Assistant professor Maria Carmen Lemos is a co-PI on a new project lead by Purdue University to develop decision-support tools to help corn and soybean growers adapt their practices to changes in climate. Lemos will be focusing on understanding how farmers in Michigan, Indiana, Iowa and Nebraska use, or don't use, climate information and on the role of social networks—farmers, extension agents, and farmers' advisers—on knowledge dissemination and uptake.
The University of Michigan and Michigan State University will jointly lead a federally funded effort to help Great Lakes-region residents anticipate and adapt to climate change. The interdisciplinary effort will be funded by a five-year, $4.2 million grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The new Great Lakes Regional Integrated Sciences and Assessments Center (GLISA) will focus initially on the watersheds of lakes Erie and Huron and three critical topics: agriculture, watershed management, and natural resources-based recreation and tourism.
Three SNRE researchers have been selected to contribute climate-change adaptation research and analysis to the fifth climate assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The comprehensive assessments examine climate change in terms of physical science, adaptation, and mitigation of impacts, and provide governments with sound scientific knowledge of climate change.