The Fourth National Climate Assessment: Midwest

While the Midwest is best known for its agricultural productivity, it also contains large tracts of federal, state, and private forests and preserves that provide significant economic and ecological benefits to the region. The Great Lakes are another major ecological and economic resource for the region. The people in the Midwest value their health and the well-being of their communities. All of these face numerous risks and challenges from a changing climate.

Volume II of the Fourth National Climate Assessment (NCA) - Impacts, Risks, and Adaptation in the United States - fulfills the 1990 Congressional mandate to "assist the Nation and the world to understand, assess, predict, and respond to human-induced and natural processes of global change." This poster will focus on the findings of the Midwest chapter, which builds on the 3^rd NCA's Midwest chapter on agriculture, forestry, infrastructure, and health, with new elements addressing the ecosystem and vulnerable communities. A special emphasis was placed on the Great Lakes as an area of concern. This chapter was written by a team of experts of Federal agencies, universities, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). The Midwest chapter hosted an engagement workshop in March 2017, with the hub in Chicago and satellite meetings in Iowa, Indiana, Michigan, and Wisconsin. The authors also considered other outreach with stakeholders, inputs provided in the public call for technical material, and incorporated the available recent scientific literature to write the chapter. The chapter went through multiple rounds of public and governmental review.