The National Assessment
OverviewThe Global Change Research Act of 1990 (Public Law 101-606) states that the Federal Government "shall prepare and submit to the President and the Congress an assessment which--
The assessment, which is entitled "U.S. National Assessment: The Potential Consequences of Climate Variability and Change," is a Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA) chartered process that began with a series of 7 regional workshops across the United States that were designed to identify and prioritize issues related to climate variability and change. Following the initial workshops, a National Forum of scientists and stakeholders was convened in Washington, D.C., in November, 1997. During the forum, regional issues were synthesized and prioritized, and plans for conducting the national assessment were initiated. These plans include holding 13 additional regional workshops in 1998 and reducing the number of national assessment sectors to five. The five national sectors are water resources, forests, agriculture, human health and coastal areas. Approaching potential impacts from a regional scale helps place climate variability and change in the context of specific concerns to people where they live. By engaging scientists, educators, planners, resource managers, legislators, business people, activists, and other decision makers and concerned citizens in the assessment process, the hope is to better understand the regional mosaic of current and potential changes and establish the basis for coping with the future change. The regional networks overlap by design to foster involvement and interaction. The National Assessment will help society understand climate variability and change, what the significance might be, and how to better prepare for responding or coping. The program has both science and assessment components to address these goals.
The science is focused in four areas:
The major questions driving the assessment include:
The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), through the Department of Interior (DOI), was given the responsibility for 3 of the 20 regions in the United States (Rocky Mountain/Great Basin, Southwest, and Alaska) and for the water resources sector. The regions are charged with qualitative assessments, while the sectors have quantitative responsibilities. The water resources sector analysis will provide an assessment of the potential consequences of climate variability and change on the water resources of the nation. Results from the water resources sector assessment will provide a wide spectrum of useful data and information. Analytical information will include modeling results from climate, hydrologic, and socio-economic models for current, 25 to 30 and 100 years in the future that will be useful to stakeholders.
U.S. Department of the Interior U.S. Geological Survey This page is <http://esp.cr.usgs.gov/info/assessment/overview.html> Maintained by Randy Schumann Last modified Wednesday, 15-Mar-2006 14:38:42 MST |