Co-producing actionable climate science and adaptation strategies to inform planning for public lands management

Many community livelihoods and economies in the western United States are inextricably tied to public lands and resources. These communities rely on the health of public lands and the ways in which these lands are managed by federal agencies for their well-being. Changes in weather, climate, and ecosystem services can further impact the health of public lands, and can add complexity and uncertainty to already complex, multi-use decision-making processes. Therefore, there is a need to better understand social-ecological vulnerabilities and identify adaptation strategies that are appropriate and usable given regulatory and institutional constraints. In this presentation, we will present work from an ongoing collaboration with the Colorado Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and multiple university and government partners, the goal of which is to connect the best available science to action and co-produce actionable adaptation strategies that inform management planning and decisions. Through multiple, iterative meetings and workshops with social and environmental researchers and state- and local-level Colorado BLM staff, as well as interviews with BLM staff and local communities who depend on public lands, we have developed to date: 1) a state-wide ecological vulnerability assessment; 2) a state-wide social vulnerability assessment; 3) a state-wide review of Colorado BLM planning documents; and 4) two in-depth case studies in BLM field offices. We will present initial results from these efforts that provided baseline understandings of social-ecological vulnerabilities in the context of BLM lands across Colorado. We will then demonstrate how insights from this approach are being used currently in collaboration with the San Luis Valley Field Office in Colorado to co-produce an integrated social-ecological vulnerability assessment to climate change and variability, co-determine actionable strategies that support healthy ecosystems and sustainable livelihoods, and inform their ongoing landscape assessment and planning efforts.