Research Projects: Field Projects

• Field Projects 1 and 2 - Climate Information and Water Resource Management in Ceará, Brazil
  (Upmanu Lall, Kenny Broad, Alex Pfaff, Renzo Taddei 2004-2009)

  The proposed projects cover two prototypical climate decision settings: water allocation and drought contingency planning. For background information see http://iri.columbia.edu/application/region/america/Ceara/.
  The semi-arid region of NE of Brazil that includes the state of Ceará is subject to extreme droughts linked to climate variability affecting agricultural production for both commercial and subsistence farmers. Low productivity in agriculture has a major impact on the state's development and is often attributed to periodic severe droughts, poor soils, skewed land distribution, low levels of education, high levels of poverty and underemployment, and limited physical and social infrastructure (Costa et al 1997). The latter factors are exacerbated during multi-year droughts (Neves 2002b; Magalhaes 2002). Historically, government responses to recurrent droughts were exploited to the disproportionate advantage of some groups. More recently, there have been two major initiatives in Ceará to alleviate these negative effects and to do so fairly: 1) development of an extensive network of reservoirs for water storage and canals for water transfer, with intensive implementation of participatory decision making among stakeholders, in so-called Water Allocation Seminars; and 2) the development of an early warning system (based on climate, soil moisture, and human vulnerability indices) for triggering drought relief efforts for the region's poorest inhabitants, who do not have access to the reservoir waters.

  Two field studies that complement an ongoing larger collaborative effort between the Government of Ceará and the IRI are planned. Project 1 will study the behavior of individuals in groups during the Water Allocation Seminars in relation to the theoretical paradigms described earlier in this proposal. Project 2 will study the use of climate information among the individuals responsible for the drought relief system, identifying how systemic constraints (e.g., alliances, fiscal limits) interact with individual psychological characteristics (e.g., understanding of the climate and drought information, risk aversion). Preliminary data have already been collected. Research results will be used by our Brazilian partners: including FUNCEME, the agency that produces and disseminates environmental information for drought contingency planning and COGERH, the group that organizes Water Allocation Seminars. In the current receptive and cooperative atmosphere, research concerning decision practices and their biases has a good chance of leading to improved understanding and use of climate information.

  Project 1: Water Allocation and Decision-Making under Climate Uncertainty. Water allocation and reservoir operation in Ceará is a common pool resource dilemma with significant heterogeneity: resource users vary in assets, goals, education, time horizons and other natural problem framing, exposure to risk, and political status. Annual decisions on water allocation are based on current reservoir levels and assumptions about inflow to each reservoir. Inflow estimates are increasingly based on climate forecasts. The predicted total resource (corrected for expected losses) is then allocated. In the participatory resource allocation process, user heterogeneity strongly affects group dynamics. Such effects, including shared and unique goals and problem framings, need to be understood in order to introduce useful innovations in decision making directly into the ongoing process in Ceará.

  Our analysis and development of decision support tools will be based on intensive study of Ceará's participatory water allocation process: twice a year approximately 120 representatives of diverse stakeholder groups from the private, public and water management sectors, who are linked by shared water use from connected reservoirs gather together. They are presented with a range of possible scenarios as to what to expect in terms of the upcoming season's water availability (streamflow scenarios), taking into climatic factors. The users then negotiate-through a full day of discussion in a large seminar room-release amounts for each reservoir and some of the use priorities for the upcoming six months. Consensus is attained through dialogue, with a moderator from the state water operations agency. If verbal agreement is not unanimous, a vote is taken. Our partial understanding of this decision process has already led to significant improvement of climate forecast product, namely a transformation of general climate forecasts into the streamflow forecasts observed to be critical in the decision process. Further understanding of the group process in Seminars will be based on video and audio recording, participant observation, and interviews with the participants and the stakeholder groups they represent (Broad, Pfaff and several US and Brazilian graduate students). Existing video tapes of four Seminars will be used to develop a coding scheme and to train coders. Content analyses of subsequent Seminars will identify naturally occurring framing of discussion issues and analyze them as follows: reference points and aspiration levels (different as a function of backgrounds or goals? different for individuals or groups?), regulatory focus (do government stakeholders tend toward prevention focus and private stakeholders toward promotion focus?), time-horizon(which participants use multi-year frames?), experiential processes (do recent vivid events or projections of the future have more influence on participants and on group consensus?), and representation of past, present, and future events or consequences (level of specificity or abstractness). We also will compare individual assessments of situations (prior to seminar meeting) and group deliberation and decision during the seminar, with focus on mechanisms that foster emergence of group goals.

