One Earth 2020_Horizon Scan Survey Results
Description
Results from an online survey that was part of a modified (two-phase) horizon scan to determine the emerging topics in ecological drought. See Crausbay et al. 2020. Unfamiliar territory: emerging themes for ecological drought research and management. One Earth. We conducted a two-phase horizon scan that was co-produced with drought scientists, managers, and decision-makers to reveal emerging topics in ecological drought research and management. The pool of experts was defined as the list of attendees (n=180) from a series of eight regional Ecological Drought Workshops. These workshops were convened by the U.S. Geological Survey’s National Climate Adaptation Science Center and were held in each of the eight Regional Climate Adaptation Science Centers (CASCs) between September 2015 and March 2017. The Regional CASC network covers the entire continental U.S., Hawai’i, Alaska, the U.S. Affiliated Pacific Islands, and the U.S. Caribbean. Although these workshops and experts were centered in the U.S., they do encompass a wide range of ecosystem types and drought regimes represented globally. Each of the regional workshops sought to identify the most pressing ecological drought issues for their particular region and assess the current knowledge and research pertinent to these issues. We evaluated the synthesis outputs from each workshop, including summary documents and outreach materials, to generate a list of unique and emerging ecological drought topics across all eight regions (n=19). As a second phase to this horizon scanning approach, in May 2017, we distributed an anonymous online survey to the same attendees of all eight regional Ecological Drought Workshops (n=180). The survey requested that attendees assign each topic a rank based on its degree of ‘emergence’ (e.g., topics yet to be extensively reviewed/synthesized, that relate to novel scientific questions, and are increasingly important in the 21st century, and/or provide insight on innovative management approaches). We presented topics to rank within different aspects of vulnerability; in this case, either exposure, sensitivity / adaptive capacity, or the ecological impact itself. Then we asked attendees to provide up to five additional topics they considered to be emerging in ecological drought research or management (resulting in n=17 added topics), and to list their top three to five highest-ranked topics among those provided or added. In total, 52 of the 180 attendees responded.