Reports and assessments

2020 SW CASC Highlights and Impact screenshot

Annual Reports

The Southwest Climate Adaptation Science Center has produced yearly annual reports since 2011 in an effort to provide helpful information to stakeholders, policy makers, and associated researchers. Click through to find out more information about this and get a quick overview of the efforts and research the SW CASC has been doing throughout the years.

Annual Report Archive

Stakeholder Needs Assessment

In 2018, to help fulfill the Southwest Climate Adaptation Science Center’s (SW CASC) mission of developing useful science products for natural resource managers, researchers conducted a rapid assessment of science and information needs of Southwest natural resource managers in Arizona, California, Nevada and Utah.

Researchers assessed (a) stakeholder research, data and information needs, (b) communication and engagement preferences, (c) training and extension needs, and (d) identified partnership and collaboration barriers and opportunities. Outcomes from this assessment include improved communication with state natural resource agencies; increased understanding of the SW CASC stakeholder science needs; enhanced capacity for the SW CASC to conduct needs assessments, and relationships to seed a knowledge network. A final report from this assessment can be found attached below. Other products include a blog and a webinar.

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Screenshot of cover page for Societal Impacts Guidebook

Societal Impact of Research

Societal impacts are the ways that research, or the process of conducting research, influence the world beyond academia. The following resources provide information on understanding the societal impact of research, and how to demonstrate and document the societal relevance of research.

Webinar by Climate Assessment for the Southwest (CLIMAS) investigators: Identifying and Reporting the Societal Impacts of Your Research.

Advancing Research Impacts in Society

Edwards, David M, and Laura R Meagher. 2019. A framework to evaluate the impacts of research on policy and practice: A forestry pilot study. Forest Policy and Economics:101975.

Spaapen, Jack, and Leonie van Drooge. 2011. Introducing 'productive interactions' in social impact assessment. Research Evaluation 20 (3):211-218.

Reed, Mark S. 2018. The Research Impact Handbook. 2nd ed: Fast Track Impact.

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Screenshot of cover page for 2013 SW Climate Change Assessment Report.

Southwest Climate Change Assessment Report

Assessment of Climate Change in the Southwest United States is a technical report prepared for the Third National Climate Assessment (https://nca2014.globalchange.gov/). The full report, along with all figures and a Spanish version of the Summary for Decision Makers, are available on the SWCCAR site.

The report was published in 2013, and was the first deliverable of the SW CASC. It is a synthesis of knowledge (from some 120 contributing experts) on climate and its effects on the people and landscapes of Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, the U.S.– Mexico border region, and the lands of Native Nations. The report offers decision makers and stakeholders a substantial basis from which to make informed choices that will affect the well-being of the region’s inhabitants in the decades to come.

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Preventing Extreme Fire Events

The final technical report for "Preventing Extreme Fire Events by Learning from Historical Fire Events, Weather, and Drought" provides a better understanding of the longer- and shorter-term environmental factors that drive fire activity and provides the basis for a new set of predictive models of wildland fires using weather and drought measures for the major climate regions in California. The project is a combined effort from researchers at the U.S. Geological Survey, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, and Desert Research Institute.

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Resources