  Project 2: Role of climate information in drought contingency planning. Every fall policy makers focus on climate projections for the coming rainy season. Different government ministries and agencies formerly acted independently in response to anticipated drought. More recent coordinated response has been sought, based on formal analysis of scientific information. The Ceará Governor, conferring with cabinet, makes the decisions that trigger relief efforts (e.g., distribution of drought-resistant seeds, water delivery to rainfed dependent areas, national government emergency funds) The IRI is collaborating with the Ceará government on revising the Drought Contingency Plan; this gives our researchers access to the situations during which climate information is discussed.

  This process, and the IRI role in it, creates an opportunity for study of high-level decision process and possibly for useful feedback of the results of such a study to the government officials involved. Semi-structured interviews with the actors involved in this process, combined with participant observation during planning meetings, will allow us to study individual differences in perception of climate information, critical uncertainties considered by different participants, shared and separate goals of the participants, and perceptions of the "space" of possible action plans.

  One significant contribution will be development of tailored forecast products (analogous to the development of streamflow forecasts, mentioned above) that would directly address critical uncertainties considered by the decision makers. A second contribution will be the explicit enumeration of shared goals, including minimizing cost, preparedness, appearance of preparedness, and correct signaling (to avoid rash or conflicting actions by other actors). A third contribution will be understanding the dimensions or features in which available relief actions differ, analyzing how this "action space" differs among individuals involved in the process, and developing a common sharable "action space" (as an easily grasped graphical structure) that could aid in the design of relief actions. Standard similarity scaling and data analysis methods will be used to develop individual and group action spaces and to examine changes in action space that emerge from group discussion.

• Field Project 3 - Surveillance and control of Rift Valley Fever in the Greater Horn of Africa and the Middle East
  (Maxx Dilley, Kenneth Broad, and IRI staff, 2005-2007, with some timing uncertainty)

Rift Valley Fever (RVF) is a vector-borne disease affecting livestock and humans. Outbreaks in recent years have disrupted livestock trade from the Greater Horn of Africa (GHA) to the Middle East, producing very large economic losses on both sides, in addition to disrupting religious festivals (for which cattle are imported), causing illness and death among religious pilgrims, and creating negative political consequences. RVF outbreaks are more likely when unusually heavy rainfall increases mosquito populations at times of cattle movement. Recent progress in climate prediction has produced relatively skillful forecasts of unusually high or low rainfall in the GHA during the October-December rainy season when many RVF outbreaks have been observed. Such forecasts open the way to more accurate targeting of costly preventive measures (livestock vaccination, insect spraying, and restriction of livestock movements). A series of meetings involving livestock health experts, epidemiologists, environmental scientists and trade specialists led to a design protocol for a RVF risk model that would support such targeted interventions. In addition, several international and regional organizations are working to form a Red Sea Livestock Trade Commission (RSLTC), to regularize trade in this region, including early warning and control of RVF.

Current plans call for delivery of a prototype RVF risk model by the end of 2003. This model will be tested by field surveillance and serological testing of cattle, by qualified veterinary services, and will be revised as necessary. Simulated operational use of the model will lead to guidelines for its effective use. If the model is accurate and is used effectively, the multitude of costs associated with RVF may be reduced substantially. It should be noted that currently, RVF is a sensitive issue, and data are not now generally shared among countries or stakeholder groups. The process of developing a valid risk model will necessarily involve pooling of data. This is an opportunity to enhance openness and mutual confidence among countries and stakeholders through an ambitious intervention in a large-scale multilevel decision system. Stakeholders include pastoralists in the GHA, at-risk consumers in the Middle East, and traders, health organizations, and governments on both sides of the Red Sea. The intervention provides some remarkable opportunities to observe individual and group decision processes in this system. We have identified four observation windows into this system, each of which gives a partial view and allows tests of some aspects of the overall decision process.

