New publication “The dangers of disaster-driven responses to climate change” just published in Nature Climate Change from Sarah E. Anderson, Ryan R. Bart, Maureen C. Kennedy, Andrew J. MacDonald, Max A. Moritz, Andrew J. Plantinga, Christina L. Tague and Matthew Wibbenmeyer.
Naomi Tague was invited to lead a session at the International Symposium – BOUNDARY SPANNING: Advances in Socio-Environmental Systems Research – put on by The National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center (SESYNC) in partnership with the National Science Foundation (NSF), Resources for the Future (RFF), and University of Maryland (UMD) this week in Annapolis, Maryland. Naomi brought together Tamma Carleton (UCBerkeley) “Valuing the global mortality consequences of climate change accounting for adaptation costs and benefits”, Adrian Das (US Geological Survey) “Tree Mortality and the California Drought: A preview of the future?”, Alex de Sherbinin (Columbia) “Migration as an adaptive response to climate change impacts and vulnerability”, Ariel Lugo (US Forest Service) “Who responds the quickest after hurricane wind stress: the social or the ecological systems?”, and Max Moritz (UC Santa Barbara) “When does fire, a natural ecological disturbance, become ‘stressful’?” in her session “Under Stress: For adaptive, evolving systems, how much stress is too much?”.
Please join us in congratulating former PhD student/post doc Erin Hanan on her new faculty position as Assistant Professor of Fire Ecology in the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences at the University of Nevada, Reno.
Dr. Erin Hanan has been a valuable member of the Tague Team Lab and has made important contributions to research and RHESSys model functionality while she has been at UCSB. We wish her success in this new venture and look forward to future collaborations.
Former Tague PhD student Dr. Elizabeth Garcia, now a Water Resources Hydrologist at Seattle Public Utilities, returned last week to present “Water Management at Seattle Public Utilities” in Dr. Tague’s Climate change impacts and adaptation class.
In case you were unable to make it in person – video of last month’s town hall event “Drought, Fire, and Flood: Climate Change and Our New Normal” is now online.
Watch the entire event:
Watch Naomi Tague’s presentation:
The research in this new publication enhances understanding of deep subsurface water storage across landscapes and identifies key remaining challenges in predicting and managing response to climate and land use change in mountain ecosystems of the Sierra Nevada and in other Mediterranean climates worldwide.
In this new publication, regional regression models using a set of three variables (mean annual precipitation, potential evapotranspiration, and baseflow index) selected via expert assessment was found to be effective in predicting percentile flows and performed similarly to larger sets of variables selected using a data-driven method.
Fouad, G., Skupin, A., Tague, C.L. (2018) Regional regression models of percentile flows for the contiguous United States: Expert versus data-driven independent variable selection, Journal of Hydrology: Regional Studies 17:64-82, doi.org/10.1016/j.ejrh.2018.04.002
In the event “Drought, Fire, and Flood: Climate Change and Our New Normal” that took place last wednesday at the Granada Theatre emceed by UCSB’s Bren School Dean Dr. Steven Gaines – Dr. Naomi Tague (modeling), Dr. Max Moritz (wildfire), Dr. Edward Keller (debris flow), and Dr. Sarah Anderson (environmental politics) gave flash talks on research and data regarding drought, fire, and flood issues.
Keynote speaker James Lee Witt shared his experience managing disasters during his tenure as former White House cabinet member and Director of FEMA, who currently serves as senior advisor to fortune 500 companies and government leaders around the world.
This was followed by a town hall style discussion led by Sigrid Wright (CEO/Executive Director of the Community Environmental Council) with Pat McElroy (recently retired Fire Chief of the Santa Barbara City Fire Department), Das Williams (First District of Santa Barbara County supervisor), and Maricela Morales (CAUSE Executive Director).
The event was well attended by members of the community, who were able to pre-submit questions for the town hall discussion.
Congratulations to Tague Team Lab member Rachel Torres on being awarded the 2017/2018 Groundwater Resources Association of California scholarship for her proposal, “Modeling the effects of connected impervious surfaces on evapotranspiration and groundwater recharge rates in an urban semi-arid environment”.
We congratulate Julian Reyes, PhD student in Civil and Environmental Engineering at Washington State University – and Tague Team Lab friend and collaborator – on successfully defending his PhD “Characterizing rangeland ecosystems and their sustainable management in a changing climate”. Dr. Reyes developed a new approach to modeling carbon allocation and his research led to additional new functionality being included in RHESSys code.
