Climate Impacts on Watersheds, Water Quality, and Ecosystems Project (CIVA-2), Summary Report: FY16 – FY2019 (October 1, 2015 – September 30, 2019)

Climate change poses unique challenges for protecting environmental resources upon which our society depends. Adapting to changing climate hinges on knowing the regional and local vulnerabilities and impacts to water resources and ecosystem services. Determining social and ecological risk is a major challenge because of insufficient data, knowledge and models, including uncertainties about the regional and seasonal nature of changing climate and how water, watersheds and associated ecosystem services respond to interacting biological and physical stressors. Research conducted by the EPA’s Office of Research and Development under the Air and Energy Program addressed essential and innovative science and engineering needed to address climate change and improve air and water quality . This report is a summary of research results from tasks within the Climate Impacts and Vulnerability Assessments: Impacts on Watersheds, Water Quality, and Ecosystems Project (CIVA-2). Scientists in CIVA-2 investigated the impacts of changing climate on inland watersheds and near-shore environments, the ecosystem components and processes inherent to those systems, and the provisioning of ecosystem services (particularly water resources) received from those ecosystems. The findings are presented by task and emphasize peer reviewed research published in scientific journals and agency reports. The summaries in this report are not intended to provide details of the various research activities, but rather are intended to point the reader toward the published material.

Impact/Purpose

Understanding the regional and local vulnerabilities of water quality, watersheds, ecosystems, and constituent species to climate change is critical for societal adaptation, including sustaining environmental goods and services. Research conducted by the EPA’s Office of Research and Development under the Air and Energy Program addressed essential and innovative science and engineering needed to address climate change and improve air and water quality . This report is a summary of research results from the Climate Impacts and Vulnerability Assessments: Impacts on Watersheds, Water Quality, and Ecosystems Project (CIVA-2). Results of this multi-faceted research support national, state and local governments, as well as non-governmental entities in promoting resilience by identifying characteristics of populations, watersheds and ecosystems that are susceptible to the direct and indirect effects from changing climate. The research was directly responsive to the needs of EPA's Office of Water, the National Water Program Climate Strategy, and individual Regions and supported the Agency’s targeted adaptation actions by providing the means to measure and monitor risk from changing climate to watersheds, water quality, ecosystems and economically important species across geographical regions

Citation

Beedlow, P., C. Folger, J. West, S. Leibowitz, H. Lee, T. Johnson, Y. Yang, S. Klein, J. Ebersole, AND B. Bierwagen. Climate Impacts on Watersheds, Water Quality, and Ecosystems Project (CIVA-2), Summary Report: FY16 – FY2019 (October 1, 2015 – September 30, 2019). U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, DC, 2019.

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