A Framework for Climate Change-Related Research to Inform Environmental Protection
A critical charge for science to inform environmental protection is to characterize the risks associated with climate change, to
support development of appropriate responses. The nature of climate change, however, presents significant challenges that
must be overcome to do so, including the need for integration and synthesis across the many disciplines that contain
knowledge relevant for achieving environmental protection goals. This paper describes an interdisciplinary research
framework organized around three “Science Challenges” that directly respond to the needs of environmental protection
organizations. Broadly, these Science Challenges refer to the research needed to: inform actions to enhance resilience across
a broad range of environmental and social stresses to environmental management endpoints; actions to limit GHG emissions
and slow the underlying rate of climate change; and the transition to sustainability across the full spectrum of climate change
impacts and solutions; all as situated within an overarching risk management perspective. These Challenges span all media
and systems critical to effective environmental protection, highlighting the cross-cutting nature of climate change and the
need to address its impacts across systems and places. While this framework uses EPA’s programs as an illustrative example,
the research directions articulated herein are broadly applicable across the spectrum of environmental protection
organizations. Going forward, we recommend that climate-related research to inform environmental protection efforts should
accelerate its evolution toward research that is inherently cross-media and cross-scale; explicitly considers the social
dimensions of change; and focuses on designing solutions to the specific risks climate change poses to the environment and
society.