(1) Validation of the risk model involves on-range visits by local veterinarians for inspection and serological testing. Such visits provide opportunities to request interviews from local pastoralists that will cover beliefs about causes and prevention of RVF, including its relations to climate; will probe individual and social goals in cattle husbandry and RVF prevention; and will explore regulatory focus and temporal framing for several different individual decisions, including decisions to test, to vaccinate, and to withhold cattle from trade.

(2) Meetings of the RSLTC or some of its subcommittees will provide opportunities to observe group process under conditions where individuals have conflicting goals, group cohesion is at risk, and yet one or a few important goals are widely shared. Trained observers will code behavior on several dimensions: how individuals incorporate new data, contributed by others, into their inferences; the role of affective processes; leadership style and actions; and the emergence of group cohesion and shared goals.

(3) We can take advantage of semi-regular meetings of exporters and/or importers to schedule individual interviews and group discussions concerning RVF and targeted interventions; we will also take the opportunity to probe individual and social goals, regulatory focus and temporal framing.

(4) We can take advantage of the presence of officials of the sponsoring international organizations and of participating governments to schedule additional interviews, on topics similar to those in (3).

• Field Project 4 - Integration of Climate Information from Multiple Sources through Group Discussion in Ugandan Farm Communities
  (Ben Orlove, Jennifer Phillips; Duration: 2 years, 2004-2006)

  This project falls at the intersection of two questions. (1) What is accomplished during group discussion in planning future activities? (2) How do people integrate new aids for information processing and decision making with those already established in their cultures? Group discussion of plans is found in most cultures, for many possible reasons: the discussion may have both a cognitive component, e.g., adopting a common set of group goals, and sharing of information, and an affective component. The latter may include reducing anxiety about how other members will feel about novel forms of action. The problem of integrating different methods is also ubiquitous. One can point to many examples of poor integration: a new aid is either not used at all or is overweighted. An example (drawn from scientific subcultures) is the overweighting of statistical significance in scientific inferences.

  These two themes merge our recent observations of community discussion of farming plans in Uganda. Farmers throughout the world have traditional or indigenous methods of making climate forecasts, and vary considerably in the extent to which they incorporate forecasts derived from modern ocean/atmosphere models into their decision making (Orlove Chiang Cane 2000, 2002), as well as the extent to which good decisions result from the use of these forecasts (Hammer et al. 2001). Preliminary work in Uganda (Phillips Orlove 2003) shows that some farmers do integrate traditional and scientific forecasts in their practices, often using the traditional method for selecting a planting date but using the scientific forecast to choose crops and crop varieties and to provision livestock with fodder and water. Our initial research in Uganda (Phillips and Orlove, 2003) shows also that farmers place high importance on collective discussion in shaping the use of forecasts. They gather spontaneously in public places to converse about forecasts and their possible uses, and sometimes for "listening groups" that assemble to hear and discuss radio programs that present forecasts.

  Building on this initial research, we will observe and code group interactions in the processing of climate information. We will study 4 to 5 farming or pastoralist communities in each of two major language groups in Uganda. The first phase will involve field reconnaissance, ethnography and initial surveys covering farming systems, perceived and actual vulnerability to climate extremes, traditional forecast techniques, access to media, perceptions of past and present climate variability, planning horizons, perceived riskiness of different choice options, and group organizations and contexts for decision making. In the second phase, seasonal forecasts will be translated into local languages and transmitted over local radio stations. Surveys and focus groups before and after forecast release will be coded for individual and emergent group framing of decision problems, for affective processes, and for shared goals in the integration of new climate information. These assessments will include communities that have "listening groups" and ones that do not. In the latter part of the two-year study we will conduct meetings to disseminate preliminary findings to members of the communities involved and to meteorologists and agricultural experts who interact with them. This will include information about how scientific forecasts and traditional forecasts are used and about how group discussion modifies the use of forecasts. We will attempt to include members of different communities and even different language groups in such meetings.

