John Daigle, professor of forest recreation management at the University of Maine, co-authored the first paper in a series designed to help communities nationwide prepare for future national disasters and other extreme weather events.
The paper, “Research Priorities for Robust Climate Assessments in the United States,” is the first contribution to the U.S. Climate Collection informing Assessment of Risks and Solutions, a joint special collection of the American Geophysical Union and the American Meteorological Society. The collection will feature climate assessment science and research synthesis papers to inform future national and sub-national assessments.
Daigle contributed by highlighting certain vulnerabilities facing Indigenous Peoples and demonstrating and explaining how their connections to the place and value systems can strengthen adaptation and resilience.
“Climate change impacts the relationships between people and nature, particularly for Indigenous Peoples and other communities with strong place-based cultural ties. Changes in timing of biological events, range shifts of plants and animals, and function can disrupt cultural
practices, subsistence activities and identity,” said Daigle. “At the same time, Indigenous Knowledges and relational worldviews offer valuable insights for adaptation and stewardship.”
The paper identifies research priorities, including how greenhouse gas emissions and laws compound the effects of extreme weather; how social systems shape planning; how climate-related weather risks threaten infrastructure and institutions; and how well existing intervention, mitigation, adaptation and disaster management efforts work.
“Future assessments will be more useful if they go beyond species inventories to focus on dynamic processes, adaptive capacity, integrated system-level responses, and social and ecological feedbacks,” Daigle said. By synthesizing insights from ecological, cultural, and governance domains, the scientific community can better anticipate, manage, and leverage ecological transformation as climate change accelerates.”
