Final Report: Improving the Midwest Climate Change Vulnerability Assessment Tool to Support Regional Climate Adaptation
Dates
Publication Date
2023-08-24
Citation
John T Delaney, and Kristen L Bouska, 2023-08-24, Final Report: Improving the Midwest Climate Change Vulnerability Assessment Tool to Support Regional Climate Adaptation: .
Summary
We updated an existing online climate change vulnerability dashboard called the Watershed-based Midwest Climate Change Vulnerability Assessment Tool (https://www.usgs.gov/apps/CC_Vulnerability/). The dashboard combined 15 climate change impact metrics (five each from three categories: hydrology, precipitation, and temperature) and five metrics representing each watershed's capacity to adapt to changing conditions to create a vulnerability score for 360 watersheds across the Midwest. The vulnerability assessment can be customized for any species, habitat, or other resource of interest by users by adjusting the weighting given to each of the metrics. The updates include greater representation of the range of potential impacts and vulnerability [...]
Summary
We updated an existing online climate change vulnerability dashboard called the Watershed-based Midwest Climate Change Vulnerability Assessment Tool (https://www.usgs.gov/apps/CC_Vulnerability/). The dashboard combined 15 climate change impact metrics (five each from three categories: hydrology, precipitation, and temperature) and five metrics representing each watershed's capacity to adapt to changing conditions to create a vulnerability score for 360 watersheds across the Midwest. The vulnerability assessment can be customized for any species, habitat, or other resource of interest by users by adjusting the weighting given to each of the metrics. The updates include greater representation of the range of potential impacts and vulnerability across the five climate models included in the tool and additions to improve usability of the tool. As part of this project, we also held a virtual workshop on regional climate change vulnerability for butterflies that live in native grassland habitats in the Midwest. The workshop involved the use of the vulnerability dashboard, and the results from the workshop will help us better understand regional climate change vulnerability for grassland butterflies. The workshop process serves as a use case example within the dashboard to illustrate how users can utilize the tool in their own work.
