Management Need 6

Management Need 6: Assess and anticipate impacts of climate change and extreme events to support successful adaptation strategies.

Science Actions

  1. Evaluate how climate change, sea level rise, and more frequent extremes will impact habitats, water supply, water quality, sediment supply, long-term species persistence, primary productivity, and food webs.
  2. Evaluate individual and cumulative impacts and tradeoffs of drought management actions on ecological and human communities over multiple timescales.
  3. Evaluate the possible multi-benefits of management actions that promote groundwater recharge for ecological functions and water resilience under climate change (e.g., multiple dry year scenarios).
  4. Identify how human communities connected to the Delta watershed are adapting to climate change, what opportunities and tradeoffs exist for climate adaptation approaches (i.e., agricultural practices, carbon sequestration, nature-based solutions/green infrastructure), and how behaviors vary with adaptive capacity.
  5. Predict and test how water allocation and supply decisions, and ecological flow scenarios should change under projected climate change to maintain habitat conditions, access of target species to critical habitat, and interactions among native and invasive species.