The University of Michigan, through its School of Natural Resources and Environment, has published the proceedings from the school's May 2007 National Summit on Coping with Climate Change. The event - the first of its kind in the nation - focused on helping the United States prepare for the impact of climate change.

Coping with Climate Change: National Summit Proceedings captures the ideas of top environmental leaders regarding national adaptation strategies to climate change. The 256-page book contains keynote speeches, transcripts of breakout sessions and panel discussions, and the candid and valuable insights from sector syntheses and scenario summaries. The book also includes an executive summary from SNRE Dean Rosina M. Bierbaum and a companion CD, which contains many PowerPoint presentations as well as photos from the Summit.

SNRE organized the May 8-10 Summit as the university's commitment to the Clinton Global Initiative, a non-partisan effort to devise and implement solutions to world challenges. More than 150 experts from academia, government, business and the non-profit sector participated. External sponsorship came from Google Inc., the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the Frey Foundation, the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

"The nation has lost a decade in thinking seriously about coping with climate change. This Summit was an effort to jump-start that conversation with science and policy leaders and put SNRE in the forefront of innovative thinking to confront climate change," Bierbaum said.

"The event made a significant contribution to the much-needed national dialogue on adaptation to climate change," Bierbaum added. "The material presented in the book and companion CD remains as fascinating and relevant today as it did during the Summit.  Building on this work will be essential to preparing our nation to confront climate change."

One of the Summit's most innovative activities, presented in depth in the book, focused around plausible future impacts of climate change. Summit organizers posed to participants five regional impact scenarios - representative of ongoing and projected changes - in order to jump-start thinking about planning and management. The scenarios were designed to be "what-if" scenarios; that is, "if" they occurred, "what" response would be needed. The scenarios were:

• Coastal Community Rapidly Losing Shoreline: A coastal community has lost 250 feet of shoreline already and the loss continues at a rate of 10 feet per year.
• Drought in the Southwest: The Southwest has been in a state of severe drought for 10 years, and grazing lands, fire frequency and water availability are all being affected.
• Failure of the Power Grid: Increased frequency of extreme heat events leads to failure of the power grid - on the scale of recent Midwest/East Coast events - once every five years.
• Rapidly Declining Snowpack in the Northwest: Communities in the Pacific Northwest are experiencing a two-week earlier peak in runoff than in 1980, with 30 percent lower snowpack and these trends are expected to continue
• Great Lakes Levels Fall: The average levels of the Great Lakes fall five feet below current levels

As part of other activities and discussions, participants identified four critical adaption sectors for the United States: public health, energy industry, water quality and fisheries. They developed options for actions to be taken at local, state and national levels to help prepare cities, counties and states as well as business and industry.

Dan Brown, SNRE's associate dean for research, and Jan McAlpine, a visiting scholar from the U.S. Department of State, co-edited the book along with Bierbaum. It is available through Island Press, a nonprofit publisher of environmental books, as well as other online book-selling sites.

More information about the Summit is available at:
http://www.snre.umich.edu/climate_change

To order the book from Island Press, visit:
http://www.islandpress.org/bookstore/details.php?prod_id=1851

About the School of Natural Resources and Environment
The School of Natural Resources and Environment's overarching objective is to contribute to the protection of the Earth's resources and the achievement of a sustainable society. Through research, teaching, and outreach, faculty, staff, and students are devoted to generating knowledge and developing policies, techniques and skills to help practitioners manage and conserve natural and environmental resources to meet the full range of human needs on a sustainable basis.
http://www.snre.umich.edu/

For more information, contact

Kevin Merrill
School of Natural Resources and Environment
O: 734.936.2447 | C: 734.417.7392
merrillk@umich.edu