Climate change and its impacts: Resilience and adaptation to changes in precipitation

From 13-26 June 2010, 30-40 young scholars will be convened to the Institute for an the 'Climate change and its impacts: resilience and adaptation to changes in precipitation' to take place at Brown University.

This Institute will focus on changes in the amount and variability of precipitation that will occur globally in coming decades. Major themes will include regional variations in changes to the hydrologic cycle; resilience of existing ecological, agricultural, economic and social systems to likely changes; the potential of CDM and REDD to increase the resilience of these systems; and what can be learned from one region to inform effective design of adaptation policies in other regions.

Themes:

Expected patterns of climate change. Here, we will discuss patterns for the coming decades of change in precipitation and temperature as both affect water supply and demand. Past climate changes and global circulation models will be discussed as tools to predict climate change.

Changes in the hydrological cycle. Patterns discussed in the previous topic provide the basis for regional analysis of alterations of the hydrological cycle and river flow. These two variables are driven by the global climate system and withdrawals for agricultural, industrial and urban activities.

Extreme events. A variety of different climate-change scenarios predict increases in variability associated with changes in mean temperature and precipitation. Therefore, we expect increases in the magnitude of droughts and floods. This topic will discuss these extreme events and their consequences for ecological and social systems.

Human disease as affected by climate change. Drought and flooding lead directly to outbreaks of water-borne and vector-borne diseases. Changes in climatic patterns in conjunction with increased nitrogen loading, trade and migration will result in novel disease threats that will affect human well-being and economic output.

Human migration resulting from direct and indirect effects of climate change. Humans in different regions of the world would migrate as a result of changes in climate that affect them directly through sea-level rise and desertification or indirectly by affecting their economic activity, disease occurrence or well-being

Climate change effects on ecosystem functioning. The expected changes in precipitation mean and variance will affect ecosystem primary production and carbon and nitrogen cycling. These processes are the bases for the provisioning of ecosystem services.

Climate change and its effects on biodiversity and conservation. Current scenarios predict dramatic biodiversity losses, ranging, for example between 12 and 15% of the species of vascular plants by the year 2050. Here, we will discuss scenarios and in situ and ex situ conservation and consequences for human well-being.

Climate change and food security. This topic will explore scenarios of yield, food demand and price as they are affected directly and indirectly by climate change, demography and human expectations.

Global, regional and local policy responses to climate change in a post-Copenhagen world. This topic will study current policy options for different regions of the world and for the world as a whole. Here, we hope to draw a great deal on the expertise of participants.

Convening Faculty:

Osvaldo Sala
Sloan Lindemann Professor of Biology
Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Areas of Interest:
Water controls on carbon and nitrogen dynamics in arid and semi-arid ecosystems, changes in biodiversity, development of future biodiversity scenarios, the complex relationships that emerge from the study of social-ecological systems.

Leah Vanwey
Associate Professor of Sociology
Areas of Interest:
Household demography, migration, population and environment.