Firming up the uncertainties in climate change adaptation

Liz Kalaugher in Environmental Research Web: As climate change kicks in, landscape managers will need to boost the resilience of the ecosystems they are responsible for. But there is little evidence of how well the various climate adaptation options will work. It is even tricky to assess scientists’ confidence in the effectiveness of the techniques.

"It is widely acknowledged that improved characterization and communication of uncertainty are essential for robust decision making," Jordan West from the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) told environmentalresearchweb.

West and colleagues analysed the discussions of six management bodies – the US National Forests, National Parks, National Wildlife Refuges, Wild and Scenic Rivers, National Estuaries and Marine Protected Areas – regarding seven adaptation approaches taken from the "Preliminary Review of Adaptation Options for Climate-Sensitive Ecosystems and Resources", prepared for the US Climate Change Science Program (CCSP) in 2008. The EPA team assessed the management bodies' findings on two factors – the amount of evidence available and the agreement among experts.

...One approach – reducing anthropogenic stresses – was rated by five of the six management teams as having a high amount of evidence and agreement. The Marine Protected Areas team assessed the approach as having low evidence but high agreement. In fact, the Marine Protected Areas team judged evidence to be lower for all the adaptation approaches, perhaps because marine systems have been studied for a shorter period of time than ecosystems on land.

The teams also agreed on the topic of relocation, which was the lowest rated approach. Two teams felt there wasn't even enough evidence on relocation to provide a ranking. The five other options – protecting key ecosystem features, representation, replication, restoration and refugia – received mixed scores....

Ansel Adams, Looking across lake toward mountains, "Evening, McDonald Lake, Glacier National Park," Montana., 1933 - 1942