Agenda

The agenda is being finalized with speakers and panelists to be confirmed in early March. The skeleton of the workshop agenda is as follows.

Day 1
Engage National Park Service (NPS) partners in a discussion of opportunities for collaboration on developing monitoring protocols and leveraging resources for monitoring indicators of climate change on federal lands.

• Overview of the state of the knowledge of projected climate change and ecological response to climate change in the Southwest Deserts
• Panel discussion on the role of inter-agency cooperation and ongoing activities as associated with the climate change monitoring in the Desert Landscape Conservation Cooperative (LCC)
• Talk on data sharing and integration across landscapes
• Talk on NPS climate change strategy

Day 2
Engage park unit managers and partners in establishing climate change monitoring priorities for Inventory and Monitoring (I&M) networks.

• Talk on first principles and criteria for multi-network monitoring strategy
• Presentations of conceptual diagrams and ongoing I&M monitoring activities related to climate change impacts on the arid land parks; systems to be covered: Sky Islands, the bajada gradient, rivers and streams, and springs, tinajas, and oases
• Breakout group exercises scoped at inventorying existing monitoring, identifying gaps, identifying collaboration possibilities, and prioritizing next steps

Day 3
Engage networks and other key staff (NPS Planning Group) in developing multi-year strategies and work plans for protocol development and implementing long-term monitoring of climate change indicators in parks within the LCC.