A New Era for Ecologists

INCORPORATING CLIMATE CHANGE INTO NATURAL RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

Kimberly R. Hall

Rapid climate change is one of the most pressing challenges facing resource managers and conservation practitioners in California and around the globe. Since the 1880s, the linear trend in average global surface temperature suggests an increase of approximately 0.85°C in the Northern Hemisphere, and the last 30 years were likely the warmest period in the last 1400 years (IPCC 2013). It is critical that we accelerate efforts to reduce the accumulation of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere (mitigate the causes of climate change). However, even if drastic reductions are achieved, the emissions that have already been released through the burning of fossil fuels, compounded by the loss of forests and other natural systems that store carbon, commit us to continued changes in climate for many decades to come (Solomon et al. 2009). The rapid pace of changes, combined with the complexity of potential responses of species and natural systems to different climatic factors, suggests that we will often need to transform, rather than just update, our management approaches (Kates et al. 2012, Park et al. 2012). The extent to which ecologists in the research, conservation, and management fields are able to contribute viable strategies to address these challenges, and promote transformation in our approaches to management, has important implications for biodiversity, natural systems, and the ecological services that support all species, including humans.

The goals of this book are to help motivate efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by describing observed and likely vulnerabilities of species and natural systems to climate change, and to help accelerate the pace of climate change adaptation in the natural resource management sector. The focus of this chapter is on framing how scientists and managers can work together to design and implement updates to our management and conservation practices that increase the odds that species and systems adapt to climate change. While most of the chapters in this book focus on observed impacts in California ecosystems, here we emphasize adaptation, and provide an introduction to the frameworks and tools available in the emerging field of adaptation planning. These frameworks and tools provide the pathway forward for incorporating what we learn from the study of responses of species and systems to climate change into natural resource management and conservation strategies.

Steps for adaptation planning include identifying likely changes in key climatic factors, characterizing the risks that these changes pose to things we care about, prioritizing those risks, evaluating the consequences of various strategies to reduce risk, implementing preferred actions, and tracking and learning from these actions (Moser and Ekstrom 2010, Poiani et al. 2011, Cross et al. 2012, Stein et al. 2014). While science is a critical input to these tasks, it is not by itself sufficient (Gregory et al. 2006), and lack of information should not be used to delay action. Given that the need for "more science" is often described by practitioners as a barrier to adaptation (Heller and Zavaleta 2009, Moser and Ekstrom 2010, Bierbaum et al. 2013, Petersen et al. 2013), a key step that scientists, managers, and policy-makers can partner on is reminding each other that we make decisions under uncertainty all of the time, and there are methods we can use to help make these decisions more rigorous and more transparent. In addition to investing in more science, to make progress on adaptation, we need to think more broadly about the skills and processes that can facilitate society's ability to act on what we observe, and plan for the changes that our climate and ecological models suggest are likely to occur.

Making decisions on how to address climate change risks to species, natural systems, and the people that depend on these systems requires that we integrate science with information on societal values and account for many types of uncertainties (Schneider et al. 2007, National Research Council 2009). Integration of science with values and the collaborative determination of likely costs and benefits of various adaptation actions require that science be presented clearly, with key thresholds identified where possible. As ecologists, we need to explain the logic behind our expectations for the future, and explain our assumptions in ways that help nonscientists understand the relationship between various climate drivers and the sensitivities of species and systems. When we are able to communicate science clearly, we can play an essential role in promoting science-based decisions: We enable a broader group of stakeholders to act as partners in the evaluation of the risks, costs, and benefits associated with different actions (Gregory et al. 2006, Schneider et al. 2007, National Research Council 2009, Moser and Ekstrom 2010). While the myriad of uncertainties associated with climate change impacts (and human responses to these impacts) present a major challenge, tools and frameworks for handling uncertainty continue to grow (National Research Council 2009, Kujala et al. 2013, Hoffman et al. 2014). For those of us trained in the natural sciences, uncertainty and complexity are not new concerns, and learning new ways to...