Description:

For climate science to be relevant in real-world decision making, scientists must understand the decisions being made by stakeholders and be willing to have a dialog about the stakeholder’s needs and what can feasibly be addressed by science. By incorporating a dialog between scientists and stakeholders, up front, into the formation of research projects, climate science inherently becomes more actionable. Unfortunately, such dialog has not always been at the forefront of scientists’ minds. All too often we hear of stories where scientists and stakeholders are not talking to each other and tools get developed but are rarely used. The Climate Adaptation Science Center (CASC) network was established in 2010 to conduct actionable science, ideally co-produced, with natural and cultural resource managers across the United States. We include stakeholders in the science process to develop projects that assist them in preparing for and adapting to climate change, especially when the objective is to answer a decision-focused conservation challenge. Over the past 10 years, our network has learned valuable lessons about how to engage with stakeholders in the scientific process. Since there is no one size fits all solution to the challenge of climate change, the CASC network was designed as a regional network to most effectively address local and regional climate impacts. In this session, we plan to highlight some of the great work conducted by interdisciplinary and multi-institutional teams throughout the Climate Adaptation Science Center network and share our lessons learned with the larger scientific community.