Natural resource managers face uncertainties of many kinds, with limited budgets and ever-evolving hierarchies of management priorities. Not least among those uncertainties are questions regarding future climate conditions. Technological advancements have enhanced our ability to understand and model climate, which has led to improved climate forecasting capabilities. However, climate projections are usually produced at a global scale, which makes them impractical for natural resource managers who are concerned with how climate will change in the specific location or region in which they operate. While there have been a growing number of techniques for increasing the resolution of these projections, resource managers are given little guidance on how to choose the best method or model to meet their needs.
This project aimed to provide managers with much needed guidance on how to navigate the range of available modeling methods, and to identify situations in which these climate models will be most useful. For example, managers could invest in improving modeling techniques to achieve a more specific understanding of future climate conditions, but this investment may not yield the desired results, and resources may be better spent elsewhere. This project was expected to help natural resource managers understand the types of information that can plausibly be gained from climate projections, how to use climate models to inform management decisions, and how to best utilize available climate information to meet their needs while coping with uncertainty.
