Breakout Discussion Groups – Group 1: Rocky Mountains and High Elevation
Question 1: From your perspective, what are the most pressing management issues related to
climate change that still need to be addressed?
– Reduced Snowpack
– Timing of hydrology
– Total volume of runoff in response to temperature, precipitation, vegetation
– Balance current threats and future threats
– How to define and manage wilderness?
– How to define goals
– Baseline data
– Funding for more long-term monitoring
– Coordination & Communication – landscape connectivity issues
– Assessment of water agreements of the past, are they still relevant?
– Methods/formatting for disseminating data to be useful
– Biodiversity and wildfire
– Flexibility of management structures/plans for incorporating vulnerability assessments
– Marginalization of ecological or social groups – inequality within adaptation capacity & strategies
– Lack of recognition of Climate Change by local officials for future planning
Question 2: With some of these management challenges in mind, our second question is, from your
perspective, what are the most pressing gaps in scientific knowledge related to climate change in
our region?
Pressing Gaps:
– What are the ecological responses to climate?
– Single species/process predictions vs. whole system approach
– Understanding of multiple and interacting stressors -speed of gathering information to
address
– What are the public’s perceptions of priorities?
– What are the best methods of communication between scientists, decision makers, and
citizens?
– Do we know the impact of spatial variation on crop water use?
– Challenge to deliver spatial and temporal data in a timely manner
– Frequency of disturbance vs. time scale of forest stand development or ecosystem response
– Defining the ecological reference condition and historic range of variability
– Determining and quantifying the effects of topography on climate (micro-climates/refugias) – how
to better account for these differences
– GCMs are not good enough to represent topography – Need to improve RCMs
– Increase climate monitoring
– Understanding of threshold dynamics and non-linear responses
– Defining achievable future conditions
– Impact on livelihoods and communities that depend on these ecosystems
Discussion:
– Improving RCMs and Spatial/Temporal data are related
– Managers have to manage for multiple species, but often delivered single species information.
Although they also have to manage for single species (ESA).
– Multiple interacting stressors include climate, disturbances, even interacting disturbances
Question 3: What are examples of collaborations that have worked well? What is your dream
collaboration?
Past collaborations that have worked well
– Climate change tree atlas with NPS plans for the US
– Gunissan Basin sage-grouse collaboration - 20 years, successful in maintain habitat and improving
species population
– Uncompahgre partnership – evolved from public land partnership: federal agencies and local
environmental groups, forest landscape restoration program, mule deer monitoring
– Rocky Mountain National Park – Managing migratory species Ex. Elk management group
– NPS – Park based scientist from another agency (UGSG & Fish and Wildlife)
– Collaboration with commercial groups (Forest Service – ESRI, Google)
Potential future collaborations
– Long-term continuous collaborations
– Unbiased participants and not dominated by “heavy-weights”
– Build personal relationships (people collaborate not agencies)
– People who serve as “glue” for partnerships
– Address barriers for manager participation (ex. Conference attendance)
o Trainings, professional development, and conference topics directly targeted to managers
o Host at their locations
– Important for scientists to go to managers!
– More collaborations that results in experimental treatments and monitoring of strategies
– Agency (at all levels) support and valuing of collaborations
– Facilitation between scientists doing similar research (Ex. sharing equipment)
– International collaboration
– Increase collaboration with commercial groups
– Collaboration between computer scientists/web designers and ecological/climate scientists
Question 4: As you think about your ideal collaboration, what can the NC CSC do to foster and
facilitate successful collaborations?
– Continue to fund collaborative efforts
– List of projects related to climate science in the region – summary, contact information – so projects
can tie together and provide networking opportunities
– Unify data and in a data repository
– Technical support for acquiring climate science/data
– Access to science in other focus areas – NOAA, USDA, USGS
– We acknowledge they are doing a lot already!