Water shortages will likely be exacerbated by climate change in water-scarce regions, but water-rich regions may get wetter. The Great Lakes region of North America is undeniably water-rich, but apprehension exists that water resources may be over-used. Policies for regulating water withdrawals and exports are evolving through the recently-passed binational Great Lakes Water Compact, including prescriptions for water conservation. The economic future of the region is uncertain and may be linked to expansion of potentially water-intensive sectors such as biofuel feedstock growth and processing. Shifts in water usage may bring about corresponding stresses on ecosystems. Climate change will bring about shifts in the hydrologic cycle that will also produce stress on aquatic ecosystems. If pressures on water resources intensify in the Great Lakes, will individuals and organization within this water-rich region modify their behavior to conserve water? They propose to address this question by (a) developing integrated biophysical models for predicting ecosystem impacts due to future scenarios of land and climate change and (b) developing an understanding of how the region's groups and individuals view the regions' aquatic resources and what they believe are appropriate norms shaping human behavior vis-a-vis these water resources, especially as they relate to ecosystem services, and linking these assessments to interventions designed to shift their planned behavior with regard to regional water resources.
The long-range objectives of this work are (1) to predict environmental impacts and associated losses of ecosystem values and services resulting from water quantity and quality alterations caused by future land development and climate changes; (2) to develop data collection protocols for evaluating community perceptions of the social impacts of climate induced biophysical impacts (participatory self-assessment); (3) to investigate possible social responses to predicted biophysical impacts and evaluate mechanisms for changing those responses; and (4) to develop policy scenarios for mitigating negative impacts that can in turn be evaluated by a diverse set of criteria. The immediate objectives of the 1-year planning grant are: (1) to refine research objectives and formulate key hypotheses, utilizing available databases and literature to inform in-depth analyses and dialogue by a team of researchers from the economic, social, and biophysical sciences; (2) to assess existing datasets for model inputs and calibration and verification efforts; (3) to test existing and hybrid biophysical and ecosystem impact modeling strategies on a few key watersheds; (4) to develop quantitative and qualitative social data collection tools for region-wide use; and (5) to develop a proposal for a full project. The corresponding planning grant activities will include (1) convening workshops with invited scientific experts and members of NGOs and state, federal and bi-national agencies; (2) hiring a post-doc to pull together existing models and databases to develop a predictive hydrologic-ecosystem model; and (3) developing and testing the social data collection tools. The data collection and modeling activities will be leveraged by ongoing work by the co-PIs on Great Lakes biogeochemical processes and human-ecological interactions.
Intellectual merit: This project builds upon their ability to understand and predict behavior of individual ecosystems and develops tools needed to predict responses of the regional landscape to future scenarios of altered climate and socioeconomic conditions. The models they develop will require innovations in integrating climate change and human activity drivers into coupled hydrologic-ecosystem services models. Their analysis of attitudes and beliefs surrounding human perception of the Great Lakes water resources will yield important insights into the norms that shape human activities with regard to these resources and how those norms can be shaped to solve water-related problems.
Broader impacts: This project will begin the training of one M.S. student, mentor one post-doctoral fellow, and develop an educational web-based module for use by the public and schools. The module will be disseminated through the co-PIs'ongoing, broad range of local, regional, and international K-12 water resource activities. Through MTU's graduate Water Resources Management Certificate, they will feature a series of team presentations in the graduate symposium on the climate change-related implications for Great Lakes management, policy, and human values. The project will develop new interdisciplinary connections between MTU departments and among multiple institutions. It will bring together academic researchers and policy makers to structure the research to produce outcomes useful for resource managers and public policy decision makers.
This interdisciplinary team of social, natural, and engineering scientists received a short term grant to work together on writing a proposal for a long-term grant focused on understanding how climate change will affect the social and ecological systems of the Great Lakes and what can be done to reduce associated negative effects. The team worked together for a year to more deeply understand the social and ecological aspects of the Great Lakes basin and the scientific questions they could pursue together in a larger project. In the course of this project, they learned important lessons about working with a diverse set of scientists - this is a great challenge in the environmental science world. They also contributed to the understanding of sociological, geographic, and hydrologic techniques for integrating social, economic, and natural science data. These results have been presented at a series of scientific conferences and published in scientific journals. The most important findings from this project are Hydrologic modeling of the Great Lakes basin suggests that the historical conversion of forest to agriculture increased runoff by up to 15% in individual catchments; historical climate change caused increases (up to 100%) and decreases (up to 20%) in runoff from individual river catchments; and in the future, an increase (1970 to 2070) in winter precipitation is expected across the basin and a decrease in summer precipitation in Wisconsin, the upper peninsula of Michigan, southeastern Michigan, Indiana and Illinois. We have demonstrated that, when the primary stressors of projected land use and climate change are considered simultaneously, mid-southern Michigan, northwest Indiana, and southeast Wisconsin are likely to see the greatest combined stress in the Great Lakes basin. Interviews with rural and urban from a series of basin communities in the US and Canada reveals that residents view its water resources in a disjointed manner. They are concerned about water resource problems in the basin, but do not connect their actions to basin problems and do not view it as a complex system. We identified ten principles of successful interdisciplinary scientific team development, including that it is important to choose members wisely, given that team members’ social skills are equally important as their technical or scientific skills; the development of group cohesion and identity takes time but it is essential to success; drawing upon existing relationships helps kick-start cohesion, identity, and commitment; cohesive, smoothly functioning groups develop over time through sustained, structured interaction; successful interdisciplinary teamwork requires the development and compliance with shared norms; and the creation of successful interdisciplinary teams requires good leadership.
