Susanne Moser

University of Massachusetts Amherst | UMass Amherst · Department of Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning

This document recommends a common approach to developing key performance indicators (KPIs) for climate change adaptation and resilience planning, drawing upon current science and tools referenced throughout. The work is particularly aimed to support climate adaptation and resilience planning by US federal agencies and thus presents principally US n...

As the impacts and risks from climate change increase, the climate assessment landscape has expanded in scope and application, resulting in the desire for more information relevant to local decision-making. Some regions lack detailed climate projections and a body of consensus findings about sector-specific impacts, and there is a need for actionab...

Many are stymied by the challenge of how to talk about and “message” managed retreat or relocation, an utterly unpleasant, even unthinkable possibility in the American mind, though already and increasingly a necessity. This communication challenge is maybe most pressing for coastal managers, extension/outreach staff and other professionals working...

This paper outlines climate emergencies facing universities and, by drawing on research on system transition, provides insights about how change to overcome the challenges might be stewarded. Climate change brings three interconnected and urgent emergencies for universities: (1) Manifest emergencies such as risks to operations and business models;...

Our team were responsible to the chapter on Coastal Flooding

Adapting to the new normal Successfully responding to the impacts of climate change will be a challenge for many communities, especially cities. Considering the situation in the United States, Shi and Moser examine how stakeholders can help to build urban resilience even in the absence of federal leadership. They discuss how local and state governm...

The Pluriversity for stuck humxns is an exploratory dialogue between early career researchers and established researchers. It responds to the concern that dominant forms of knowledge production are not assisting us to move towards life affirming ways of being and that alternatives are possible. The production of this chapter is one of many new acts...

Universities are one potentially important place – albeit not the only one – to initiate the next generation into becoming the adult humans needed to navigate the difficult future of the Anthropocene. The University of the future will fail this mission, if it only prepared young people in the technical expertise required to manage accelerating clim...

Formalised knowledge systems, including universities and research institutes, are important for contemporary societies. They are, however, also arguably failing humanity when their impact is measured against the level of progress being made in stimulating the societal changes needed to address challenges like climate change. In this research we use...

Formalised knowledge systems, including universities and research institutes, are important for contemporary societies. They are, however, also arguably failing humanity when their impact is measured against the level of progress being made in stimulating the societal changes needed to address challenges like climate change. In this research we use...

Earth scientists and communicators dealing with or studying climate change face many potential stressors. They need support and resources to maintain and improve their emotional well-being.

The fact that the question “Is it too late (to prevent dangerous climate change”)? is being debated in serious science circles constitutes a culturally significant moment. This article does not offer a simplistic answer to “is it too late – or not?”, but explores the uncomfortable space of denying neither endings nor possibilities. In so doing, it...

Faced with increasing climate extremes and climate change impacts, local governments in California are eager to advance their adaptation measures and build local resilience. However, as previous studies and day-to-day interactions with local leaders make clear, identifying ways to resource adaptation is one of the most significant barriers to progr...

Resilience has experienced exponential growth in scholarship and practice over the past several decades. We conduct a meta-analysis of recent review papers on resilience from all relevant fields to distill key themes emanating from both research and practice. These themes reflect prevalent debates, trends and insights from the thousands of underlyi...

Report mandated by California Assembly Bill 2800. Focused on integrating forward-looking climate science into infrastructure design.

Climate change impacts in California are expected to lead to more extreme heat days, shifts in precipitation, extended drought periods and increased wildfire risk, as well as more coastal flooding from storms and sea-level rise. Many communities are now actively preparing for these locally occurring impacts through climate adaptation planning. Yet...

Faced with increasing climate extremes and emerging climate change impacts, local governments in California are eager to advance their preparedness and adaptation measures and take action to build local resilience. However, as previous studies and day-to-day interactions with local leaders make clear, determining how to fund adaptation planning and...

The third coastal adaptation needs assessment, administered in 2016, provides a snapshot of the current state of coastal adaptation in California, and constitutes a longitudinal assessment of the changing needs of coastal professionals since 2006. The only comprehensive, longitudinal assessment of adaptation in the country, the study aimed to (1) u...

The most critical question for climate research is no longer about the problem, but about how to facilitate the transformative changes necessary to avoid catastrophic climate-induced change. Addressing this question, however, will require massive upscaling of research that can rapidly enhance learning about transformations. Ten essentials for guidi...

If it is true that humans are about to leave behind the environmental conditions we have known for the 150,000-200,000 years of our species' existence, then we are now changing the context in which we have evolved to date. This means Homo sapiens will have to co-evolve further with the climatic and environmental conditions it is creating through it...

Effective climate change communication is a central concern for geographers and others wishing to convey the science and impacts of climate change to lay publics, policymakers, and managers, and to engage in meaningful discourse on response options. The interdisciplinary field of climate change communication has grown rapidly since the early 2000s,...