  The collective discussions studied here afford an excellent opportunity to examine group processes and goals in framing decisions and in using scientific information, within well-established and cohesive community groups. It will be interesting to see in what respects (if any) these group processes differ from those in more formal and less closely-knit decision-making groups studied in other projects proposed for this Center.

• Field Project 5 - Individual, Household, and Technical Advisor-Assisted Agricultural Decision Making in the Argentine Pampas
  (Guillermo Podesta, Kenny Broad, Elke Weber; 2004-2007)

  This project will focus on individual and group agricultural decision making in the Pampas region of Argentina, one of the most productive agricultural areas in the world (Hall et al 1992) and one where the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) phenomenon has a marked influence on the region's climate (Ropelewski Halpert 1987; Vargas et al 1999; Grimm et al 2000) and crop yields (Podestá et al 1999). The region's production scale, crops grown and technology are similar to those in other major production areas, including the US Midwest, with research results thus having broader relevance. In pilot work, Pampas farmers ranked climate variability among the top 2-3 sources of risk to production or profits, and the top risk source perceived to be reduceable.

  Prior research in collaboration with a major national (not-for-profit) farmer advisory service (AACREA) has (1) mapped key components of the decision landscape; (2) constructed a conceptual model of agricultural production with links and feedbacks among relevant processes; (3) identified socioeconomic constraints on farm level options; and (4) begun to evaluate approaches to provide improved climate information for farm decision making. The proposed work will build on this knowledge. Our existing working relationship with AACREA is unusual and invaluable. It provides us with ready access to hundreds of farmers, who are members of the organization and to AACREA's existing database of individual farm characteristics (past decisions and performance) and farmer demographics and information processing styles (assessed by standardized tests).

  This project will provide a better understanding of respondent heterogeneity and its effect on individual and group decisions. We propose to study how individual differences in preferences and expectation (shaped by information processing styles, personal experiences, and needs) influence decision framing and objective functions (including instrumental as well as cognitive and affective objectives), and how those interact and integrate in very small groups. We will study peer groups (husband/wife decision making teams and informal consultation groups among neighboring farmers) and hierarchically structured groups (AACREA technical advisor/farmer dyads, and technical advisor/multiple farmer monthly meeting groups). For participants in these groups, we will assess key demographic and processing style information, decision objectives, outcome framing, expectations about future (political, economic, climate) events, and preferred action at the individual level, using both real and stylized decisions (involving simulated farm environments, responses to which can be compared across respondents). We will examine how group members' individual preferences get integrated into the final dyad or group decision. We will analyze the relative weight that individuals' preferences get in determining the dyad/group decision as a function of status, demographics, or processing style, as a function of observed group processes, or as a function of group composition and structure. A central component in this work will be the provision of seasonal climate forecasts, and the testing of different formats to deliver and explain such information. We will examine the use of educational tutorials and envisioning tools to facilitate the understanding of abstract, probabilistic like climate forecasts. We will also test the effects of social facilitation, comparing for example the effectiveness of doing a climate forecast explanation tutorial, of the kind that we have piloted in other studies, either alone by a farmer or in conjunction with a technical advisor, or with another farmer.

• Field Project 6-Decision Making Under Risk of Extreme Climate Events among Farmers in the Northeastern US
  Project Description(doc, pdf); Outline (pdf, ppt)
  (Jennifer Phillips, David Krantz, Bradfield Lyon, Elke Weber; 2006-2008)

  Progress made in the realm of applying seasonal climate forecasts to resource management decisions provides a wealth of insights for application to the challenge of adaptation to climate change (Hammer et al. 2001). This is particularly relevant given that, even with a simple change in mean weather variables, change will be manifest as increases in seasonal or event-based extremes, with shifts in either one tail of the distribution, or both tails (Meehl et al. 2000; Katz Brown 1992). We therefore have the opportunity to draw on these insights and utilize the occurrence of current extreme weather and climate events to study human perception and decision making for the potential benefit of future climate-sensitive decisions.

