Bridging the gap: linking climate-impacts research with adaptation planning and management

A critical challenge in supporting climate change adaptation is improving the linkage between climate-impacts and vulnerability research and public and private planning and management decisions. We highlight the need for bottom-up/top-down vulnerability assessment, bringing together bottom-up knowle...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Climatic change 2010-05, Vol.100 (1), p.87-101
Main Authors: Mastrandrea, Michael D, Heller, Nicole E, Root, Terry L, Schneider, Stephen H
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adaptation
Atmospheric Sciences
Climate change
Climate Change/Climate Change Impacts
Climatology. Bioclimatology. Climate change
Complement
Decision making
Decisions
Earth and Environmental Science
Earth Sciences
Earth, ocean, space
Emissions
Environmental problems
Exact sciences and technology
External geophysics
Greenhouse effect
Human ecology and demography
Management
Management decisions
Meteorology
Research methodology
Risk assessment
Robustness
Sociology
Strategic planning
Strategy
Thresholds
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:A critical challenge in supporting climate change adaptation is improving the linkage between climate-impacts and vulnerability research and public and private planning and management decisions. We highlight the need for bottom-up/top-down vulnerability assessment, bringing together bottom-up knowledge of existing vulnerabilities with top-down climate-impact projections, as a transparent basis for informing decisions intended to reduce vulnerability. This approach can be used to evaluate the likelihood of crossing identified thresholds of exposure, and to evaluate alternative adaptation strategies based on their ability to reduce sensitivity to projected changes in exposure and their robustness across uncertainty in future outcomes. By identifying thresholds for which adaptive capacity is limited in particular systems, adaptation and mitigation become complements where the magnitudes of climate change at which such thresholds cluster can help to define mitigation targets.
ISSN:0165-0009
1573-1480
DOI:10.1007/s10584-010-9827-4