The National Climate Assessment’s ability to support decision-making partly relies on engaging stakeholders throughout the assessment process. The guiding vision for the Third National Climate Assessment (NCA3) was for an inclusive, broad-based, and sustained process attentive to both the conduct of assessments and communication of findings. Such a...

The Third US National Climate Assessment (NCA3) was produced by experts in response to the US Global Change Research Act of 1990. Based on lessons learned from previous domestic and international assessments, the NCA3 was designed to speak to a broad public and inform the concerns of policy- and decision-makers at different scales. The NCA3 was als...

The leaders and authors of the Third US National Climate Assessment (NCA3) developed new modes of engaging academia, the private sector, government agencies and civil society to support their needs for usable, rigorous, and timely information and better connect science and decision-making. A strategic vision for assessment activities into the futur...

Amid growing effort to move towards implementation of climate change adaptation, serious interest is emerging about how to use indicators and metrics (I&M) to evaluate adaptation success. Cities are among the leading experimenters developing I&M, but many other entities also view I&M as a tool for providing clarity and accountability about the goal...

Increasingly, ‘co-design’ is a key concept and approach in global change and sustainability research, in the scholarship on science–policy interactions, and an expressed expectation in research programs and initiatives. This paper situates co-design and then synthesizes insights from real-life experiences of co-developing research projects in this...

Coastal areas are on the front lines of the impacts of climate change. The immediate impacts of temperature, precipitation and sea-level change affect rich but already threatened ecological systems and the most populated, highly developed, and economically vibrant regions of human activity on the planet. The specific vulnerabilities, impacts and ad...

The leaders and authors of the Third US National Climate Assessment (NCA3) developed new modes of engaging academia, the private sector, government agencies and civil society to support their needs for usable, rigorous, and timely information and better connect science and decision-making. A strategic vision for assessment activities into the futur...

The Third US National Climate Assessment (NCA3) was produced by experts in response to the US Global Change Research Act of 1990. Based on lessons learned from previous domestic and international assessments, the NCA3 was designed to speak to a broad public and inform the concerns of policy- and decision-makers at different scales. The NCA3 was als...

The National Climate Assessment’s ability to support decision-making partly relies on engaging stakeholders throughout the assessment process. The guiding vision for the Third National Climate Assessment (NCA3) was for an inclusive, broad-based, and sustained process attentive to both the conduct of assessments and communication of findings. Such a...

Appreciable advances have been made in recent years in raising climate change awareness and enhancing support for climate and energy policies. There also has been considerable progress in understanding of how to effectively communicate climate change. This progress raises questions about the future directions of communication research and practice....

Climate change poses numerous challenges for ecosystems, communities, businesses, and government agencies, and these challenges are becoming more visible across the globe. Over the last decade, conversations focused on documenting, anticipating, and preparing for climate risks have provided significant opportunities for interdisciplinary research a...

Coastal areas are on the front lines of the impacts of climate change. The immediate impacts of temperature, precipitation and sea-level change affect rich but already threatened ecological systems and the most populated, highly developed, and economically vibrant regions of human activity on the planet. The specific vulnerabilities, impacts and ad...

This book presents a new perspective on adaptation to climate change. It considers climate change as more than a problem that can be addressed solely through technical expertise. Instead, it approaches climate change as an adaptive challenge that is fundamentally linked to beliefs, values and worldviews, as well as to power, politics, identities an...

Climate change adaptation – to be politically feasible and socially acceptable – will not happen without broad public support. Yet, to date, the public has been barely engaged in finding effective solutions. Municipal and county staff, as well as community organizations that have taken the lead to date with climate planning, list building political...

We are encouraged by the fact that our recent Perspective on the new frontiers of adaptation barriers research is generating academic debate. We hope that others will engage and thus help to advance a scientifically rigorous and practically relevant research agenda. Here we would like to respond to the Correspondence from Biesbroek and colleagues.

“Societal teleconnections” - analogous to physical teleconnections such as El Niño - are human-created linkages that link activities, trends, and disruptions across large distances, such that locations spatially separated from the locus of an event can experience a variety of impacts from it nevertheless. In the climate change context, such societa...

The Third U.S. National Climate Assessment (NCA3) was guided by a strategy that emerged from lessons learned from previous U.S. climate and other regional, national, and international assessment efforts. In particular, NCA3 aimed to build and sustain assessment capacity both among its scientific experts, authors and contributors as well as external...

Today, upwards of 40% of the world's population are living on the 5% of the world's land area that is within 100km of the coast, exerting tremendous human pressures on coastal and marine ecosystems and resources. Australians face from sea-level rise and coastal climatic hazards. Fletcher and colleagues set out from the simple, if for many difficult...

