Climate change literature and information gaps in mountainous headwaters of the Columbia River Basin
A narrative description of research published at:
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10113-020-01721-7
Find a related blog post here
Background
The mountains of the Columbia River Basin are elemental to water resources that sustain linked social-environmental systems throughout Northwest. Understanding the rapid and dynamic changes occurring across this snow-dependent basin is essential in order to inform management, policy, and science into the future.
Project Mission
The Mountain Climate Research Group formed in 2016 at the 7th Mountain Climate Conference. Our central objective, to better understand the status of science on the vital headwater systems of the Columbia River Basin, grew out of awareness of regional snow dependence and a shared concern for climate change impacts on current and future water resources.
Our work improves transparency and understanding around the current state of climate change science in headwater regions specifically. We achieve this by showing facets and patterns of research that are well represented (by topic, scale, and geographic location) and we address knowledge gaps. Our ultimate goal is to aid timely production of climate change research and facilitate identification of science needs under rapidly changing circumstances.
Our approach
In simple terms we asked:
Is the research specific or broad in scope?
What scientific disciplines are present and dominant?
Are studies from single disciplines or do they include multiple disciplines?
Are studies large or small in spatial scale, and where are they located?
Our multidimensional, quantitative, and spatial approach to these inquiries satisfied the objective of clarifying potential research strengths and deficits across the landscape.
What we found
Selected findings suggest important opportunities for future work.
From our analyses of the most and least common research topics and disciplines, we discovered a need for more social science and integration of social-environmental systems.
A focus on climate change impacts, compared to adaptation or mitigation is dominant, which may limit opportunities and interventions that limit negative effects on human and environmental systems.
CRB water resources are vital to both the US and Canada, however there is significant need for climate change research with an integrated, Basin-wide focus.
Questions?
Website developed by Paris Edwards
Contact adrienne.m.marshall@gmail.com or meghan.foard@gmail.com to get more information