Climate Services in Community and Sector-Specific Engagement in the Great Lakes: Localization of Climate Information and Barriers in Partnerships

The Great Lakes Integrated Sciences + Assessments (GLISA) is a NOAA-funded partnership between the University of Michigan and Michigan State University. GLISA functions as a bridge between climate science researchers and boundary organizations in the Great Lakes region to inform climate adaptation decisions with sound scientific knowledge. Climate services that target sector-specific decision makers are a central area of GLISA operations, and for sector- and community-specific applications, making climate information relevant at the local level is key to effectively engaging stakeholders. Recent findings point to an iterative process of localizing climate information in stakeholder engagements as being effective in the scaling of climate information across various levels of government, ensuring that stakeholders are able to learn from one another to improve sector-specific climate change readiness in communities throughout the Great Lakes region. This presentation will detail a past GLISA-supported project working with federally recognized tribes in the Great Lakes region through preexisting trusted partners to identify climate vulnerabilities and to inform adaptation planning. The iterative process of providing supportive localized climate information and the identification of barriers inhibiting co-production of climate information that occurred in this project have been found to be key elements in the successful production of usable climate information resources for our partners.