ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Environ. Sci.
Sec. Interdisciplinary Climate Studies
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fenvs.2025.1605176
This article is part of the Research TopicAddressing climate change in agriculture and natural resources with a focus on adaptation and extreme eventsView all 3 articles
Advancing Decision Support for Climate Adaptation in Agriculture and Natural Resources
Provisionally accepted
- 1University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources, Oakland, California, United States
- 2University of California, Merced, Merced, United States
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Climatic changes in California require farmers to develop adaptation strategies to sustain their production. Decision support is a key element of climate adaptation but requires a robust understanding of producer needs and priorities. One approach to sharing adaptation information and gathering stakeholder interests and needs is through workshops. This investigation was conducted among 78 technical service providers in a session on adaptation decision support during the 2023 California Adaptation Forum. We adopted a constructivist orientation to understand stakeholder interests and needs on decision support during a 30-minute dialogue. Four questions were discussed, and participants recorded their responses on different colored sticky notes which were analyzed thematically. Five interrelated themes were uncovered relating to the lived experiences of service providers in making decisions including climate impacts, community engagement and equity, adaptation programs, resources, and cost-benefit analysis. In making those decisions, the most used information sources and tools were community and tribal knowledge, reports like climate assessment reports, and specialized data portals such as Cal-Adapt, CalEnviroScreen, and Healthy Places Index. Several interconnected themes emerged around stakeholder perceptions of gaps in existing decision support resources, the relevance of decision support, and what researchers should focus on. These themes underscore the importance of data translation, visualization, and community engagement to harness stakeholder lived experiences, dissemination, and training to improve data access. We conclude there is a need to engage technical service providers and extension programs on adaptation decision support, equip them with necessary tools such as curricula and resources that will help in advising.
Keywords: climate adaptation, Decision support tools, visualization, translation, dissemination, Community Engagement, California Adaptation Forum
Received: 02 Apr 2025; Accepted: 16 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Ikendi, Lyons and Pathak. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Tapan B Pathak, University of California, Merced, Merced, United States
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