region, public and private sector decision makers and natural resource managers must consider not only multiple environmental stresses but other essential factors (competing incentives, tradeoffs, institutional constraints, jurisdictional conflicts, availability of human or financial resources, etc.) in their decision making process. Some decision makers lack access to information in forms that are applicable to their problems, while others are inundated with information and need assistance in selecting, organizing, integrating resources. To address both problems, state of the art information systems that integrate environmental research results and data on economic and social factors are required.

The 2001 NRC report on The Science of Regional and Global Change concludes that there are barriers to promoting regional research, notably within the interagency structures used to plan collaboration and research, and between scientists, policy/decision-makers, and natural resource managers. To foster collaboration both across agencies and between scientists and policy/decision makers, we recommend a focused set of prototype regional investigations that will rely on new incentives and mechanisms. While we acknowledge that it is difficult to dictate collaboration, as rapport and trust must first be developed between individuals, we feel we can promote collaboration between research and decision making cultures to a much greater degree. These programmatic approaches are described below.

Programmatic Objectives

The NRC report recommends the following eight actions to implement an effective research agenda:

• Ensure an "intimate connection" between research, operational activities, and the support of decision making;

• Participate in and support interdisciplinary research relating physical, biological and human systems;

• Plan and implement sustained and integrated observing networks and information systems that transcend traditional agency boundaries;

• Plan to incorporate scientific and technological advances into on-going research and operational programs;

• Develop improved models and new predictive capabilities;

• Develop improved assessment capabilities for integrating scientific knowledge into effective decision support systems;

• Define and carry out programs of regional and sectoral multiple-stress research and demonstration projects; and

• Connect research, education, and outreach.

Proposed Strategy

• Develop formal mechanisms to establish ongoing working relationships between the research community and the decision makers to ensure that the research and assessments will address the specific issues of concern to the decision- making community.

• Develop multi-agency RFPs that stipulate that proposals and projects must be developed jointly between scientists and decision makers with requirements for structured cooperation, communication, planning, and implementation between the scientists and decision makers.

• Develop multi-agency RFPs or other funds for both intramural and extramural researchers and programs under joint control to provide support for integrative activities required above and beyond current activities or programs;

• Reward and promotion incentives for scientists doing interagency research.

Ongoing plans and activities

Carrying out regionally-specific research on the issues related to natural resources productivity, metropolitan regions, and integrated assessment will require contributions from the base program of global change research, as well as new approaches for fostering collaboration across disciplines and areas of research, across the agencies, and among researchers and decision and policy makers. Contributions from multiple agencies will be required, with each agency providing expertise and products consistent with its own mission. A number of existing agency programs have supported pilot regional research projects. Experience of these efforts will be evaluated and used to guide development of an integrated interagency RFP for different regional groups related to the focus areas of the initiative.

Deliverables

• Fostering regionally-specific integrated research will empower local, state, and regional decision makers and resource managers with adaptation, mitigation, and management strategies to optimally benefit from the positive aspects of global change and effectively with its detrimental effects by ensuring that scientists work directly with decision makers so more mature research is planned and executed that assists them in making immediate and near-term decisions.

• This initiative will provide the capability to determine which regions, and within those regions, which systems, are most resilient (and which are most vulnerable) to multiple environmental changes. Knowledge and tools needed to respond in a timely manner to environmental changes so that benefits can be maximized and costs of adaptation or response to change can be reduced will also be provided.

Integrated decision support systems for climate change assembles knowledge from a diverse set of sources, relevant to one or more aspects of the climate change issue, for the purpose of gaining insights that would not otherwise be available from traditional, disciplinary research. An idealized integrated assessment modeling system addresses questions ranging from emissions of greenhouse gases to atmospheric composition to climate to effects of human and natural systems.

Research Objectives

• Integrate technology and economics with other system components, particularly the description of energy technology in integrated assessment models. Develop detailed regional descriptions of technology resources, institutions and opportunities, and the ability to describe transition pathways -- roadmaps - for technology transitions from the present to the future.

• Develop alternative approaches for aggregating and representing different types of impacts, including those to market economies, informal economies in which barter rather than exchange of money facilitates transactions, and ecological systems, in which important attributes cannot easily be assigned a monetary value.

