skip to main content
US FlagAn official website of the United States government
dot gov icon
Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.
https lock icon
Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( lock ) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.


Title: Community capacity and climate change in the Laurentian Great Lakes Region: the importance of social, human, and political capital for community responses to climate-driven disturbances
Award ID(s):
1940128
PAR ID:
10399951
Author(s) / Creator(s):
; ; ; ;
Date Published:
Journal Name:
Journal of Environmental Planning and Management
ISSN:
0964-0568
Page Range / eLocation ID:
1 to 20
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
More Like this
  1. Non-technical summaryImproving the flow of information between governments and local communities is paramount to achieving effective climate change mitigation and adaptation. We propose five pathways to deepen participation and improve community-based climate action. The pathways can be summarized as visualization, simulations to practice decision-making, participatory budgeting and planning, environmental civic service, and education and curriculum development. These pathways contribute to improving governance by consolidating in governments the practice of soliciting and incorporating community participation while simultaneously giving communities the tools and knowledge needed to become active contributors to climate change adaptation and mitigation measures. Technical summaryCommunity participation is considered a key component in the design of responses to climate change. Substantial engagement of local communities is required to ensure information flow between governments and communities, but also because local communities are the primary sites of adaptation action. However, frontline communities are often excluded from decision-making and implementation processes due to political choices or failures to identify ways to make participatory frameworks more inclusive. Climate action requires the active engagement of communities in making consequential decisions, or what we termdeepened participation. We propose five pathways to deepen participation: visualization, simulations to practice decision-making, participatory budgeting and planning, environmental civic service, and education and curriculum development. The five pathways identify strategies that can be incorporated into existing organizational and institutional frameworks or used to create new ones. Shortcomings related to each strategy are identified. Reflection by communities and governments is encouraged as they choose which participatory technique(s) to adopt. Social media summaryClimate action requires the active engagement of communities. Learn five pathways to get started deepening participation. 
    more » « less
  2. Abstract Alternative ecological theories make divergent predictions about the relationship between predators and their prey. If predators exert top‐down ecosystem control, increases in predation should diminish prey abundance and could either diminish or enhance community diversity of prey species. However, if bottom‐up ecosystem controls predominate, predator populations should track underlying variation in prey diversity and abundance, which ultimately should reflect available energy. Past research, both across islands and comparing islands with the mainland, has frequently invoked the importance of predation in regulating lizard abundance and diversity, suggesting an important role of top‐down control when predators are present. However, others have posited a stronger role of food limitation, via competition or bottom‐up forces. If top‐down control predominates, then negative correlations between prey abundance and predator occurrence should emerge within and among islands. Using data from eBird, we inferred landscape‐level presence data for bird species on the islands of Jamaica and Hispaniola. By summing occurrence probabilities of all known anole‐predator birds, we estimated total avian predation pressure and combined these estimates with anole community data from a mark‐recapture study that spanned spatial and climatic gradients on both islands. Avian predators and anole lizards were both affected by climate, with total predator occurrence, anole abundance and anole species richness increasing with mean annual temperature. Anole abundance and predator occurrence showed a curvilinear relationship, where abundance and predator occurrence increased together until predator occurrence became sufficiently high that anole abundance was negatively impacted. This indicates that bottom‐up ecosystem controls drive richness of both anoles and their predators, mitigating the negative effects predators might have on their prey, at least until predator occurrence reaches a threshold. We did not detect consistent evidence of predator occurrence reducing anole community richness. These findings support past research showing that islands with more predators tend to have lower prey abundances, but it does not seem that these top‐down forces are strongly limiting species coexistence. Instead, bottom‐up forces linked with climate may be more important drivers of diversity in both lizards and their avian predators on these islands. 
    more » « less
  3. Abstract There has been an increase in entrepreneurial activity within the weather, water, and climate (WWC) community over the past decade, with the potential for much more as artificial intelligence/machine learning techniques continue to develop and as new opportunities arise across the weather, climate, and ocean service enterprises. Despite indications of recent growth, this study reports on key challenges that are limiting the community’s ability to achieve the full potential of commercialization of new WWC products and services. Most of these challenges are related to the preparation of those in the WWC community for jobs in the private sector in general and entrepreneurial activities in particular. These results extend and build upon the work of others who have reported on shortcomings in the preparation of students for positions in the private sector, with this study showing that deficits in preparation and awareness of available resources affect potential entrepreneurs well into their career—most researchers are unaware of the resources available to them. Based on a synthesis of input from successful WWC entrepreneurs, many of the challenges could be greatly reduced by relatively minor adjustments to curriculums at universities and through new programs that could be offered by scientific and professional societies to help potential entrepreneurs better take advantage of existing resources as they spin up a new business. 
    more » « less
  4. Abstract Understanding how community composition is reshaped by changing climate is important for interpreting and predicting patterns of community assembly through time or across space. Community composition often does not perfectly correspond to expectations from current environmental conditions, leading to community‐climate mismatches. Here, we combine data analysis and theory development to explore how species climate response curves affect the community response to climate change. We show that strong mismatches between community and climate can appear in the absence of demographic delays or limited species pools. Communities simulated using species response curves showed temporal changes of similar magnitude to those observed in natural communities of fishes and plankton, suggesting no overall delays in community change despite substantial unexplained variation from community assembly and other processes. Our approach can be considered as a null model that will be important to use when interpreting observed community responses to climate change and variability. 
    more » « less