Project Title: Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation Onsouthwestern Dod Facilities

SERDP Project RC-2232

Project Title: Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation onSouthwestern DoD Facilities

Project Goal III: Developing Climate Services for Moving Research to Applications

Task 6, Subtask 6.3

DraftUA SERDP Cross-Project Workshop Report

Workshop Dates: March 7-8, 2016

Draft Report Issued: April 18, 2016

University of Arizona, Tucson

Institute of the Environment

For further information please contact:

Kathy Jacobs, Director

Center for Climate Adaptation Science and Solutions

Project RC-2232 Co-PI

University of Arizona

UA SERDP Cross-Project Workshop Report Outline

Section I: Introduction, p. 1

Section II: Background, p. 3

Section III: Lessons Learned across SERDP Projects, p. 6

Section IV: Findings Associated with DoD Context and Culture, p. 10

Section V: Research Ideas,p. 16

Section VI: Conclusions and Path Forward,p. 20

Appendix A: Participant List, p. 22

Appendix B: Agenda, p. 23

Section I: Introduction

The purpose of this workshop was to discuss the transferable lessons that can be learned across DoD climate adaptation projects and to identify research needs in support of climate adaptation. We discussed the findings of individual adaptation projects funded by the Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program (SERDP), identified obstacles to adaptation and opportunities for climate services mechanisms, reviewed and commented on draft hypotheses developed by the University of Arizona(UA) SERDP team, and discussed scalability of SERDP science to meet DoD needs. Finally, we developed a long list of ideas for future SERDP research. We were pleased that Admiral Dave Titley, former Oceanographer of the Navy and Chief Operating Officer ofthe National Oceanic and Atmospheric and Administration (NOAA), joined us for this event, as well as Major Ryan Harris, Director of Operations for the 14th Weather Squadron, NinetteSadusky, Deputy Director of the U.S. Navy Task Force Climate Change, and Cate Fox-Lent of the US Army Corps of Engineers. The insights of these important players in the DoD climate/weather/adaptation arena were invaluable. A list of participants appears as Appendix A, and the workshop agenda appears as Appendix B.

Research Questions Addressed at the Meeting:

• Is DoD different from other communities that are working to manage risk? If so, in what ways? (e.g., culture, leadership, turnover issues?) What are the implications?
• How does what we know across the SERDP projects inform the implementation of the recent Departmental Directiveon Climate Change?
• How might the research investments of other federal agencies in the area of risk communication and risk management be leveraged or augmented to advance DoD’s strategic interests?
• What are the specific research needs that, if met, would substantially enhance the capacity of DoD to manage risks to its mission and facilities?

Findings: As we expected, many experiences across SERDP projects were similar, especially in the context of challenges in engaging with on-base personnel. Transferability and scalability of research outputs depend on strategies that take a wide range of “culture” and “incentive” considerations into account, some of which are entirely consistent with findings in similar projects outside of the military. The recent adoption (in January, 2016) of the DoD Directive on Climate Change Adaptation and Resilience(DoD Directive 4715.21) is likely to have positive consequences for increasing interest and investments in climate preparedness, though the choices made in implementing the Directive will control how quickly the uptake occurs and how significantly these efforts are incorporated into the fabric of decision-making across the Department. Major outcomes from the conversations in the workshop, including suggestions related to research needs, are summarized in this report.

Section II: Background

Insights provided by participants in the workshop are summarized in this report. SERDP has been funding projects related to climate adaptation for seven years; the importance of tying the use of climate information to decision-making has been steadily rising. What does climate preparedness actually mean in the context of DoD? In reality, success in modifying management, policy and infrastructure decisions to “take climate change into account” is about human dimensions, not just physical climate science. The basic physics of the climate system are understood and widely appreciated by many, butsome career bureaucrats and active duty personnel are caught in the middle in the current political context. It is therefore important to identifyhowDoDcanprotect mission-readinessin the face of changing risks resulting from changing climate.

These challenges are not unique to DoD; thus, it is also important to identify what can be learned from other entities that can be translated into a DoD context. All federal agencies are required by Executive Order to develop plans to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and to identify and manage climate-related risks, and there are many private sector interests whose work is of particular relevance. For example, the concerns of the oil and gas industry in protecting their infrastructure, often operating near or within civilian communities and/or extreme environments,can be very similar to the issues faced by military infrastructure both within the US and overseas.