  Laboratory studies show that people's appreciation of variability and of trends depends strongly on concrete experience and on recent sequences of events (Hamill Wilson Nisbett 1980; Bolger Harvey 1993). This was borne out in a study of East African farmers (Phillips Orlove 2003a,b): their decisions tended to protect against strong climate anomalies that had occurred two years earlier, even though the probability of recurrence was low. This project will study how farmers in the Northeastern United States utilize personal experience, group experience, and instructional materials to formulate climate expectations and to protect against climate risk. Some extreme weather events occur every year, and some seasonal anomalies have occurred and will recur (as statistical fluctuations, absent global change); these vivid experiences may be combined with longer-run statistics to determine climate expectations and risk-reduction strategies. We focus on Northeast US partly to simplify (interannual climate variability cannot be forecast for this region) and partly to take advantage of these farmers’ substantial access to varied information sources and of their flexibility to deploy multiple strategies for risk reduction.

  Project goals and justification
  Decisions have been based on some mental model of probabilistic outcomes for as long as humans have been interacting with their environment, and, given a familiar context, probabilities are readily understood (Phillips Orlove 2003a,b). However, the shape of the mental distribution of outcomes is likely to be distorted as a result of emotion and memory, recent experience, and the action context (Loewenstein et al. 2001; Hertwig et al. 2002). Thus a goal of this work is to develop interventions that can facilitate “improved” mental models of the climate distribution by correcting for cognitive and affective (emotional) biases. Furthermore, there are likely to be cases when biases are adaptive. For example, recent experience of a low probability event would tend to lead the decision maker to over weight it, but in this case, if the trajectory of climate change is towards increased return rate of extreme events, and that event helps broaden the tails of the distribution in a manner consistent with expectations, it may provide an opportunity to begin shifting expectations of future climate.

  An additional impediment to facilitating adaptive decisions, specific to the climate change context, is the possibility that short planning horizons of individuals and institutions preclude adaptive goals that might be desirable given expectations of climate change. Adaptation to increased climate variability and extremes will necessarily include changes in resource planning and management that increase system resilience. For example, if increased frequency of storm events leads to increased vulnerability of soils to erosion (SWCS 2003), an adaptive measure may be to minimize tillage or use perennial cover farming systems which minimize erosion events. Such a change requires long-term planning and a strong grasp of the future costs and benefits of converting one’s tillage system versus soil loss. But planning horizons are notoriously short due to uncertainty about the future, which is dim and far away. We plan to investigate the influence of time frame on adaptive responses to extreme climate events in our study population.

  Extreme climate events now and in the future
  Observational studies suggest that in the US, mean temperatures have increased over the twentieth century (Easterling 2002; IPCC 2001) and that amount and frequency of precipitation have changed in several regions (Karl and Knight 1998; Easterling et al. 2000). These changes are manifest as an accumulation of individual events, and events are what people experience and that which influence our mental models of climate distribution. Extreme events, in particular, are of interest for the purposes of this study, both since they have disproportional effects on people and perceptions, and because much of climate change research suggests that extremes will increase as climate change unfolds.

  Observed temperatures have increased towards the end of the century in the United States, but the change has not been as pronounced as it has been globally (Hansen et al. 2001). Within the US, the Northeast shows less warming than the West and Central zones (Easterling 2002), although there is evidence that there are fewer extremely cold daily minima (DeGaetano 1996). It is suggested that the more moderate warming in the Northeast compared other locations is potentially related to increases in cloud cover associated with increased precipitation (Robinson et al. 2002). More strikingly, observations of precipitation in the Northeastern US show strong positive trends. Karl and Knight (1998) found that the trend in the 95th percentile of precipitation, i.e., the heaviest rainfall events, in spring and summer was responsible for the large part of the annual increase in precipitation in the Northeast. Both precipitation frequency and intensity (amount of rain falling in a single event) increased over the century, but the latter characteristic dominates the trend. Because of the potential to cause flooding, Kunkel et al. (1999) looked at the increase in occurrence of rainfall events lasting 7 days in the US. In New York State, the number of 7-day events has increased on all seasons, but the bulk of the increase in has been in summer and fall, with the smallest increase in winter.
  

