Accounting for ecological thresholds when developing policy

Background/Question/Methods

Climate change is driving rapid and broad changes across the United States and the world.  These changes are impacting local environments and economies and pose threats to our Nation’s cultural traditions and resources.  As the primary land, water and wildlife manager for the nation, the U.S. Department of the Interior has an obligation to address the impacts that climate change is having on America’s resources by developing integrated adaptation and mitigation strategies.  To meet these challenges, the Department is establishing Climate Science Centers (CSCs) and Landscape Conservation Cooperatives (LCCs) across the nation to work in partnership with other government agencies, universities, tribes, NGO’s and other interested stakeholders to better understand and adapt to the impacts of climate change.  This strategy invests in scientific research to better understand climate change impacts, designing science-based strategies to protect our resources and people, and decreasing greenhouse gas emissions. 

The Department’s new data integration and dissemination strategy is geared towards making climate change data collection and monitoring comprehensive, integrated, standardized, and accessible to interested stakeholders.  This work is an evolving partnership with our governmental and non-governmental partners to improve the management of and access to our nation’s collective scientific data.  This information will help provide the foundation for scenario-planning, creation of decision-support tools, and adaptive management strategies for scientists, resource managers, decision makers, and the general public. 

Results/Conclusions

Adapting management strategies to address climate change requires that scientists and land, water, and wildlife managers early and often throughout the adaptive management process.  Adaptive management and disaster risk reduction tools will strengthen resilience of communities impacted by coastal landscape changes due to sea-level rise and extreme storm events, increasing debris flows, wildfire impacts, and shifting drought patterns.  This priority includes the need for baseline and ongoing monitoring of these hazards and their impacts.

A few of the Department’s adaptation and mitigation strategies include:

·         Adapting water management strategies to enable continued supply of drinking and irrigation water;

·         Creating science-based strategies to conserve and manage fish and wildlife resources, including nearly 2,000 threatened and endangered species;

·         Managing millions of acres of parks, refuges, other public lands, and 1.7 billion acres of the outer-continental shelf for multiple uses in the face of a changing climate;

·         Addressing the impacts of climate change on American Indians and Alaska Natives;

·         Protecting and restoring ecosystems, enhancing the carbon stored in our forests, wetlands, grasslands and other natural systems.