Lisa Dilling
Research Interests
I am a Professor in the Environmental Studies program and Director of the Western Water Assessment program. My research focuses on understanding how society chooses to respond to environmental risks such as climate change. I use interdisciplinary, empirical methods to study questions such as how different views about the nature of risk affect the outcomes of decision processes. I am also interested in the tradeoffs involved in implementing new policies at the local scale and understanding how science can best support robust decision making in deeply uncertain contexts. My work has recently focused on drought and urban water management, climate change and public lands, geoengineering, and municipal policies regarding natural hazards.
Current Projects
Interactions of Drought and Climate Adaptation (IDCA) for Urban Water
This project, funded by the NOAA Sectoral Applications Research Program (SARP), examined how drought policies interact with both short-term drought and long-term climate change.
Learn MoreCurrent Research
One of my collaborative projects is focused on identifying opportunities to improve drought risk management and build climate resilience. We conduct in-depth interviews, participant observation, document analysis, and focus groups of Western Slope water entities to characterize decision processes related to drought risk and describe the current use of information among water providers in the Western Slope. In addition, the team is assessing whether snowpack indicators will remain good predictors of seasonal water supplies under a warming climate using modeled data. Climate change projections indicate that a regional warming trend will continue, causing the snowpack to melt earlier and produce less runoff for the same precipitation input, and potentially reducing its utility as a drought indicator.
Another of my collaborative projects seeks to enhance understanding of how drought management strategies may position urban water providers to respond to the long-term impacts of climate change. Municipalities have responded in various ways to past droughts, enacting a variety of policies to cope with temporary reductions in water supply. The fundamental question that arises, however, is whether the policies put in place to reduce short-term vulnerability to drought might in fact have unintended consequences on adaptive capacity in the longer term. The project is using a case study and interview approach to understand drought decision-making in several cities across the United States.
Other recent research has included working with several smaller municipalities in Western Colorado and southern Utah to build collective understanding of how climate is affecting their water supply, flood vulnerability, and fire risk, and where options exist to build resilience for the future. I am also a partner in the new North Central Climate Adaptation Science Center that seeks to build climate resilience among resource managers in the North Central region (Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska and Kansas) by providing innovative and relevant science in a timely and accessible way.
Courses Taught
- ENVS 5100-004: Creating Usable Science - Theory and Practice
- ENVS 4800 Capstone in Critical Thinking: Urban Resilience
Graduate Students
MS student, Environmental Studies Program

PhD Student, Environmental Studies Program
Graduated 2016

MS Student, Environmental Studies Program
Graduated 2013

PhD Student, Environmental Studies Program
Graduated 2012
MS Student, Environmental Studies Program
Graduated 2011

MS Student, Environmental Studies Program
Graduated 2011
Highlighted Publications
- The Politics of 'Usable' Knowledge: Examining the Development of Climate Services in Tanzania
- The Critical Role of Communities of Practice and Peer Learning in Scaling Hydroclimatic Information Adoption
- Is adaptation success a flawed concept?
- Savior of Rural Landscapes or Solomon's Choice? Colorado's Experiment with Alternative Transfer Methods for Water (ATMs)
- Testing the Potential of Multiobjective Evolutionary Algorithms (MOEAs) with Colorado Water Managers
- Drought in Urban Water Systems: Learning Lessons for Climate Adaptive Capacity
- Regional Climate Response Collaboratives: Multi-Institutional Support for Climate Resilience
- Making Research More Usable at CU Boulder
- Learning to Expect Surprise: Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, Maria, and Beyond
- Making Sense of Climate Engineering: A Focus Group Study of Lay Publics in Four Countries
- Drivers of adaptation: Responses to weather- and climate-related hazards in 60 local governments in the Intermountain Western U.S.