SERDP is interested in bridgingthe gap between scientific evidence and how to use that knowledge to support decision-making in DoD. Any inputsfor the next R&D solicitation cycle (FY 18) that result from this workshop areneeded before the end of May of 2016. SERDP’s objective is to be strategic… to anticipate future conditions and encourage preparedness. Some of the DoD approaches to “workingaround” current climate-related issues havealready resulted in unintended consequences, such as short-term approaches to fire management that have increased the risks of more catastrophic fires, and a failure to evaluate and prepare for the full range of future conditions could prove costly in the future. There are many questions about how to makeDoD facilities, operations, and missions more resilient in the face of increasing climate challenges. In some cases there is a need for transformative change (particularly in the context of inevitable impacts, like those associated with sea-level rise). However, like the rest of society, there is a tendency to focus on incremental solutions and on weather timescales, rather than seasonal-to-decadal timescales.

To date, it has been hard for DoDas a whole to internalize and proactively respond to climate-related risks, for a range of reasons beyond the political ones. The specifics of probable impacts are not as well understood as they could be; the rotation of leadership at the installations limits institutional memory and there are urgent and ever-present operational and mission-critical priorities that make thinking about the longer term difficult. This is problematic, since the business of the DoDis risk management on multiple timescales. Even the observation that climate-related humanitarian response requirements are becoming more frequent and expensive does not always add up to a conclusion that these needs may be linked to an increase in climate risks.

Workshop participants noted that climate change could cost trillions of dollars by the year 2100. Thisshould be a motivator for action across a range of sectors.For example, the New York and Los AngelesPort Authorities are recognizing the potential magnitude of sea-level-rise impacts, as is the City of Miami. The DoD facilities in Norfolk, Virginia are considered “ground zero” for these impacts.

Over the last two decades, the military has made transformational changes in the way it manages environmental issues. Historically, meeting the requirements of the Endangered Species Act and the benefits of managing to support ecosystem services were not well appreciated by DoD personnel. Now there are a wide range of reasons why investments in these programs have been broadly embraced, along with the community-building efforts that have come with solving these problems.Extending this flexibility to address climate-related issues is a logical next step, backed by the strength of the new Directive.

The convergence in understanding that comes from sharing experiences across the SERDP-funded projects provides an opportunity for collective learning, which was the intent of this workshop. Identifying these collective lessons and leveraging efforts of others are important as SERDP explores ways to strategically invest in research that supports DoD’s efforts. Given the new Directive, the questions we ask are:

• “What can SERDP do to support the implementation of the Directive, given that it appears there are critical information and research elements needed?”
• “Focusing efforts on risk management, and defined processes to protect the mission at a range of geographic scales and time frames, how can climate readinessbe enhanced?”
• “How can the urgency/priority of adaptation efforts be established for each facility?”

Section IIIof this report is organized around a simple typology of installation-level adaptation/risk management experiences developed by Moss et al. (RC-2206) to summarize the lessons learned through the experience of the SERDP project teams in our cohort(see

• Stakeholder engagement (theory vs. practice, comparisons with lessons in other communities)
• Climate and environmental information (observations and projections and the need for tailored information and practices at different temporal and spatial scales)
• Impacts work (risk assessments and identification of impacts across temporal and spatial scales)
• Adaptation (identification, implementation, evaluation of options in a manner consistent with the standard “adaptation cycle”).

Section IV of this report includes findings from the workshop associated with the DoD context and culture, and the implications for integration of adaptation under the following themes:

• Similarities and differences between DoD and other communitiesfaced withthe need to manage climate-related risks. Although DoD is different in some ways (e.g., mission-readiness is its primary concern), it is striking how similar its issues are to others, for example, other Federal agencies, the oil and gas industry, ports and airports.
• Incentives and opportunities for institutionalizing adaptation (mainstreaming, incorporating into officer training, etc.; overcoming obstacles to resilience, e.g., Base Realignment and Closure [BRAC] threat, staff turnover)
• Scalability/transferability of learning (knowledge transfers within DoD,potential to scale up)
• Governance levels and opportunities for collaboration (across training ranges, facilities; big picture/large-scale vs installation-level activities, community efforts like SERPAS, JLUSP (see p. 5 of Directive 4715.21)
• Mainstreaming, culture, partnerships – alternative models for accelerating the research-to-operations processes

Section V of this report includes a series of research ideas that can be considered by SERDP. Many of them relate to implementation of the Directive and institutional/behavioral issues, including ways to support decision-making in the context of uncertainty. Although uncertainties underlie most decisions on a day-to-day basis both inside and outside DoD, uncertainties associated with climate change are often a common barrier to progress. The primary issues here are:

• framingclimate changeissuesto avoid having them be viewed as a barrier to action;
• helping personnel embraceclimate change uncertainty instead of avoiding it is an important approach in decision-making; and
• providingmeaningful and relevant tools such as scenario planning to helpwith the transition.

Section VI of the report contains our conclusions and a suggested path forward.

