Indicators of Climate Change to Inform Resilience Decisions

Indicators are increasingly used to provide information on the trends of climate change, impacts, vulnerabilities to inform resilience decisions. Developing indicators of climate change that reflect coupled social and environmental systems and incorporate social dimensions of climate change remains challenging. In this paper, we review past efforts and synthesize social science perspectives on indicators. To capture social dimensions of climate change, indicators development should use interdisciplinary approaches to convey the complex interconnections between climate stressors and social, economic and cultural contexts.

To illustrate these issues, we conduct a case study that couples socioeconomic data with biophysical data to develop indicators of wildfire risks, social vulnerability and management strategies for resilience. We link climatic, land use and socioeconomic data which are available nationally to depict trends in wildfire risks in the U.S., and explore how components of societal vulnerability, response actions, and resilience to wildfire risks at the local level can be used to inform local wildfire risk management and long-term planning. Our analysis shows the geographic distribution and increasing trend of wildfire incidents across the U.S. with overall lengthier fire season and increased population and property exposed to wildfire risks over time. A closer look focusing on Colorado and Boulder County, where wildfire occurrence had posed risks to human health and property safety, reveals there are several response actions taken at the local institutional and community level.

Our analysis suggests that indicators development at the national level may be best suited to depict broad biophysical and social trends related to global changes and the interconnectedness between changes in the climate system to impacts that are of significant societal concerns. However, most climate-relevant adaptation decisions are made at local-to-sub-regional scales and indicators need to be informed by local knowledge if the goal is to inform place-based planning and adaptation.