USGS-FAU Workshop on Increasing Confidence in
Precipitation Projections for Everglades Restoration

A USGS & CES Sponsored Meeting  
September 28, 2017 - 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Florida Atlantic University - Davie Campus

ABOUT

AGENDA

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LOGISTICS

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TOPIC

Improving confidence in precipitation projections for Everglades restoration.

MOTIVATION:  

The uncertainty of climate projections is a significant barrier to the implementation of restoration and adaptive management programs. Our objective was to improve the utility of precipitation projections for South Florida water management and Everglades restoration efforts, particularly related to the time scales and time periods of interest, spatial scales of interest, parameters of interest, and characterization of uncertainty for 3 focal areas or domains.

We had two goals for this meeting:

1. to improve the awareness of how climate data and science can support natural resource management activities; and
2. to produce a peer-reviewed scholarly publication that includes tailored outputs for one or more of the three user-groups represented by our three focal topics (the Western Everglades Restoration Project, Fire Ecology, and Ecosystem Modeling)

We identified three overlapping topical domains for discussion:

1. Everglades restoration (specifically the Western Everglades Restoration Project),
2. Fire weather/fire ecology, and
3. Ecosystem modeling.

In each case, we discussed what existing climate data products exist – or may soon be created – for improving the state-of-the-art in managing each domain.  At our 1-day workshop, we paid particular attention to three dimensions of each domain:

1. Which precipitation time scale(s) are of greatest interest to improving the management of the domain?
2. Which precipitation parameters(s) (e.g. mean, trend, extremes, intensity-duration-frequency, etc.) are of greatest interest to improving the management of the domain?
3. Recognizing that any model brings some uncertainty, how might this uncertainty influence management of your domain, and how best to characterize the uncertainty of the precipitation projections for improving the management of the domain?

FORMAT:  

The meeting was informal but in-depth.  Morning activities included background on climate projection research in Florida and currently or newly available information and data. The afternoon consisted of small breakout groups focusing on the existing and potential climate data products for improving the state-of-the art in managing each domain. We anticipated that each domain will have differing, but related, needs in regards to the time- and spatial-scales, parameters, and uncertainty characterization.

This technical meeting is sponsored by:

Florida Atlantic University Center for Environmental Studies, United States Geological Survey, University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, and University of Miami Rosenstiel School for Marine and Atmospheric Science  

 

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For more information contact:

MaryBeth Hartman Kerber, Conference & Outreach Coordinator 
Center for Environmental Studies at Florida Atlantic University 
mhartman@fau.edu  or (954) 236-1203 

Johnna Infanti, PhD
Postdocs Applying Climate Expertise (PACE) Fellow
University Corporation for Atmospheric Research/Center for Environmental Studies at Florida Atlantic University/
University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science/United States Geological Survey
jinfanti@rsmas.miami.edu