The concept of barriers is increasingly used to describe the obstacles that hinder the planning and implementation of climate change adaptation. The growing literature on barriers to adaptation reveals not only commonly reported barriers, but also conflicting evidence, and few explanations of why barriers exist and change. There is thus a need for...

The persistent gap, termed the “adaptation deficit,” between the assumed ability of communities to adapt to climate change and the on-the-ground evidence of their progress to adapt is well-documented. To at least partially explain this adaptation deficit, a growing number of researchers have focused on the existence and nature of barriers to adapta...

Use-inspired research that is co-designed and co-implemented by producers and users of information requires a revolution! Science cannot continue with business as usual. The lessons learned from the short presentations in this ignite session will be synthesized under four simple messages, reflective of the call for a "scientific revolution" put for...

Background/Question/Methods California has a strong commitment to supporting state-focused climate change research. While ongoing for now nearly two decades, this demand for regular updates on climate change science (as well as on state-level progress made on mitigation and adaptation/preparedness) is formally codified in an Executive Order, sign...

Background/Question/Methods Common approaches to public engagement are often guided by an assumption that stakeholders lack sufficient and relevant information. If the public were just better informed about where electricity comes from, what the impacts of energy on the environment are, and how to weigh trade-offs in a rational and systematic way...

The risks of climate change play out in different ways along the United States’ more than 94,000 miles of coastline, but all coasts share one simple fact: no other region concentrates so many people and so much economic activity on so little land, while also being so relentlessly affected by the sometimes violent interactions of land, sea, and air....

The environmental challenges that confront society are unprecedented and staggering in their scope, pace and complexity. Unless we reframe and examine them through a social lens, societal responses will be too little, too late, and potentially blind to negative consequences.

This article synthesizes relevant literature and examples from practice to examine what is known to date about communicating climate change adaptation. It explores the language used to discuss adaptation, what is known about resonant frames, drawing on adaptation discourses in policy, practice, and the media. Identifying trends and widely applicabl...

Part 4 focuses on visions of change, particularly the role of technology and shifts in economic policies in shaping the future; conditions of change: that is, the drivers and barriers to changes in human behaviour; and interpretation and subjective sense-making, exploring how individuals and societies perceive and understand the changes occurring a...

Global environmental change is linked to and exacerbates other social, economic and political crises such as poverty and inequality. Global sustainability requires urgent action to protect the planet and ensure human equity, dignity and well-being. The social sciences need to research the human causes, vulnerabilities and impacts of environmental c...

Produced by the International Social Science Council (ISSC) and UNESCO, and published by the OECD, the 2013 World Social Science Report represents a comprehensive overview of the field gathering the thoughts and expertise of hundreds of social scientists from around the world. This edition focuses on the transformative role of the social sciences i...

Drawn from the more than 150 authors in the World Social Science Report 2013, the key messages and recommendations call for a new kind of social science – one that is bolder, better, bigger, different. There is a need to reframe global environmental change as a social process, infuse social science insights into problem-solving processes, encourage...

Adaptation requires science that analyzes decisions, identifies vulnerabilities, improves foresight, and develops options.

Even the most progressive communities and local governments in the United States are only in the beginning stages of adapting to climate change. Most places are not far enough along to evaluate outcome-oriented success metrics related to their adaptation strategies. One measure of success, however, is advancing through the process of adaptation and...

Adaptation to climate change is now a common concern on policy and management agendas of national and subnational governments, planning fo a climate-altered future is becoming common place and some adaptive actions are being taken. This has led many decision-makers, program managers, and other stakeholders to ask what adaptation success would look...

People are drawn to the coast for its moderate climate, scenic beauty, cultural and ecological richness, rural expanses, abundant recreational opportunities, vibrant economic activity, and diverse urban communities.’ More than 70% of California residents live and work in coastal counties (U.S. Census Bureau n.d.). Over the last thirty-eight years,...

This chapter provides an integrated overview of solutions and choices for responding to climate change in ways that reduce risks and support sustainable development in the Southwest. The goal is to illustrate the range of choices for responding to climate change, along with some of the relevant trade-offs and opportunities, to inform policy options...

With continuing influx of large numbers of people into coastal regions, human stresses on coastal ecosystems and resources are growing at the same time that climate variability and change and associated consequences in the marine environment are making coastal areas less secure for human habitation. The article reviews both climatic and nonclimatic...

The article describes challenges to comparative risk assessment, a key approach for managing uncertainty in decision making, across diverse threats such as terrorism and climate change and argues new approaches will be particularly important in addressing decisions related to sustainability.

Society has difficult decisions to make about how best to allocate its resources to ensure future sustainability. Risk assessment can be a valuable tool: it has long been used to support decisions to address environmental problems. But in a time when the risks to sustainability range from climate change to terrorism, applying risk assessment to sus...

