SECC History: Learning from the past to
guide the future
Norman E. Breuer
SECC Fall Planning Meeting
18-20 November 2014
Auburn, AL
Overview
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Timeline
People
Scale
Teams
Looking forward
SECC Beginnings
• 1996 – O’Brien (FSU), Jones (UF), and Brown (UM) do “END to
END” with farmer groups in Argentina (Florida Consortium)
• 1996 – IRI competition second prize: The first RISA and NOAA
OGP funding
• Land grant univ. in each state
• Climate Science (FSU), Crop Science (UF), Assessment (UM)
• 2004 Auburn, UAH and UGA added
State Climatologists
John Christy, AL
Pam Knox and David
Stooksbury, GA
Dave Zierden and Melisa Griffin, FL
• Legitimacy
• Extension capability
2005-2010
• NCSU and Clemson added
• O’Brien (FSU) receives $20M USDA earmark
• Jones (UF) receives $4M from USDA Risk Management
Agency for AgroClimate
• Assessment scientists (social, interdisciplinary) are key
components of SECC
2000-2010: Scale: Seasonal Forecasts
based on Categorical ENSO
• Most effects not in growing season
• Many farmers have insurance and irrigation
• Potential in cool season forages and horticultural crops
Teams:
• Climate
• Agriculture
• Water
• Extension
• Assessment
These teams began to coalesce around 2004 and each went through a strategic
planning exercise
SECC Assessment* (2003-2010):
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Identifying potential end users, understanding decision
processes, and the role of climate forecasts
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Assessing the accessibility, relevance, utility of SECC tools
from end-users’ point of view
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Eliciting lessons learned, facilitating M&E
*Through Strategic Planning
The Focus Evolved
• Temporally: From Seasonal to longer term
change
• Spatially: From the crop and farm to the
region
• Sectorally: From Agriculture to Water and now
Coastal
2011-present
Existing and Planned Learning Communities
Organic Farmers
AgroClimate Users
Florida Water and
Climate Alliance
African American
Farmers
A Network of Learning Communities
Florida Water and
Climate Alliance
Organic Farmers
SECC
AgroClimate Users
African American
Farmers
AgroClimate:
Historically a climate service for agriculture
at the seasonal to shorter scale
Next: discussion support
object for co-learning ?
• We are thinking of repositioning
AgroClimate as a learning platform
• We will learn from the process of
developing it for water and coastal
decision support
Look at all the new faces!
Challenges for the “new” SECC
• Continue with uncertainty, probability and decisions
• Climate Service and Climate Learning: New roles for decision support
• SE Farming systems & pasture; economics at decision scale
• Scale ~ appropriate stakeholders: decisions under possible future
scenarios
• Cutting-edge social science: big and new questions on adaptive
capacity, adaptation, resilience
• Technologies including novel management and diversification
Roadmap for Future Excellence
• Strategic Planning: establish science priorities, standards and order
(horse before cart) by teams and then overall
o Establish trends and thresholds for SE USA
o Learning is difficult for all without a clear message
• Strengthen DSS team: Reposition decision support for learning
o ag, water, and coastal
• Use SEWaterClimate.org and SeCoasts.org as boundary objects around
which scientists from all disciplines can work together
• Seek theoretical backup, scaling up, and transferability in social science
o Resolve (finally) academic rewards
o Incorporate and integrate economics
Why am I in a Consortium?
Figure 3. SECC co-authorships between 2007 and 2014 (Mathews 2014). Authors are grouped into single nodes
based on their organizational affiliations (e.g., all UF authors are in the UF node). The number of authors determines the size of the nodes.
If you want to be an active, recognized SECC member you must:
• Co-publish with colleagues from other disciplines, other
universities, and ideally, other stakeholders
• Write grants and obtain funding with these
Take home message
Biophysical Science:
Climate
Agriculture
Water
Assessment:
Human dimensions,
Adaptation science,
Social science,
Interdisciplinary
Environmental
science
The best integration will be achieved with better knowledge of the
SE climate (trends, thresholds, probabilities) to keep up with
advances in stakeholder interaction through social and
interdisciplinary science (and Extension).
The horse must come before the cart.