  Objectives

  • 1) Mapping mental models: Perceptions of the frequency of recurring events varies as a function of a number of variables. During the course of this study, we will have the opportunity to observe farmer responses to at least a few “real” extreme climate events, and we will additionally utilize hypothetical climate event scenarios in interview and focus group settings. We expect mental models of climate to change with 1) type of extreme event and farming system profile (Slovic 1995; Tversky and Kahnemen 1981), and 2) whether or not the event is experienced or described (Loewenstein et al. 2001).
     
  • 2) Planning horizons and adaptation: Given uncertainties about the specific nature of changes in extreme events under climate change, details of protective action are not well defined. Adaptation is therefore potentially more likely to evolve from responses to individual events. Yet, depending on the decision maker’s planning horizon and perception of return rate for a particular event, reactions may simply be to bring the system back to its previous state, rather than proactively prepare for the return of the event. Certain types of farm management activities could be coded for the degree to which they represent “quick fix” approaches versus those building long-term resilience. For example, milk productivity of dairy cows is sensitive to temperature, with productivity dropping with increases in temperature. In conventional confinement dairy systems, the approach to this problem is to provide more air circulation in the barn or even to provide air conditioning. A long-term solution, however, may to be to select for temperature insensitivity by culling animals that are the most vulnerable to heat, and possibly converting to a pasture-based, non-confinement system. It may take years to see an impact on herd productivity using selection alone. Although the decision to focus on herd genetics would fit the description of building system resilience, it also requires a long planning horizon. We will attempt to identify linkages between planning horizons, perception of climate change impacts, and reactive or proactive management options.
     
  • 3) Resources for decision making: Based on our survey and interview work, we will develop and test a set of instructional materials that 1) attempts to help the decision maker become aware of his or her own biases, and 2) make explicit the linkages between extreme climate events and a variety of actions that can be taken, and the associated temporal framework for action. The balance between analytic processing of information and the affective or emotional interpretation (e.g., fear) can potentially be optimized if the decision maker is more fully aware of the influence of each. Instructional materials will be designed to elucidate the two processing modes. Additionally, drawing on work conducted in Lab Projects One and Two of the larger DMUU Center, climate/agriculture-related decision scenarios will be developed to help decision makers “experience” a series of climate events into the future. Instructional materials will be evaluated for impact on decision making and then revised accordingly.

  Methods
  Population: Our sample will be drawn from the population of dairy and vegetable farmers in eastern New York State. In the Northeast US, skill in seasonal climate forecasts is too low for practical application. This lack of a seasonal forecast simplifies our study because expectations for the coming season are based solely on experience and knowledge of climatology, and possibly perceptions of the influence of climate change. If this perception was additionally influenced by a seasonal forecast, it would complicate our attempts to isolate mental models of current and future climate.

  Both dairy and vegetables are important products for New York State. In our population, proximity to New York City has had contrasting impacts on these two sectors: there are growing opportunities for direct marketing for small and medium sized vegetable producers, but strong development pressures and record low milk prices are forcing exits from the dairy industry. Vegetable and dairy farming systems represent very different concerns with respect to climate, and therefore will help guard against bias of one producer type. Dairy farmers may be more concerned with high temperature impacts than vegetable farmers are, due to impacts on herd health and productivity. Vegetable farmers are extremely vulnerable to spring and fall freezing events and drought. Both are sensitive to excess precipitation, as a function of erosion, limitations on field traffic, and yield impacts on field and vegetable crops. An important environmental impact of flooding on dairy is potential for overflow from manure confinement facilities.

  Data collection: In year one, a survey will be mailed to approximately 400 farm families, with an expected return rate of approximately 100 completed surveys. This initial survey will cover demographics, general information about the farming system, length of time farming, expectations for the future of their operation, and initial questions about climate. This set of data will serve two purposes. First, from this larger sample, we will be able to estimate general perceptions of climate change from a broad array of New York State vegetable and dairy farmers. Second, we will use the responses to identify a cohesive set of farmers willing to participate in the on-going study.