The frequently heard call to harmonize adaptation and mitigation policies is well intended and many opportunities exist to realize co-benefits by designing and implementing both in mutually supportive ways. But critical tradeoffs (inadequate conditions, competition among means for implementation, and negative consequences of pursuing both simultane...

Since 2006 the scientific community in California, in cooperation with resource managers, has been conducting periodic statewide studies about the potential impacts of climate change on natural and managed systems. This Special Issue is a compilation of revised papers that originate from the most recent assessment that concluded in 2009. As with th...

This article explains the behaviour of communications that have been taking place in the context of climate change and how fruitful they have been so far. It states that important insights can be gained from better understanding the way climate change has been communicated to date and how this communication has been received and interpreted. This a...

As adaptation planning is rising rapidly on the agenda of decision-makers, the need for adequate information to inform those decisions is growing. Locally relevant climate change (as well as related impacts and vulnerability) information, however, is difficult to obtain and that which can be obtained carries the burden of significant scientific unc...

University–community partnerships offer synergistic spaces for communities to address difficulties and universities to meet their missions. Geographers are well positioned to participate in these partnerships, owing to the discipline's integrative nature, spatial perspectives and analytic approaches, and its attention to social and environmental is...

Public understandings and perceptions of, as well as engagement with, climate change have garnered the interest of research and policy for almost three decades. A portion of this growing body of literature examines such perceptions in‐depth, using largely qualitative methodologies, such as personal interviews, limited sample size surveys, focus gro...

Since the early years of the twenty-first century, the United States has been awakening rapidly to the fact that climate change is underway and that adaptation to the unavoidable impacts of climate change is needed and must be begun now. This chapter provides an historical overview of the public, political, and scientific concern with adaptation in...

The call to harmonize adaptation and mitigation policies is well intended and many opportunities exist to realize co-benefits by designing and implementing both in mutually supportive ways. But critical tradeoffs (inadequate conditions, competition among means for implementation, and negative consequences of pursuing both simultaneously) also exist...

Interest in adaptation among local and state governments in the USA is on a steep incline since about 2007. Yet, place-specific vulnerability and adaptation research in the USA is still sparse, the public in many regions is still skeptical about the reality of climate change, and model adaptation planning processes are not well-known among practiti...

Geographers have a long history of contributing to basic, use-inspired, and applied research on one of the greatest challenges humanity has ever faced: global climate change. Their contributions cut across all the major traditions and subfields within geography, have aimed at a variety of scales, and have connected to the scholarship of other disci...

The State of California is committed to preparing periodic climate change impacts and adaptation assessments to inform and develop policy in the State. The most recent assessment was released late in 2009 and a new vulnerability and adaptation assessment is underway for release in late 2011. Both assessments use IPCC climate simulations that were s...

Improved sea-level rise projections and translation into decision-relevant information (e.g., changed flood frequencies and elevations, increased rates in coastal erosion, salinity changes in coastal aquifers) are critical for coastal managers, planners, and local elected officials to feel more confident in bringing climate change and its related c...

Recent research on sea level rise suggests that sea level rise by the end of this century may well be significantly larger than those identified in the IPCC AR4 (2007). Whereas in the past, sea level rise was ascribed equally to thermal expansion of a warming ocean and the melting of land-based ice sheets and glaciers, the recent acceleration in ri...

This article presents a systematic framework to identify barriers that may impede the process of adaptation to climate change. The framework targets the process of planned adaptation and focuses on potentially challenging but malleable barriers. Three key sets of components create the architecture for the framework. First, a staged depiction of an...

Since anthropogenic climate change first emerged on the public agenda in the mid‐to‐late 1980s, public communication of climate change and—more recently—the question of how to communicate it most effectively have witnessed a steep rise. This paper synthesizes what is known, presumed, and still unknown about how to effectively communicate this probl...

This study explores potential adaptation approaches in planning and management that the United States Forest Service might adopt to help achieve its goals and objectives in the face of climate change. Availability of information, vulnerability of ecological and socio-economic systems, and uncertainties associated with climate change, as well as the...

This chapter explores civic mobilization around climate change in the United States, Canada, and Mexico, in association with climate governance efforts in the public and private sectors from local to international degrees. It focuses on how greater civic involvement on climate change can be developed. The chapter suggests that civil society can pla...

Analysis of climate change policy innovations across North America at transnational, federal, state, and local levels, involving public, private, and civic actors. North American policy responses to global climate change are complex and sometimes contradictory and reach across multiple levels of government. For example, the U.S. federal government...

Decision support has become a popular concept, especially in the context of climate change. Government agencies and researchers increasingly recognize that they should provide it, and resource managers and policy-makers increasingly need and demand it. This demand will only grow as climate change progresses. Those who will attempt to meet this grow...