CIRES' Center for Science and Technology Policy Accomplishments in FY09
Climate Services Clearinghouse, CIRES' Center for Science and Technology Policy
The National Science Foundation-funded Science Policy Assessment and Research on Climate (SPARC) project conducts research and assessments, outreach, and education aimed at helping climate science policies better support climate-related decision-making in the face of fundamental and often irreducible uncertainties. SPARC research focuses on two themes. The Sensitivity Analysis theme attempts to disentangle the various factors that lead to policy impacts in areas such as climate impacts on ecosystems, natural disasters, and energy and emissions scenarios. The Reconciling Supply of and Demand for Climate Research theme focuses on developing science policies that are responsive to the needs of decision makers.
The NOAA-funded Scales of Decision-Making and the Carbon Cycle project is examining the drivers of land-use decision-making at different scales, and their intersection with new imperatives and opportunities coming from climate mitigation goals. This past year, researchers conducted a case study on land-use decision-making in Colorado, a Western state with a significant portion of land managed by federal agencies in addition to privately owned agricultural, grazing, and forested lands. Our main goal was to put together a first-order look at the types of decision makers involved in managing land, what influences their decisions, and how the potential for storage of additional carbon on land might vary according to ownership category and land vegetation type.
A Western Water Assessment-funded research project, The Impact of Earlier Spring Snowmelt on Water Rights and Administration, examined whether the growing mismatch between seasonal water rights and earlier runoff in the Mountain West has resulted in conflict between supply and demand. It found that no significant on-the-ground problems have yet emerged from the growing mismatch of rights and hydrographs. It remains unclear exactly where and how intensely these problems may be manifest, and whether they will present mostly as legal or water-management problems.
The Center collaborated with the University’s Natural Hazards Center to inventory disaster loss data in the United States and globally. Disaster data are used to track trends and to fashion policy, but are notoriously inconsistent— our goal is to develop research-grade data subsets (such as those shown in the graphs at right of U.S. flood losses) that more reliably reflect trends in impacts and vulnerability.
Education Activities
The Graduate Certificate in Science and Technology Policy—a rigorous educational program to prepare graduate students for careers at the interface of science, technology, and decision-making—is completing its fifth year. Eighteen students are currently enrolled in the certificate program, and 18 others have completed the program. Program alumni have served on the staff of the House Science Committee, interned for the Office of Management and Budget, staffed a congressional office, and served in postdoctoral positions in science policy.
Outreach Activities
The Center, in partnership with the CU-Boulder Energy Initiative, sponsored a lecture and panel discussion series titled “The Energy and Climate Challenge,” to examine the challenge of meeting rapidly rising global energy demand while simultaneously reducing planet-warming greenhouse gases. The series was intended to foster discussion and debate on these issues to coincide with the 2008 presidential campaign. Other ongoing Center outreach efforts include a quarterly newsletter, an email briefing sent to more than 3,500 decision makers in Washington, D.C. and elsewhere, and an extensive web site.
Personnel
William Travis was appointed to succeed Roger Pielke, Jr. as director of the Center in 2008. Travis, an associate professor of geography who has taught for more than 20 years at CU-Boulder, is the former director of the university’s Natural Hazards Center. He has researched and written extensively about humans and the environment, including in his latest book, New Geographies of the American West: Land Use and Changing Patterns of Place. His current work examines causes and patterns of regional land-use and cover change, and assesses the impacts of climate extremes.
