RECLAMATION USE OF PRACTITIONER NETWORKS AND SCIENCE-MANAGEMENT PARTNERSHIPS TO BUILD CAPACITY IN USING CLIMATE CHANGE INFORMATION IN WATER RESOURCES PLANNING

A fundamental question faces today’s climate science and water management communities: how do we build capacity within our community to be able to feasibly, credibly, and regularly account for climate change within our water resources assessment activities? Given the challenges of having limited guidance on preferred incorporation methods, and given the reality of typically having access to only a limited pool of planning practitioners trained in the application of such methods, the Bureau of Reclamation has initiated numerous efforts to address "planning capacity" in the context of internal program and planning needs. The focus here is on two types of vehicles that have underpinned much of these activities and led to successes in capacity-building, namely: practitioner networks and science-management partnerships.

The presentation introduces four example coaltions that have involved Reclamation, highlighting how these coalitions have helped build planning capacity and challenges that have been experienced:

(1) "Climate Change and Water Working Group," an interagency group co-developing user needs documents (Circular 1331), collaborative R&D strategies, training curricula for practitioners and a workshop to develop methods guidelines for water planning practitioners,

(2) "Bias Correction and Spatially Downscaled WCRP CMIP3 Climate Projections," an interagency-NGO-academic partnership working to develop and provide downscaled climate projection information for the contiguous United States,

(3) "Colorado River Basin Hydrology Work Group", a academic-public-private sector group working to pilot and select methods to serve various environmental compliance and general study efforts in the basin,

(4) Columbia-Snake Basin "Reservoir Management Joint Operating Committee," sponsoring a intergovernmental-NGO-academic technical group that is working to adopt a consensus set of future hydroclimate scenarios and methods for use in basin planning efforts.