Research

Societal Dimensions

Overview

The Climate Impacts Group (CIG) strives not only to understand the degree to which society is sensitive to climate, but to suggest how society could increase its adaptability, or resilience, to climate variations and change. Regional planners make decisions with long-term implications each year. How could these decisions be influenced to improve the adaptability of the Pacific Northwest (PNW) to climate variations and climate changes?

CIG’s research on societal dimensions works to:

• Identify the human activities and institutions in the PNW most sensitive and vulnerable to climate variability and change,
• Evaluate existing institutional capacity to adapt to climate variation and change and examine alternative methods of enhancing that capacity,
• Determine the necessary conditions for increasing the social utility of climate and climate-based resource forecasts, and
• Characterize how new climate-related information could be most effectively introduced into regional planning and decision making.

Key Personnel

• Edward Miles
• Richard Slaughter
• Don Reading

Related Activities

• Planning meetings and policy workshops on climate impacts on resource management (e.g. 2001 Water Policy and Climate Change meeting)
• Community and stakeholder outreach
• Contributions to national and regional policy related studies (e.g., CIG contribution to National Assessment of Climate Impacts on the United States)