  Historical records of daily weather data will be secured for a number of sites in the region. Based on data availability and the geographic range of our sample set of farmers, we expect to have data for approximately four stations. We will perform simple statistical summaries of the distribution of climate variables identified by farmer participants.

  Following an analysis of the written survey and identification of 30 farmer participants, we will perform in-depth interviews to clarify and extend the information gathered in the written survey. Included in the in-person interviews will be a set of creative visualization techniques to elucidate each farmer’s mental model of the climate events each feel have the greatest impact on their farming system. Data collected should represent perceptions of the highest and lowest values expected over a variety of time frames, expected return rates, and ways in which their farming system is vulnerable. Finally, planning horizons and potential linkages between planning and expectations of future climate will be covered. These results will be compared to the observed climate distributions for the station closest to each participant.

  Climate education materials: Based on an analysis of the data collected, instructional materials will be developed for testing at each of two one-day workshops to be conducted in the 2nd half of the project time frame. The workshops will take place in January, when farmers are least busy. The objectives of the workshops are 1) to provide a forum to present new information about climate, climate change, and information resources that exist; 2) to test new visualization techniques that we will design to address cognitive biases in perception of climate and to aid in decision making with new climate information; and 3) to conduct group exercises in decision making with uncertain information, using a contingency planning approach, designed to explore multiple outcomes and implications of various trade offs. Exercises will be conducted in groups in the workshop setting followed by an evaluation process to test for impacts on perception. Materials development will be guided by past experience with climate information delivery in Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda, and results from lab experiments conducted by one of the co-investigators (Krantz).

  Deliverables
  This work will provide insight into the relationships between on-going extreme climate events and decision processes of farmers responding to these events, with implications for adaptive responses to climate change. Interventions developed will make use of these insights to improve adaptive responses to climate change in the agricultural community. Lessons across other sectors will be explored. In the context of the Columbia center for climate decisions under uncertainty, this work will serve two goals: 1) provide a real-world context in which to test theoretical knowledge emerging from laboratory research, and 2) provide another dimension of results to compliment the Center’s work in other agricultural and natural resource management settings – Argentina, Brazil, Uganda, and the pastoral context of the Greater Horn of Africa.
  

  References
  See Project Description (doc)

• Field Project 7-The Future is Now: Climate change detection and behavior in regions experiencing significant climate change
  Full Project Description(html, doc, pdf); Outline (pdf, ppt)
  (Anthony Leiserowitz, Paul Slovic, Robin Gregory, Terre Satterfield, 2004-2005)

  We do not understand how individuals or groups detect climate change or respond to prevent or adapt to it. Yet such responses will determine the trajectories of both global climate change and local adaptation. Past research on climate change decision-making has shown that most Americans are aware of this risk but confused about its nature, causes, and consequences (Bostrom et al. 1994; O'Connor et al. 1999). Moreover, knowledge about a risk is not sufficient to explain perceived threat or behavioral response. Perceived threat and behavior are also guided by affect and experience (Finucane et al 2000; Slovic 1997, 1998, 2001). To improve our ability to forecast human responses, we will focus on Alaska, which is already experiencing significant climate change (US Global Change Research Program, National Assessment, 2001).

  Our research will contrast the roles of analytic/consequentialist vs. associative/affect/experientially-based decision-making about climate change. Specifically, we will conduct interviews, focus groups and surveys in which respondents will be asked to assess the likelihood and severity (analytic/consequentialist mode) of climate change and its local impacts, and the probable consequences of various possible mitigation and adaptation policies. Respondents will also be asked to provide affective imagery (Szalay Deese 1978; Slovic et al. 1996; MacGregor et al. 2000) and affective evaluations (Slovic et al. 2000) of climate change, local impacts and possible mitigation and adaptation policies. These factors will be correlated with both risk perceptions and behaviors. It is hypothesized that individuals and groups in areas that have already experienced significant climate impacts will exhibit higher levels of risk perception, more concrete and locally-relevant cognitive images of climate change impacts, increased negative affect and will have already begun taking action to mitigate and adapt to climate change.

