south east regional climate hub handouts, cfsa sac 2015
TRANSCRIPT
Agricultural Solutions: adapting to and mitigatingclimate change on farms and forests in the southeastern US
When: January 20-21 2016Where: Virtual; register at serch.us/workshopWho: NRCS extension, FSA, RD, FS Field Staff, state and private forestry, Land managers, land owners, general publicHow: Register at serch.us/workshop. Email Sarah Wiener with any questions ([email protected]).
About the Workshop:
• USDA Regional Climate Hubs focus on adaptation to and mitigation of climate change on agricultural and forest lands
• This virtual Southeast workshop will focus on adaptive strategies that make working lands more resilient to an increasingly variable climate, while at the same time mitigating greenhouse gas emissions
• State and federal programs that support these efforts will be highlighted, along with tools for improving resilience and communication methods
Greenhouse Gas Mitigation Workshop
Hosted by the USDA Southeast Regional Climate Hub
Pam Knox - Climate Vulnerabilities & Forecasting in the Southeast
Laura Lengnick - Increasing Mitigation through Adaptive Management
Steve McNulty - Climate Communication
Bill Hohenstein - Overview of USDA’s Mitigation Strategy
Richard Straight - Building Carbon and Resilience through Agroforestry
Sarah Wiener - Climate Hubs Tool Shed Demo
David Lamm - Soil Health
Adam Chambers - Resources for Estimating and Maintaining Carbon; COMET
Steve Musser - USDA Programs for Agricultural Producers
Mark Risse - Mitigation in Livestock and Poultry Systems
John King - Forest Stewardship
Richard Birdsey - Current Resources for Estimating and Maintaining Forest Carbon
Bill Hubbard - Overview of Forestry Extension & Climate Science Learning Network
Speakers and Topics(subject to change)
Tool Shed: tools.taccimo.info TACCIMO: taccimo.info SERCH LIGHTS: serch.us/lights/subscribe Newsletter: globalchange.ncsu.edu/serch Website: climatehubs.oce.usda.gov/southeast
FIND US!
SERCH delivers science-based information on climate change to farmers, ranchers, and forest land
managers to maintain and improve sustainability of working lands under
increasing climate variability.
SERCH LIGHTS is a location-based drought alert system. Subscribers receive an email alert when the drought condition for their location is expected to change, according to NOAA’s Monthly Drought Outlook.
The right information in the right place at the right time
SERCH LIGHTS
SERCH is headquartered in Raleigh, NC and serves AL, AR, GA, FL, KY, LA, MS, NC, SC, TN, and VA.
AgroClimate is a suite of climate adaptation tools for land managers in the Southeast. SERCH is working with AgroClimate to expand the geography of these tools. The Forestry Toolkit App is a field guide for foresters, and SERCH is updating this app to reflect recent climate science.
Extending existing tools to create new opportunities
CREATING VALUE
Southeast Regional Climate Hub (SERCH)
Addressing Climate Variability
and Change
Steve McNulty, SERCH Director – [email protected], 919-515-9489 Sarah Wiener, SERCH Coordinator – [email protected], 919-515-9490
The Climate Hubs Tool Shed is the go-to database for land management professionals to find decision support tools that help adapt to climate change and variability. With 150 tools and simple and advanced search functions, users can locate the best tool for the job. Visit tools.serch.us.
TOOL SHED Tools and data
at your fingertips
TACCIMO (Template for Assessing Climate Change Impacts and Management Options) is a web-based knowledge management system that meets the climate change science needs of resource managers. Explore at taccimo.info.
TACCIMO Providing the best available science
Increasing frequency of extreme events, such as drought and precipitation (right) has lead to increases in the cost of disasters (lower left) and crop losses (lower right). Visit serch.us/viz.
