Data Basin Climate Center: where to get datasets, manipulate them, and generate practical answers
Abstract
Monitoring datasets are essential to detect changes that are occurring and identify thresholds that cause them, but scientists around the world are now generating large volumes of data that vary in quality, format, supporting documentation, and accessibility. Moreover, diverse models are being run at various spatial and temporal scales to try and understand past climate variability and its impacts, generate future climate and land use scenarios, and project potential future impacts to the planet. Conservation practitioners and land managers are struggling to synthesize this wealth of information, identify relevant and usable datasets, and translate evolving science results into on-the-ground climate adaptation strategies. In partnership with ESRI and Mambo media, the Conservation Biology Institute (CBI) is developing a versatile web-based resource that centralizes usable climate change-relevant datasets and provides analytical tools to visualize, analyze, and communicate findings for practical applications. To illustrate its capability to store, manipulate, and derive relevant conclusions to users, we present a project focusing on California included in the Climate Center of Data Basin (http://www.databasin.org). The project synthesizes several studies at a variety of scales describing climate change impacts on vegetation distribution, carbon sequestration potential, and wildfire risk, for the State of California, as a result of collaboration between PNW Forest Service, Oregon State University, CBI and The Nature Conservancy.
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2009
- Bibcode:
- 2009AGUFMED33B0565B
- Keywords:
-
- 0439 BIOGEOSCIENCES / Ecosystems;
- structure and dynamics;
- 1615 GLOBAL CHANGE / Biogeochemical cycles;
- processes;
- and modeling;
- 1626 GLOBAL CHANGE / Global climate models;
- 1630 GLOBAL CHANGE / Impacts of global change