Proposed Strategy

• Develop and sustain three types of integrated assessment groups: large modeling groups, small modeling groups, and research teams which develop specialized information to fill gaps left by other, larger program elements.

Ongoing plans and activities

Integrated assessment models do not yet incorporate impacts on metropolitan areas as distinguished from the economy in general. Yet, important progress is anticipated in three key research areas relevant to metropolitan areas: Air Quality, Water Quality and Quantity, and Extreme Events. An attempt will be made to incorporate this knowledge into the larger integrating framework of assessment models.

Deliverables

Deliver the capability to address regional emissions and consequences of climate change in integrated assessment models, facilitated by building international partnerships. Hydrology and agriculture are acutely important to understanding the regional consequences of climate change.

1. Natural resource regions

We know that several environmental factors are changing. We also know that each of these factors has effects on the Nation's managed and natural ecosystems and the critical goods and services that they provide such as food, fiber, clean water, energy, and recreation. These changes also have major implications for how decision makers, including resource managers, regional planners, large corporations, small farmers, and rural communities, must manage these resources to maintain their productivity. In this initiative, we recommend research targeted at identifying strategies for maintaining the productivity of natural resources that the nation depends on, such as agriculture, forestry, and water.

This will not only provide direct economic benefits, it will also help preserve watersheds that provide water supplies for many major metropolitan regions, as well as recreation outlets for densely populated areas. Because the challenges to managing these resources vary widely across localities and regions, it is crucial to carry out a substantial portion of this research within localities and regions, working hand in hand with the decision makers and resources managers who need sound, science-based information to make effective decisions.

To address these issues, a combination of field experiments, mechanistic models, and decision support tools and information systems will be developed.

Research Objectives

• Investigate the impacts of multiple factors, including climate change, on natural resources, in particular food production by major U.S. crops.

• Evaluate the response in water use by crops and other ecosystems in a combination of warming and elevated CO₂.

Proposed Strategy

• Implement a field experiment program to experimentally manipulate multiple factors in key (and representative) ecosystems in several regions. Within the next 5 years target the major annual crops: corn, wheat, and soybean, in major agricultural regions. For other systems such as forests, rangelands, and wetlands, initial efforts will target those of most economic consequence (e.g., forests) and those that are potentially most sensitive and unique (e.g., national parks, wildlife refuges, wilderness, and other protected areas).

• Improve the major crop models so that they treat effects of multiple environmental changes, and extreme conditions, on yield and water use.

• Implement a national, pilot project on integrated, multidisciplinary modeling of impacts of multiple changes on ecosystems. As a prototype, develop a comprehensive and modular computer model of a terrestrial system, including responses to multiple changes and human management, such as fire suppression.

• Develop, test, and evaluate plant response and water quantity/quality prediction models for land management at different scales.

• Develop an integrated framework to guide selection and application of these models and related decision support tools.

• Develop a central point of access and repository for all plant, ecosystem, and watershed information, data, and management models and decision support tools.

• Promote and coordinate application of these information-bases, models, and tools for watershed management, through training and support.

Ongoing plans and activities

The experiments proposed here will focus on multiple attributes including: plant water use efficiency, ground/surface water quality, impacts on pests and invasive species, and the multiple uses to which landscapes are put, such as agricultural, recreational, and other purposes that affect carbon storage.

Deliverables

The products will be developed within the context of regional economic markets and population dynamics. Specific products and deliverables will include:

• Crop models that include responses to multiple environmental changes (CO₂, ozone, temperature, and precipitation), based on up-to-date research, will be developed.

• An advanced ecosystem model (pilot effort) will be developed for one (or a few) natural system(s) important to the Nation. This work will be the foundation for a new national capability in modeling and predicting effects of climate change on our natural resources.

• A capability to support collection and exchange of regionally-based information on potential climate change effects and model development/application that: a) serves as a clearinghouse for information, databases, models and decision support tools; b) provides an integrated framework to guide selection and application of models and support tools for land and watershed managers; c) provides training, technical support, documentation, evaluation and user manuals for modeling packages, and d) maintains pointers to ongoing successful applications for management under uncertainty.