CLIMATE VARIABILITY
Extreme Event Return Interval (months) 10.70
40.34
Leading Crop Loss Cause – 2000-2009
Tools Prospectus Decision support tools for working lands are proliferating, particularly in the form of mobile applications and websites. These tools can improve ease of delivery for science-based information to working land managers. Where tools are individually limited in some way – such as geographic scope or regarding up-to-date science on climate variability and change – SERCH plans to employ a four-facet approach (fig. 1) to take full advantage of existing tools by:
• Extending existing climate variability and change tools across sectors and scales (both geographic and temporal)
• Amending existing tools that do not currently address climate variability and change with relevant scientific information enabling them to address climate variability and change
• Creating new tools that integrate existing tools of all types to realize complementary and synergistic opportunities
• Maintaining tool delivery systems that ensure effective and efficient dissemination along with needs assessments to guide future tool development
Figure 1—SERCH approach to tool development, integration, and delivery with 2015-2016 proposed projects.
USDA is an equal opportunity provider and employer.
SERCH Projects 2015-2016 Available Projects • SERCH LIGHTS (Lately Identified Geo-specific Heightened Threat System) is a location-based
email alert system that notifies users when climate conditions may threaten resources within their geo-specific area, coupled with timely adaptive management information. The initial prototype version of SERCH LIGHTS will notify subscribers with the NOAA Climate Prediction Center forecasted changes in drought conditions in their geo-specific location and couple that forecast with adaptive management information from TACCIMO, AgroClimate, NRCS Conservation Planning Process, and the Service Foresters’ Handbook. Visit serch.us/lights/subscribe.
• The Climate Hubs Tool Shed is a national Hub effort led by SERCH to provide a framework for inventorying tools and assessing their attributes for working land managers. The Tool Shed enables SERCH to identify candidate tools most appropriate for land manager use to maximize their short- and long-term working land productivity, sustainability, and economic gain. Visit tools.serch.us.
In-Progress Projects • The Template for Assessing Climate Change Impacts and Management Options (TACCIMO)
is a web-based knowledge management system containing an adaptive information infrastructure supporting the development and delivery of scientific information for land management decision support. TACCIMO was originally developed and parameterized for forests and ecosystems but could be expanded to address other sectors, including the core working land sectors of SERCH (i.e., croplands, livestock, and grazing lands). After TACCIMO is populated for a new sector, it can serve as the basis for amending other tools (e.g., Service Foresters’ Handbook and the NRCS Conservation Planning Process) with the information needed to help them address climate change.
• The NRCS Conservation Planning Process is the method that NRCS uses to deliver technical assistance and incentives to producers. The process includes 163 practices that address 44 general resource concerns commonly encountered among producers. SERCH is working with NRCS to assess the 44 resource concerns in the context of climate change and variability. The potential vulnerabilities of each concern will be aggregated across specific resource types (e.g., crops, agroforestry, etc.).
• The Forestry Toolkit is a staple of forest management decision making for decades and was recently developed into a mobile application through SREF. Neither the Handbook nor the app considers the impact of changing climate variability in their guidance. As increasing climate variability creates new challenges for forest managers, and SERCH is working with the developers to include climate change science in the app.
• AgroClimate is a web platform containing a suite of tools lead by the University of Florida researchers to assist farmers in the southeastern US in making climate-informed decisions. AgroClimate integrates real-time climate into its decision support tools and translates that science into locally-scaled, user-specific information. However, its geographic scope is limited, with most tools only covering five states in the Southeast, and some tools covering even less area. SERCH is working with AgroClimate to extend those tools across all 11 SERCH states.
SERCH was established in 2014 to assist working lands managers in adapting to climate variability and change. SERCH priorities include modifying existing decision support tools to include climate variability science into their design and expanding tools geographically or by
sector. SERCH is partnering to expand the scope and improve the functionality of these tools in the face of changing climate variability. By modifying tools, rather than creating new ones,
information will reach land managers while efficiently using existing resources.
Contact the SERCH Director Steve McNulty at [email protected] or 919-515-9489. Visit SERCH at http://globalchange.ncsu.edu/serch/
and http://www.climatehubs.oce.usda.gov/southeast-hub.
USDA is an equal opportunity provider and employer.