  The methodology for this research project will take advantage of Columbia University's resources in climate change modeling, GIS analysis (at CIESIN), and decision-making research. Project stages include: (1) GIS analysis using the CSCI (Hansen) to identify regions currently experiencing significant climate change (which will certainly include Alaska). (2) Higher resolution GIS analysis using the CSCI for those regions to identify specific localities experiencing large climate change. (3) Interviews with climatologists and other experts to identify locally specific causes, impacts, mitigation, and adaptation responses. (4) Interviews with local community and organization leaders (state officials, farmers and fishermen, commercial exporters, and Native Americans in three ecological zones) in impacted areas to examine climate change detection, decision-making and adaptive response. (5) Focus groups in each of relevant ecological zones to discuss structured decision problems. Group discussion will be coded for goals, mental models of climate change, models of causal impact of climate change, and individual and consensus responses. (6) A survey on climate change detection, decision-making and behavior conducted at the state level, that will include measures of analytic estimations of the likelihood and severity of specific climate impacts, affective and experientially-based evaluations of climate change, and behavioral response to local and regional impacts. It is hypothesized that individuals in areas that have already experienced significant climate impacts will exhibit higher levels of risk perception, more concrete and locally-relevant cognitive images of climate change impacts, and increased negative affect about global climate change. They will also be less susceptible to alternative framings of climate change and will have already begun taking action to mitigate and adapt to climate change.

• Field Project 8-Decision-making under the Impact of Glacial Retreat: Perception of and Response to Climate Change among Residents of Vulnerable Zones
  (Ben Orlove, 2006-2008)

The main focus of this project is detection of climate change through direct experience. We focus on glacial retreat, a highly visible accompaniment to warming in Alpine environments. Glacial advances and retreats are often measured accurately; thus, misperceptions or incorrect recall can be identified. Moreover, glacial changes can have important effects on resources (stream flow) and on hazards (floods, rockfalls), and thus can elicit action plans. Study of perception and response to glacial retreat thus permits us to evaluate effects of various factors on perception and recall in connection with climate change. The gradual nature of glacial retreat is a typical example of the psychological challenges posed by climate change phenomena. Expectations about change and temporal reference points against which future conditions are compared influence the detection and evaluation of change. Extreme events, such as floods or years of low stream flow, may affect expectations of change and might alter time horizons and reference points. This project will identify community and individual attributes that influence expectations, encoding, and temporal framing of glacial retreat, and thus affect responses to climate change. Community variables studied will include spatial proximity to glaciers, vulnerability to impacts of glacial retreat, balance of individual and public ownership of natural resources, and relevant organizations in the community. Individual variables will include socioeconomic and demographic characteristics, ownership of resources impacted by glacial retreat, size of social networks, and extent of participation in community organizations. Three levels of action plans will be observed: 1) household-based (e.g., insurance purchase or altered economic activity); 2) community-based (e.g., joint investments); 3) externally-linked (decision-makers seek help from other communities or regions).

We will study three Alpine regions faced with glacial retreat, declining water availability, and flood risks: Swiss Alps, Peruvian Andes, US Cascades. Field reconnaissance and ethnography will be conducted in the first year for each region, followed by surveys, focus groups, and observation of community meetings and discussions in the second year. Data will be obtained in 15-20 communities in each range, with the communities grouped in 3-4 clusters in each case, with a target of 500 completed surveys in each region. Topics will include perceptions and memory of past and present glacial extent, extreme events, the perceived impacts of glacial change, respondents' planning horizons, and aspects of household and community economic activities and infrastructure that relate to glacial retreat. Individual responses and group discussions will be analyzed for the way in which glacial changes are naturally framed, and for the way in which framing affects described past actions or anticipated responses. Measurements of glacial area and volume, available from the World Glacier Monitoring Service and the World Data Center for Glaciology, allow comparison of perceived to actual changes. Preliminary results will be organized into informational packages for each region, and these will be presented in workshops in additional communities in each region. Surveys will be conducted both before the workshops and several months after them in workshop and matched non-workshop communities to assess the effects of these informational materials on individual and community perceptions and encodings of ongoing change and their actions or reactions to such change.