- Participatory Framework for Assessment and Improvement of Tools (ParFAIT): Increasing the impact and relevance of water management decision support research
- Climate in Context: Science and Society Partnering for Adaptation (coauthored chapters)
- Managing Carbon on Federal Public Lands: Opportunities and Challenges in Southwestern Colorado
- The Role of U.S. States in Facilitating Effective Water Governance Under Stress and Change
- Adaptation, Invited Contribution to Research Handbook on Climate Governance
- The Colorado Basin River Forecast Center and the Decision Making Process
- Community Involvement Critical to Adaptation, Managing Climate Change Risks
- The dynamics of vulnerability: Why adapting to climate variability will not always prepare us for climate change
- What Stakeholder Needs Tell Us about Enabling Adaptive Capacity: The Intersection of Context and Information Provision across Regions in the United States
- Unpacking the 'information barrier': Comparing perspectives on information as a barrier to climate change adaptation in the interior mountain West
Bear Lake in Rocky Mountain National Park. Photo: Daniel Mayer, Wikimedia
View Publications
- Page, R; Dilling, L (2020), How experiences of climate extremes motivate adaptation among water managers. Version: 1 CLIMATIC CHANGE 161 (3) 499-516, issn: 0165-0009, doi: 10.1007/s10584-020-02712-7
- Dilling, L; Daly, ME; Kenney, DA; Klein, R; Miller, K; Ray, AJ; Travis, WR; Wilhelmi, O (2019), Drought in urban water systems: Learning lessons for climate adaptive capacity. Version: 1 CLIMATE RISK MANAGEMENT 23 32-42, issn: 2212-0963, doi: 10.1016/j.crm.2018.11.001
- Dilling, L; Prakash, A; Zommers, Z; Ahmad, F; Singh, N; de Wit, S; Nalau, J; Daly, M; Bowman, K (2019), Is adaptation success a flawed concept?. Version: 1 NATURE CLIMATE CHANGE 9 (8) 572-574, issn: 1758-678X, doi: 10.1038/s41558-019-0539-0
- Daly, M; Dilling, L (2019), The politics of "usable" knowledge: examining the development of climate services in Tanzania. Version: 1 CLIMATIC CHANGE 157 (1) 61-80, issn: 0165-0009, doi: 10.1007/s10584-019-02510-w
- Smith, R; Kasprzyk, J; Dilling, L (2019), Testing the potential of Multiobjective Evolutionary Algorithms (MOEAs) with Colorado water managers. Version: 1 ENVIRONMENTAL MODELLING & SOFTWARE 117 149-163, issn: 1364-8152, doi: 10.1016/j.envsoft.2019.03.011
- Dilling, L., J. Berggren, J. Henderson, and D. Kenney (2019), Savior of rural landscapes or Solomon's choice? Colorado's experiment with alternative transfer methods for water ATMs. Water Security Version: 1 6 , doi: 10.1016/j.wasec.2019.100027
- Page, R; Dilling, L (2019), The Critical Role of Communities of Practice and Peer Learning in Scaling Hydroclimatic Information Adoption. Version: 1 WEATHER CLIMATE AND SOCIETY 11 (4) 851-862, issn: 1948-8327, doi: 10.1175/WCAS-D-18-0130.1
- Averyt, K, JD Derner, L Dilling, R Guerrero, L Joyce, S McNeeley, E McNie, J Morisette, D Ojima, R OMalley, D Peck, AJ Ray, M Reeves and W Travis (2018), Regional Climate Response Collaboratives Multi-Institutional Support for Climate Resilience. Bull. Amer. Meteorol. Soc. Version: 1 99 (5) 891-898, issn: 0003-0007, ids: GH8CF, doi: 10.1175/BAMS-D-17-0183.1
- Dilling, L., R. Morss, and O. Wilhelmi (2018), Learning to Expect Surprise: Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, Maria, and Beyond. Journal of Extreme Events Version: 1 4 (3) , doi: 10.1142/S2345737617710014
- Smith, R, J Kasprzyk and L Dilling (2017), Participatory Framework for Assessment and Improvement of Tools (ParFAIT): Increasing the impact and relevance of water management decision support research. Environ. Modell. Softw. Version: 1 95 432-446, issn: 1364-8152, ids: FB5JO, doi: 10.1016/j.envsoft.2017.05.004
- Dilling, L, E Pizzi, J Berggren, A Ravikumar and K Andersson (2017), Drivers of adaptation: Responses to weather- and climate-related hazards in 60 local governments in the Intermountain Western US. Environ. Plan. A Version: 1 49 (11) 2628-2648, issn: 0308-518X, ids: FM4PM, doi: 10.1177/0308518X16688686
