PRESS RELEASE
Contact: Dr. Jenna Jorns, Great Lakes Integrated Sciences and Assessments (GLISA) jljorns@umich.edu
GLISA CO-CHAIRS SESSION, PRESENTS TWO PAPERS AT IAGLR 2018
Three GLISA representatives attended the 2018 International Association of Great Lakes Research (IAGLR) meeting in Scarborough, Ontario: co-director Maria Carmen Lemos, climatologist Kimberly Channel, and doctoral student Katherine Browne. IAGLR is a scientific organization made up of researchers studying the Laurentian Great Lakes, other large lakes of the world, and their watersheds.
On June 20th, Lemos and Browne co-chaired an oral presentation session with Dr. Nicole Klenk and Brian Pence of the University of Toronto Scarborough. Entitled “The Science-Policy Interface in Great Lakes Research,” the session explored how Great Lakes research can become “usable.” Presentations by eight experts in socio-ecological systems and environmental governance addressed how the types of decisions, and the scale and uncertainties of decision-making, affect how research is translated into policy-relevant evidence.
In the session, Browne presented a paper, “Sustaining Co-Production: the Case of the Great Lakes Integrated Sciences and Assessments,” co-authored with Lemos. The paper compares drivers and outcomes of coproduction of climate information among organizations in GLISA’s network of partners. Exploring the different forms of engagement and models of brokering and bridging information among twenty-five cases, Browne emphasized that organizations’ different resources and engagement matters in terms of desirable outcomes of coproduction.
Also on June 20th, climatologist Channell presented a paper, “Annual Climate Trends and Impacts Summary for the Great Lakes Basin.” Featured in the session “Climate Interactions with Large Lakes and Physical Streams,” the paper describes a pilot product from the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement (GLWQA) Annex 9 Extended Subcommittee on Climate Change Impacts titled ‘2017 Annual Climate Trends and Impacts Summary for the Great Lakes Basin.’ The summary aims to provide a timely and succinct review of the past year’s climate trends, notable climate-related events, and relevant new research, assessments, and activities in the context of the Great Lakes in a short and easy-to-understand document.