Lisa Dilling

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.

Current Courses

• ENVS 5100-004: Creating Usable Science - Theory and Practice

Graduate Students

Rebecca Page

MS Student, Environmental Studies Program

Graduated 2018

John Berggren

PhD Student, Environmental Studies Program

Graduated 2017

Current Position: Water Policy Analyst, Western Resource Advocates

Meaghan Daly

PhD Student, Environmental Studies Program

Graduated 2016

Current Position: Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of Leeds

Rachel Hauser

MS Student, Environmental Studies Program

Graduated 2013

Current Position: Engagement Manager for Capacity Center for Climate Extremes, NCAR

Kelli Archie

PhD Student, Environmental Studies Program

Graduated 2012

Current Position: Assistant Professor, Climate Change Research Institute, Victoria University

Elizabeth (Failey) Wagner

MS Student, Environmental Studies Program

Graduated 2011

Current Position: Certified General Real Estate Appraiser, Nash-Johnson Associates, Inc.

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