Speaker: Dr. Abby Frazier
Abstract:
Land managers are facing co-occurring threats to their landscapes such as climate change, invasive species, wildfire, and drought. As novel ecosystems and climates emerge—particularly hotter and drier climates—it is critical that scientists produce locally relevant, timely, and actionable science products. Trends in rainfall and characteristics of drought have been analyzed for the State of Hawai‘i since 1920, and additional high-resolution climate datasets have been recently produced (e.g., 25 years of gridded daily rainfall and temperature). However, the ability to use GIS is needed to extract site-specific information as no geospatial tools have been developed. For future climate projections, only raw climate model outputs are available for users. A knowledge exchange and technical assistance process is needed to encourage formal collaboration between researchers and managers. To address this need, we are piloting a knowledge exchange and technical assistance process with individual land managers in Hawai‘i and the U.S.-Affiliated Pacific Islands to co-produce customized site-specific drought and climate data products based on the needs of each manager. To improve the accessibility of the downscaled climate projections in Hawai‘i, the raw outputs have been re-processed and transformed into derived variables in raster format and standardized across models. This often-overlooked role of translating scientific outputs into usable, accessible data formats and engaging resource managers in research planning and knowledge co-production is essential to enable and support informed climate change decision making.