Interagency collaboration in the Rocky Mountains and Upper Missouri Basin: Challenges overcome and lessons learned in producing useful information for adapting to climate change

This talk explains how different federal agencies collaborate to conduct, share and disseminate useful climate information to enhance resilience to climate change. Specifically, we discuss how the U.S. Geological Survey, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and U.S. Department of Agriculture build and manage a collaborative research and climate-service network in the Rocky Mountains and Upper Missouri Basin. Fostering cross-agency collaboration at the regional scale optimizes efficient allocation of resources while simultaneously enabling information to be generated at a scale that is relevant to decision makers. Such collaboration takes time and intention and must include the right people and organizations to effectively bridge the gap between use-inspired research and application. Maladaptive institutions and policies exist that pose barriers to development of adaptation strategies. However, these new agency structures and their collaborations provide opportunities for making progress towards adaptation that transcends many barriers.