Document Actions
Oregon basin-scale climate change preparation pilot projects
FLASH - Reports identify climate change stressors and risks, and offer preparation recommendations: Rogue Basin Climate Preparation Report and Upper Willamette Basin Climate Preparation Report
Preparing Local Communities and Ecosystems for Climate Change
The National Center is working in the Rogue, Upper Willamette, and Klamath basins of Oregon, in partnership with the Climate Leadership Initiative, as well as in several basins in California to test a workshop planning framework that will help communities envision a climate changed future and take action to 
reduce the social and ecological risks.
Workshop Objectives
The objectives of these workshops is to:
- Predict the range of risks posed by climate change to natural ecosystems (and focal species like salmon) and human communities of the pilot basins
- Identify strategies and policies that will help the region prepare for the impacts of climate change by building resiliency into natural and community systems
- Recognize opportunities that will allow communities to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in a manner that is safe, effective, and avoids unintentional harm to the environment
- Identify scientific data gaps, research needs and monitoring processes
Workshop Goals
Climate change predictions indicate that significant shifts in climate are likely. Prudent risk management dictates that actions to reduce the risk posed by these climatic shifts begin now.
Our work with communities in the pilot basins is intended to help launch discussions that lead to implementation of integrated climate change preparation plans. The aim is to identify effective ways to 
increase resiliency of natural (biodiversity and habitat), human (public health, social, and emergency services), economic, built (infrastructure), and cultural systems.
Through integrated planning, these workshops help communities identify strategies that build resiliency and resistance into ecological systems and human communities in anticipation of growing climate change risks.
Workshop Process
Climate Projections - The National Center, with the assistance of the Pacific Northwest Research Station, has relied on three global climate models (CSIRO, MIROC, and Hadley) to project likely climate futures. The models chosen represent a range of possible future climate conditions in the Pacific Northwest. All are
Atmosphere-Ocean General Circulation models 
designed to use equations
describing physical relationships in the atmosphere, land surface,
cryosphere (ice and snow), and oceans.
Model projections are based on the assumptions associated with the “A2” emission scenario described in the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report. This “business as usual” emissions trajectory most closely follows the current global emissions path, although a sharp rise in emissions since 2000 means that real emissions of the past decade have exceeded the A2 predictions. Without major cuts in the growth of emissions, the future climate projections are likely to underestimate the actual extent of climate change.
Assessment of Risk and Development of Recommendations- Possible future climate scenarios, based on the model projections, are described and serve as the foundation for facilitated discussion among workshop participates. This project purposefully involves a cross-section of experts with a varied knowledge base.
Natural System Workshop: Scientific professionals with diverse backgrounds and expertise in a wide array of disciplines meet first to assess likely consequences of climate change on the natural systems that support the basin's biodiversity and its human communities, and recommend actions to minimize the risks.
Human Community Workshop: Tribal members, local decisionmakers, business leaders, and representatives of public safety, social service, and public health sectors then are gathered to consider climate change risks to local communities. Their charge is to assess risks to economic, human, built, and cultural systems posed by climate change and by the likely response of natural systems to those changes, and propose strategies for risk reduction.
Development of an Integrated Preparation Plan - The next task is to integrate workshop input into a comprehensive and detailed climate change preparation plan that efficiently reduces risks across the basin. Participants of both workshops are invited to continue their involvement during plan preparation and release, following which the hard work of implementation begins.