- Wibeck, V, A Hansson, J Anshelm, S Asayama, L Dilling, PM Feetham, R Hauser, A Ishii and M Sugiyama (2017), Making sense of climate engineering: a focus group study of lay publics in four countries. Clim. Change Version: 1 145 (2-Jan) 1-14, issn: 0165-0009, ids: FM4XI, doi: 10.1007/s10584-017-2067-0
- Dilling, L, KC Kelsey, DP Fernandez, YD Huang, JB Milford and JC Neff (2016), Managing Carbon on Federal Public Lands: Opportunities and Challenges in Southwestern Colorado. Environ. Manage. Version: 1 58 (2) 283-296, issn: 0364-152X, ids: DQ4FK, doi: 10.1007/s00267-016-0714-2, PubMed ID: 27272016
- Kirchhoff, CJ and L Dilling (2016), The role of US states in facilitating effective water governance under stress and change. Water Resour. Res. Version: 1 52 (4) 2951-2964, issn: 0043-1397, ids: DN9XA, doi: 10.1002/2015WR018431
- Dilling, L, K Lackstrom, B Haywood, K Dow, MC Lemos, J Berggren and S Kalafatis (2015), What Stakeholder Needs Tell Us about Enabling Adaptive Capacity: The Intersection of Context and Information Provision across Regions in the United States. Weather Clim. Soc. Version: 1 7 (1) 5-17, issn: 1948-8327, ids: CA5UN, doi: 10.1175/WCAS-D-14-00001.1
- Dilling, L, ME Daly, WR Travis, OV Wilhelmi and RA Klein (2015), The dynamics of vulnerability: why adapting to climate variability will not always prepare us for climate change. Wiley Interdiscip. Rev.-Clim. Chang. Version: 1 6 (4) 413-425, issn: 1757-7780, ids: CK1SK, doi: 10.1002/wcc.341
- Dilling, L (2015), Adaptation. Version: 1 RESEARCH HANDBOOK ON CLIMATE GOVERNANCE 470-479, Ed. Backstrand, K; Lovbrand, E, ids: BE7WF, isbn: 978-1-78347-060-0; 978-1-78347-059-4
- Dilling, L and J Berggren (2015), What do stakeholders need to manage for climate change and variability? A document-based analysis from three mountain states in the Western USA. Reg. Envir. Chang. Version: 1 15 (4) 657-667, issn: 1436-3798, ids: CD8VK, doi: 10.1007/s10113-014-0668-y
- Archie, KM, L Dilling, JB Milford and FC Pampel (2014), Unpacking the information barrier: Comparing perspectives on information as a barrier to climate change adaptation in the interior mountain West. J. Environ. Manage. Version: 1 133 397-410, issn: 0301-4797, ids: AA8JH, doi: 10.1016/j.jenvman.2013.12.015, PubMed ID: 24440587
- Dilling, L and E Failey (2013), Managing carbon in a multiple use world: The implications of land-use decision context for carbon management. Glob. Environ. Change-Human Policy Dimens. Version: 1 23 (1) 291-300, issn: 0959-3780, ids: 099JL, doi: 10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2012.10.012
- Dilling, L and R Hauser (2013), Governing geoengineering research: why, when and how?. Clim. Change Version: 1 121 (3) 553-565, issn: 0165-0009, ids: 256OH, doi: 10.1007/s10584-013-0835-z
- Ellenwood, MS, L Dilling and JB Milford (2012), Managing United States Public Lands in Response to Climate Change: A View From the Ground Up. Environ. Manage. Version: 1 49 (5) 954-967, issn: 0364-152X, ids: 934WO, doi: 10.1007/s00267-012-9829-2, PubMed ID: 22437431
- Archie, KM, L Dilling, JB Milford and FC Pampel (2012), Climate Change and Western Public Lands: a Survey of U.S. Federal Land Managers on the Status of Adaptation Efforts. Ecol. Soc. Version: 1 17 (4) , Art. No. 20, issn: 1708-3087, ids: 069EF, doi: 10.5751/ES-05187-170420
- McNeeley, SM, SA Tessendorf, H Lazrus, T Heikkila, IM Ferguson, JS Arrigo, SZ Attari, CM Cianfrani, L Dilling, JJ Gurdak, SK Kampf, D Kauneckis, CJ Kirchhoff, J Lee, BR Lintner, KM Mahoney, S Opitz-Stapleton, P Ray, AB South, AP Stubblefield and J Brugger (2012), Catalyzing Frontiers in Water-Climate-Society Research A View from Early Career Scientists and Junior Faculty. Bull. Amer. Meteorol. Soc. Version: 1 93 (4) 477-484, issn: 0003-0007, ids: 930BO, doi: 10.1175/BAMS-D-11-00221.1
- Morss, RE, OV Wilhelmi, GA Meehl and L Dilling (2011), Improving Societal Outcomes of Extreme Weather in a Changing Climate: An Integrated Perspective. Annu. Rev. Environ. Resour Version: 1 36 1-25, Ed. Gadgil, A; Liverman, DM, issn: 1543-5938, ids: BYP43, isbn: 978-0-8243-2336-3, doi: 10.1146/annurev-environ-060809-100145
