Faced with increasing risks of intense storms, heat stress, clean water availability and economic hardship, municipal leaders are seeking high-quality, location-specific analyses to help plan for climate change impacts.
That is the focus of a new $1.2 million U-M research project called the Great Lakes Adaptation Assessment for Cities (GLAA-C).
Led by the Graham Environmental Sustainability Institute and supported by The Kresge Foundation with $600,000 in matching funds, the three-year project seeks to strengthen the science and decision-making necessary for more effective urban climate adaptation in the Great Lakes region, in both Canada and the United States. Researchers, staff, students and stakeholders from across the region will collaborate to make this happen.
“While there is abundant research on climate change at national and global scales, there is a gap in regionally focused adaptation planning for effectively addressing this pressing issue,” says Arun Agrawal, professor of natural resources and environment and co-principal investigator for the project. “The Great Lakes project is helping to fill this gap by providing the place-based information needed for developing and improving policy decisions and infrastructure investments.”
Don Scavia, director of the Graham Institute and co-principal investigator on the project, concurs.
“Every day, city administrators, land-use planners, mayors and other key decision makers face questions about to how to better prepare for, and deal with, the impacts of climate change in our region,” he says. “This project will generate datasets, tools and a network of stakeholders that will be extremely useful for decision makers in private and government sectors.”
In addition to the information amassed by participating researchers, a significant amount of data will be harnessed from the Great Lakes Integrated Sciences and Assessments Center (GLISA) — a collaboration between U-M, Michigan State University, The Ohio State University and Michigan Sea Grant, which is supported by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
“The purpose of GLISA is to connect researchers and decision makers around the issues of climate change and variability, so our work is a perfect fit for this project,” says Michigan State professor and GLISA co-principal investigator Thomas Dietz. “GLISA is helping to translate national research to regional levels, and the Great Lakes Cities project is synthesizing information down to practical, city-level applications. This work is bringing timely climate adaptation data to people who are making critical decisions about infrastructure and human health.”
Other U-M faculty involved with the project include: Elisabeth Gerber, School of Public Policy; Larissa Larsen, Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning; Maria Lemos, School of Natural Resources and Environment; Marie O’Neill, School of Public Health; and Ricky Rood, Atmospheric, Oceanic and Space Sciences. SNRE postdoctoral fellow Ahmad Safi also is working on the project.
