Southeast Climate Consortium Programs

The Southeast Climate Consortium operates under a broad range of program and research themes. Ranging from general climate studies to specific applications of climate data, the goal of our programs and research is to provide useful tools and information to users in agriculture and other fields. The current themes and programs of the consortium are highlighted below.

Our recent progress reports and work plans are available in pdf files:

Also available are the Florida Consortium White Paper (Adobe PDF format) and bibliography through 2002. The Florida Consortium White Paper, published by the predecessor to the Southeast Climate Consortium, highlights previous progress made and research done into ongoing themes and programs of the consortium, while the list of publications provides a bibliography of all Florida and Southeast Climate Consortium publications.

Introduction

   The SECC has two components: SECC RISA, which includes six universities in Alabama, Florida and Georgia; and SECC agricultural research and extension projects funded by other sources, which also include Clemson University and North Carolina State University. In addition to NOAA RISA funding, the SECC funding sources include the USDA Risk Management Agency, USDA National Institute for Food and Agriculture, NASA, DOE, and NOAA CPO.
   In total, about 70 faculty members, post-doctoral scientists, and graduate students participate in SECC activities from a broad range of disciplines, including climate sciences, hydrology, agricultural sciences, and social sciences. State Climatologists from AL, FL, GA, and NC participate in SECC activities, as do the land grant universities from all SECC participants. Each year, SECC participants meet twice, once in the spring for a program review and once in the fall for program planning. In addition, we hold regular video- and tele-conferences for various task forces and teams as well as the SECC Executive Committee. Our teams are longer-term efforts that include groups that focus on: 1) extension and outreach; 2) assessment and evaluation; and 3) water resource management. Task forces are ad hoc groups focused on specific problems, such as, improving spring and summer climate forecasts and development of local and regional decadal climate change scenarios.
   Begun in 1998 as the Florida Consortium with three universities and a focus solely on agriculture, the SECC has grown steadily in both geographic coverage and sectors served. In the early 2000s, we started working on water resources with a focus on agricultural water users. We have expanded this effort to municipal water managers, larger scale water utilities, and other water resources stakeholders. As part of the recent RISA re-bid, we have expanded our scope further to address issues of coastal ecosystems and communities and terrestrial ecosystems. Further, we have also begun to address issues of forecasting and applying information on climate change at 5- to 30-year time scales in addition to seasonal climate information that was our sole focus until 2007.

Core SECC activities and structure

   In order to meet the growing and changing demands for local climate change information, including information needs for sectors other than agriculture, to understand what information stakeholders need and their decision environments, and to develop accessible decision support tools, the SECC is reorganizing using a three-dimensional structure that is designed to promote collaboration among scientists and our partners. The three dimensions are: 1) ecosystem-based adaptation sectors; 2) natural resources sciences; and 3) application sciences. The SECC RISA activities will not support all components of the structure, but we present the structure to show how SECC RISA activities are part of our overall SECC program, much of which is leveraged with other funds.

   The ecosystem-based adaptation sectors each tend to have different boundary organizations. In agriculture we have worked closely with Cooperative Extension and have begun working with other boundary organizations that provide targeted outreach to socially disadvantaged farmers, such as the Federation of Southern Cooperatives, which works primarily with black farmers, and the North South Institute, which works with Spanish-speaking, Asian, and black farmers. For coastal ecosystems, we will work closely with Sea Grant Extension, the Association of County Governments, Florida Oceans Coastal Council, Gulf of Mexico Alliance, and others depending on the findings of our assessments. For other terrestrial ecosystems, we will work in partnership with diverse boundary organizations, including Fish and Wildlife Service, Natural Resource Conservation Service, US Geological Service, and others to be identified in our scoping activities.
   We do not plan to give all adaptation sectors equal emphasis in the SECC RISA. While agriculture will remain our largest program, we will also address the needs of other ecosystems. For coastal ecosystems, we plan to conduct stakeholder assessments and to strengthen CoastalClimate.org, our on-line prototype information system for coastal ecosystems. Work in the other terrestrial ecosystems will begin with scoping activities. Over the 5 years of the SECC RISA project, we anticipate increasing efforts for both coastal and other terrestrial ecosystems, and much of this increase will be through competitive funding.

   Role of boundary organizations

   An important factor contributing to SECC success in agriculture has been a strong partnership with Cooperative Extension, which provides a boundary organization linking research to users for broad applications. The SECC also includes among its members the state climatologists for all SECC states. For the agricultural sector, we will shift much of our effort to providing information related to climate change and to developing methods to help sustain AgroClimate [http://AgroCliamte.org], our on-line climate information and decision support system.
   For coastal and other terrestrial ecosystems we have begun to develop new partnerships with appropriate boundary organizations. For the coastal ecosystems, we have begun to work closely with Sea Grant Extension programs. For other terrestrial ecosystems, we will begin with scoping activities that will include the identification of suitable boundary organizations with which we will develop partnerships.
   Much of the climate information that the SECC produces is based on integrated models and analyses that address the needs expressed by stakeholders. Stakeholders need climate forecasts over multiple time scales and also climate change scenarios that are specific to their local and regional enterprises. Using results of stakeholder assessments, multidisciplinary groups will develop downscaled climate forecasts and climate change scenarios to local scales for use in vulnerability assessments and adaptive management of water resources, coastal ecosystems, and agricultural systems.
   As shown in the diagram below, the SECC approach to development of a decision support system has four phases, with end-user and boundary organization engagement or participation throughout. While the science community may initiate and motivate the first two phases, leadership is transferred to an appropriate boundary organization in phase three. By the end of the fourth phase, the appropriate boundary organization leads the effort with support from the science community. In other words, the SECC used a co-development process with Extension as a boundary organization that facilitated end-user participation to create the decision support system that we call AgroClimate. Co-development is a participatory, iterative, and multi-feedback process in which needs, ideas, suggestions, perspectives, and discussion lead to product improvement so to improve relevance and utility for the target clientele.