Education and Outreach | Fundamental Research | Enhancing Productivity | Protection of Life and Property

ESIG 2004 Achievements

Enhancing Productivity and Resilience of Natural Resources

Agroecosystems in the Pampas

In FY04, Richard Katz started participating in a multidisciplinary, multi-institutional project on adaptive management in agroecosystems in the Pampas of Argentina. The focus of the project, “Understanding and Modeling the Scope for Adaptive Management in Agroecosystems in the Pampas,” is on the role of variations in climate on annual-to-decadal time scales. Funded by the NSF Program on Biocomplexity in the Environment, this project involves researchers at several institutions, including the University of Colorado, Columbia University, the University of Miami, Pennsylvania State University, and the University of Buenos Aires. A broad span of disciplines is also represented, such as agronomy, climate, and decisionmaking. The ESIG component focuses on uncertainty analysis, ensuring that uncertainty is rigorously treated in all aspects of the project. This project will continue for three years.

Climate Variability in the Alaskan North Slope Coastal Region

The environmental issues affecting the Alaskan North Slope coastal region are the decline in ice extent in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas, the destruction of shelves and coast by sea ice, sea level rise, and storm hazards. The focus of this NSF-sponsored project is to understand, support, and enhance the local decisionmaking process on the North Slope of Alaska in the face of climate variability on seasonal-to-decadal time scales, both natural and as a result of anthropogenic changes. During FY04, Linda Mearns and Claudia Tebaldi (ESIG/RAP) continued their examination of statistical models for downscaling large-scale climate signals into fine-scale meteorological information, such as winds, temperature, and precipitation. A presentation on the progress of the project after its first two years was made in Barrow, Alaska, in August 2004 (with contributions from team members Mearns and Tebaldi) to discuss ways of reducing vulnerability to coastal erosion and flooding in the region arising from storm hazards. The team compiled information from residents and scientists about trends and processes affecting the Barrow environment during the past fifty years. The goal of the project is to expand the range of informed options open to the residents in order to address the problem of climate change and climate variability. The project website is available at nome.colorado.edu/HARC/ and will continue through FY05.

Coral Reefs and Climate Change

For some time, researchers have been making dire predictions for the world's reefs if the impact of humans is not curtailed. During FY04, Joan Kleypas examined how two consequences of increased atmospheric CO2 concentration, greenhouse warming and changes in seawater chemistry, are affecting both coral reef organisms and the reef structures that they build. A major threat to coral reefs is the significant increase in summertime maximum temperatures, which induces a “coral bleaching” stress response that can lead to large-scale mortality of reef organisms. Kleypas and colleagues are combining CCSM (Community Climate System Model) output to help predict the probability of coral bleaching in future greenhouse scenarios. A new website has been created to link all coral reef studies being carried out in ESIG at www.isse.ucar.edu/coral/

A second threat to reefs is the increase in ocean acidity, which hampers calcium carbonate production. Kleypas and colleagues at NOAA and Columbia University have designed a field program to document seawater chemistry changes on a reef at the Caribbean Marine Research Center (CMRC) in the Bahamas. Through funding from the NCAR Opportunity Fund, the group deployed an automated seawater sampling system onto an existing time-series station on a reef near the CMRC to enable documentation of the diurnal cycle in seawater carbonate chemistry on the reef. This information will be used along with other time-series data (e.g., temperature, salinity, light, wind) to model coral reef calcification and organic production in response to environmental variables.

Additionally, Kleypas co-authored a study published in FY04 by the Pew Center on Global Climate Change entitled Coral Reefs and Global Climate Change: Potential Contributions of Climate Change to Stresses on Coral Reef Ecosystems. The study is available in both hard copy and on line.

Millennium Ecosystem Assessment for Drylands and Desertification

The United Nations Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) is a four-year-long international program designed to meet the needs of decisionmakers for scientific information on the links between ecosystem change and human well-being. The MA is a complex project with complex findings, difficult to communicate even to those working in the field of sustainable development. Michael Glantz made a presentation at a Drylands Ecosystems Workshop in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, in August 2003. After that presentation, he was invited to join the Writing Team responsible for preparation of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment Synthesis Report for Drylands. Glantz worked closely with the Team during FY04 and prepared a chapter entitled "Environmental Problems in Drylands: Challenges and Tradeoffs for Society." The final report of the MA is scheduled to be released in mid-2005. The desertification component is part of the Drylands Ecosystem Assessment, one of more than twenty ecosystems under review. The World Bank, GEF (Global Environment Facility), and the WRI (World Resources Institute) support it, among several other major institutions and foundations. A website with more information about the MA is available at www.millenniumassessment.org

International Fisheries and Climate Variability

Kathleen Miller continued the collaborative international project focused on fisheries and climate variability during FY04. As an outgrowth of the Climate Variability and Pacific Salmon project, Miller collaborated on a paper with Gordon Munro (University of British Columbia) that describes the general problems posed by climatic regime shifts for international fisheries management. The paper surveys the evidence of the significance of climatic regime shifts. It has been accepted for publication by Marine Resource Economics. Collaboration by Miller with researchers at the University of Montana and Moscow State Lomonosov University focused on the impacts of climate variability on international marine fisheries and the implications for the design of cooperative fishery management agreements. Research during FY04 included development of game theoretic models applied to a comparative assessment of the role of climate variability in international fisheries, especially highly migratory tuna resources. Miller assumed leadership of Working Group 5 (Socioeconomic Impacts and Management Implications) of the GLOBEC Climate Impacts on Oceanic Top Predators (CLIOTOP). She also prepared two papers (accepted for publication) with researchers from the University of British Columbia and the University of Portsmouth (UK) on an assessment of the pressures created by climate-related uncertainty for international fishery management agreements.

Water and Climate

Kathleen Miller served as the co-Principal Investigator with David Yates (RAP) on a project begun in ESIG during FY04 on “Climate Information for Water Supply Planning.” Because water utilities must plan updates to their facilities decades in advance, effective planning requires an adequate understanding of the possible range of climate variability and climate change that may be faced in the future. This project convened an international workshop in FY04 to bring together members of the atmospheric, hydrologic, and water-resource scientific communities with representatives of the water supply industry in order to examine the current knowledge of potential effects of global climate change on water supply. ESIG secured funds from the American Water Works Association Research Foundation (AWWARF) to develop an educational report and host the workshop. Miller is working together with Yates to create a document designed to aid water resource managers with their ability to plan for the future, as well as to understand the basic scientific questions behind global climate change and water supply. The publication will be published by AWWARF in FY05. More information is available on the project website at www.isse.ucar.edu/water_conference/

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Education and Outreach | Fundamental Research | Enhancing Productivity | Protection of Life and Property