An important focus of the recommended research options is on urban/ metropolitan areas. An increasing percentage of the American people choose to live in major urban/ metropolitan areas, particularly along the coasts. An important characteristic of these urban communities is that their economic viability and well-being is closely linked with the larger watersheds within which they are situated and the natural resources in the watersheds.

Metropolitan areas represent an ideal place within which to conduct policy-relevant research that integrates the influences of multiple factors (e.g., climate change; population changes; land-use change) on multiple effects (e.g., the air we breathe; the water we drink). It also provides an ideal test-bed within which to analyze the critical interactions between human and natural systems.

Previous research and assessments have identified priority challenges in urban/metropolitan areas that are sensitive to climate change and other important factors, including:

• Air quality and related effects on heat stress and cardio-respiratory disease

• Water quantity and quality and related health effects

• Extreme events and weather-related morbidity

The recommended initiative will include a process to identify other emerging decision making and policy challenges, develop the observing and information management infrastructure that is missing, and thus integrate, share, and apply knowledge to decision making.

Research Objectives

• Determine the quantitative effect of climate change and other factors on ambient concentrations of tropospheric ozone and particulate matter (e.g., black carbon);

• Identify the geographic areas that will experience the largest changes (positive and negative) due to global change and the areas that will fail to attain desired levels of air quality due to climate change;

• Assess the consequences of climate change on four aspects of water quality: drinking water infrastructure, wastewater treatment, surface water quality, and surface/groundwater interaction;

• Examine the potential for adaptive responses to protecting drinking and surface water for human and ecosystem uses in metropolitan areas in the U.S.;

• Develop the framework to integrate questions characterizing meteorological factors (historically and in a predictive mode) with contextual and analytical questions designed to make more precise assessments of vulnerability to extreme events and identify options for preparations to enhance resiliency.

Proposed Strategy

• Develop a set of meteorological variables needed for air quality simulations, and analyze the statistical relationships between weather and tropospheric ozone and particulate matter (PM);

• Develop baseline and future emissions scenarios for ozone and PM using scenarios of economic growth, energy demand, population growth, vehicle miles traveled, policy scenarios, and information about anthropogenic and biogenic emissions; and

• Simulate base case and future concentrations of ozone and PM;

• Since climate change and variability will affect water quality primarily through changes in runoff, we recommend evaluating how climate change will affect runoff. To that end climate models will be used to predict regional changes in both precipitation and evapotranspiration and the output will be integrated with output from land use choices models. In addition, changes in storm intensity, the effects of wetlands and riparian buffer zones and the diluting effects of runoff will be modeled;

• We recommend a "staging strategy" where, when possible, increases in the risks of certain kinds of extreme events are first identified in seasonal forecasts, the general timing of events within a season is identified through model simulations at lead times of roughly five days to two weeks, then as lead time to an event is reduced to approximately two days or less, increasingly detailed forecast information is provided as to event intensity, timing, and location. This approach will be coupled with observations, modeling and research to identify the institutional and socio-economic factors that account for increases in sensitivity to the timing and magnitude of extreme events.

Ongoing plans and activities

This integrated research approach would capitalize on existing plans to apply recent advances in understanding extreme events, such as coastal storms, and recent advances in modeling and data assimilation, to produce detailed estimates of the range of possible outcomes of relevant meteorological variables in target regions at lead times from a season down to hours. Local conditions, as well as the needs of end users in target regions, would then be used to estimate the probabilities of extremes of quantities most relevant to those end users (such as stream flow or heating degree days).

Deliverables

The products from this initiative would be nationwide assessment reports that quantify the:

• effects of climate change on ambient air quality in selected major U.S. metropolitan areas,

• effects of changes in air quality on human health in multiple metropolitan areas, extent to which wastewater treatments costs will be affected by climate change and changes in extreme precipitation events,

• effects of climate change and climate variability on drinking water quality,

• effects of climate change on water-borne diseases in multiple metropolitan areas, and

• effects of climate change and climate variability on weather-related morbidity.

Decision-support tools would also be produced to help public health officials determine appropriate adaptive response strategies, and to evaluate the extent to which these responses at the societal or individual level could reduce the impacts of climate change on human health and increase the resilience of the public health care system to climate change.