Section III. Lessons Learned across SERDP Projects

Best Practices Discussion: A brief overview of SERDP projects and lessons learned

1. Climate Change Impacts andAdaptation on Southwestern DoD Facilities (RC-2232)
   Gregg Garfin, Don Falk, Kit O’Connor, RafeSagarin (UA), Anna Haworth (Acclimatise UK)

The UA SERDP team convened workshops at four bases representing each branch of the military (Naval Base Coronado [NBC]; the Barry M. Goldwater Ranges[BMGR] East (Air Force) and West (Marines); and Fort Huachuca(Army) to establish a big picture overview. They evaluated climate related risks with those in the room, in terms of likelihood and impact, and the groupsvoted on the priority risks related to their facilities. Utilities and facilities people were on board with working with the UA team for NBC, in part because the base commander was strongly supportive. He was already aiming to mainstream adaptation activities within existing risk-management efforts. At NBC, the Navy shared its emergency management protocol, which included a risk-management framework. This allowed for a quantitative assessment of risk to be performed by Acclimatise. Thesetypes of existing protocols and frameworks were not available for the other three locations.

Sea-level rise is currently considered an imminent and long term threat at NBC, and is already being incorporated into its long term planning. A sea-level-rise report for NBC had been prepared by Scripps Institution of Oceanography, through a SPARWAR project (R. Flick, B. Chadwick, investigators), so the UA team focused on inland fire danger as an important source of risk that had not yet been addressed. Using the fire-risk assessment as an entry point into adaptation efforts was a deliberate strategy by the UA team to gain trust for the longer term effort.

Personnel at the BGMRsites were not as aware or concerned about climate-change impacts. Their primary risks are extreme precipitation and impacts on riparian areas and habitat. They are located within an already extreme environment,so changing risk is not of much interest.Flooding, however, is considered an imminent threat because it cuts off access to roads that traverse the installations; diminished road access can considerably delay the training missions of these installations. Opportunities appeared in conversations about partnering with neighboring landowners, who manage risks that intersect at the boundary of the BMGR installation, such as habitat and migration of threatened and endangered wildlife species, and desert grass and shrub fires, which can cross the fenceline.

The contrast in these experiences demonstrate the need for, and importance of, a local champion to provide access to key personnel across management sectors (e.g., operations and infrastructure, in addition to management of threatened and endangered species), and to provide the impetus to treat climate change as an important current risk. Engagement is time- and resource-intensive, and high turnover is frustrating for those who hope to build long-term, trusted relationships.

Working through the particulars on fire-risk assessment at NBC and Fort Huachuca led to broader understanding and increased interest from base personnel. The UA SERDP approach evolved to focus on problem-solving in the areas of interest to the bases asa mode of engagement. Co-identifying problems or challenges of immediate interest to base leadership opened the door to thinking longer term about climate adaptation. Wildfire vulnerability was an issuethat facilitated the path tobroader climate riskdiscussions.

Demonstrating the way that complex land management problems could be addressed using publicly available tools was the primary approach at NBC, while the team developed tailored decision-support tools for Fort Huachuca. Interpersonal discussions about where the current risks are coming from allowed consideration of the potential for increasing impacts in the future. Discussion evolved to how fires that already occurred on or near the bases could be expected to behave in a warmer, drier world, and how to adapt to that risk.

Modeling studies at Ft. Huachuca showed that the landscape hasn’t changed much in the last 140 years, but in an RCP 8.5 emissions scenario (where the greenhouse gas emission trajectory continues on its present course), the installationwould see major changes in its landscape, including a transition to shrubs rather than trees:i.e. a more flammable landscape. It was also found that fireleads tochanges in flood regimes: rain events on new landscapes lead to new risks. By the 4th decade into the future, it was estimated that 3 to 4 times the volume of watercould flow across the base in an average year, as compared with the present.Moreover, the history of recent fires in the region has demonstrated that increased flow volume can also be accompanied by debris flows and increased sediment transport down to the elevations of Ft. Huachuca’s built infrastructure, roadways, and residential areas.

NBC and Ft. Huachuca both became interested in active management of their landscapes following these discussions; a simulation helped illustrate that some of the short-term adaptation solutions might have positive consequences, and could delay wildfire and subsequent flooding impacts for a couple of decades.

At NBC, the existing chaparral landscapes are both highly flammable and important for training.Base personnel noted that theoverall utility of the base would be compromised if there were no shrub cover. Using public data sources, including a fire atlas and Landsat info, the UA teamevaluated how the landscape has been influenced by fire in the past. Due to fire suppression, there have been no fireswhere the new facilities are located, leading tofuel buildup and high fire danger there. Old growth chaparral only regenerates with fire; fire suppression encourages the introduction and establishment of invasive species – a danger for chaparral. NBC may have been inadvertently increasing its risk of catastrophic fire by managing for short-term risks. The UA team showed that managed burning will lead to lower risks.