- Hale, B and L Dilling (2011), Geoengineering, Ocean Fertilization, and the Problem of Permissible Pollution. Sci. Technol. Hum. Values Version: 1 36 (2) 190-212, issn: 0162-2439, ids: 719GJ, doi: 10.1177/0162243910366150
- Dilling, L and MC Lemos (2011), Creating usable science: Opportunities and constraints for climate knowledge use and their implications for science policy. Glob. Environ. Change-Human Policy Dimens. Version: 1 21 (2) 680-689, issn: 0959-3780, ids: 784SC, doi: 10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2010.11.006
- Failey, EL and L Dilling (2010), Carbon stewardship: land management decisions and the potential for carbon sequestration in Colorado, USA. Environ. Res. Lett. Version: 1 5 (2) , Art. No. 24005, issn: 1748-9326, ids: 618PZ, doi: 10.1088/1748-9326/5/2/024005
- Moser, SC and L Dilling (2007), Toward the social tipping point: creating a climate for change. Version: 1 CREATING A CLIMATE FOR CHANGE: COMMUNICATING CLIMATE CHANGE AND FACILITATING SOCIAL CHANGE 491-516, Ed. Moser, SC; Dilling, L, ids: BXV80, isbn: 978-0-52186-923-2, doi: 10.1017/CBO9780511535871.035
- Dilling, L and B Farhar (2007), Making it easy: establishing energy efficiency and renewable energy as routine best practice. Version: 1 CREATING A CLIMATE FOR CHANGE: COMMUNICATING CLIMATE CHANGE AND FACILITATING SOCIAL CHANGE 359-382, Ed. Moser, SC; Dilling, L, ids: BXV80, isbn: 978-0-52186-923-2, doi: 10.1017/CBO9780511535871.026
- Dilling, L (2007), Towards science in support of decision making: characterizing the supply of carbon cycle science. Environ. Sci. Policy Version: 1 10 (1) 48-61, issn: 1462-9011, ids: 132ZI, doi: 10.1016/j.envsci.2006.10.008
- Moser, SC and L Dilling (2007), CREATING A CLIMATE FOR CHANGE Communicating Climate Change and Facilitating Social Change Preface. Version: 1 CREATING A CLIMATE FOR CHANGE: COMMUNICATING CLIMATE CHANGE AND FACILITATING SOCIAL CHANGE IX-XII, Ed. Moser, SC; Dilling, L, ids: BXV80, isbn: 978-0-52186-923-2, doi: 10.1017/CBO9780511535871.001
- Dilling, Liso (2007), Toward carbon governance: Challenges across scales in the United States. GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL POLITICS Version: 1 7 (2) 28-+, issn: 1526-3800, doi: 10.1162/glep.2007.7.2.28
- Dilling, L and SC Moser (2007), CREATING A CLIMATE FOR CHANGE Communicating Climate Change and Facilitating Social Change Introduction. Version: 1 CREATING A CLIMATE FOR CHANGE: COMMUNICATING CLIMATE CHANGE AND FACILITATING SOCIAL CHANGE 1-27, Ed. Moser, SC; Dilling, L, ids: BXV80, isbn: 978-0-52186-923-2, doi: 10.1017/CBO9780511535871.003
- Miller, J. B. (2005), Book Review: ‘The Global Carbon Cycle: Integrating Humans, Climate, and the Natural World’. Bull. Amer. Meteorol. Soc. Version: 1 87 (4)
- Dilling, L and MA Brzezinski (2004), Quantifying marine snow as a food choice for zooplankton using stable silicon isotope tracers. J. Plankton Res. Version: 1 26 (9) 1105-1114, issn: 0142-7873, doi: 10.1093/plankt/fbh103
- Moser, SC and L Dilling (2004), Making climate hot - Communicating the urgency and challenge of global climate change. Environment Version: 1 46 (10) 32-46, issn: 0013-9157, ids: 891RY, doi: 10.1080/00139150409605820
- Dilling, L, SC Doney, J Edmonds, KR Gurney, R Harriss, D Schimel, B Stephens and G Stokes (2003), Therole of carbon cycle observations andknowledge in carbon management. Annu. Rev. Environ. Resour. Version: 1 28 521-558, issn: 1543-5938, ids: 801NN, doi: 10.1146/annurev.energy.28.011503.163443
- Dilling, L and AL Alldredge (2000), Fragmentation of marine snow by swimming macrozooplankton: A new process impacting carbon cycling in the sea. DEEP-SEA RESEARCH PART I-OCEANOGRAPHIC RESEARCH PAPERS Version: 1 47 (7) 1227-1245, issn: 0967-0637, doi: 10.1016/S0967-0637(99)00105-3
- Dilling, L, J Wilson, D Steinberg and A Alldredge (1998), Feeding by the euphausiid Euphausia pacifica and the copepod Calanus pacificus on marine snow. MARINE ECOLOGY PROGRESS SERIES Version: 1 170 189-201, issn: 0171-8630, doi: 10.3354/meps170189
- DILLING, L and AL ALLDREDGE (1993), CAN CHAETOGNATH FECAL PELLETS CONTRIBUTE SIGNIFICANTLY TO CARBON FLUX. MARINE ECOLOGY PROGRESS SERIES Version: 1 92 (2-Jan) 51-58, issn: 0171-8630, doi: 10.3354/meps092051