Debate and deliberation surrounding climate change has shifted from mitigation toward adaptation, with much of the adaptation focus centered on adaptive practices, and infrastructure development. However, there is little research assessing expected impacts, potential benefits, and design challenges that exist for reducing vulnerability to expected climate impacts. The uncertainty of design requirements and associated government policies, and social structures that reflect observed and projected changes in the intensity, duration, and frequency of water-related climate events leaves communities vulnerable to the negative impacts of potential flood and drought. The results of international research into how agricultural infrastructure features in current and planned adaptive capacity of rural communities in Argentina, Canada, and Colombia indicate that extreme hydroclimatic events, as well as climate variability and unpredictability are important for understanding and responding to community vulnerability. The research outcomes clearly identify the need to deliberately plan, coordinate, and implement infrastructures that support community resiliency.
This paper presents results from studies of exposure to climate change and extreme events in the Mendoza River Basin in western Argentina, the Chinchiná River basin in the Colombian Andes, and the Oldman River basin and Swift Current Creek watershed in the Canadian Prairies. These case studies are a major component of an international research project: "Vulnerability and Adaptation to Climate Extremes in the Americas" (VACEA). This project is very much interdisciplinary; with social and natural science providing context and direction for research in the other realm of scholarship, producing insights that very likely would not arise from a more narrow disciplinary perspective. A large number of interviews with local actors revealed that agricultural producers and local officials recognize their high degree of exposure and sensitivity to climate variability and extreme weather events, although they generally do not associate this with climate change. Case studies of exposure demonstrate that the perceptions of the local actors are consistent with the nature of the regional hydroclimatic regimes. In all four river basins, climate variability between years and decades masks any regional expression of global climate change. These modes of periodic variability dominate the paleoclimate of past centuries and the recorded hydroclimate of recent decades. The exposure variables examined in this paper, indices of stream flow, snowpack, water excess and deficit, vary in coherence with the characteristic frequencies of large-scale ocean-atmosphere circulation patterns, specifically the ENSO and PDO. Projections of the future states of these variables require the use of climate 23 models that are able to simulate the internal variability of the climate system and the teleconnections between ocean-atmosphere oscillations and regional hydroclimate.
El Triángulo del Café en Colombia está conformado por los departamentos de Caldas, Quindío y Risaralda. Su diversidad geográfica, climática y en suelos permite identificar varios ecotopos cafeteros que se determinan por respuestas similares en productividad. Este artículo presenta la caracterización de estos ecotopos, que fue posible por la disponibilidad de información geográfica de libre acceso, producto de la Ley de Transparencia y Derecho a la Información Pública. La información utilizada para la caracterización está relacionada con geografía, hidrología, clima, geología, suelos y biomas. El análisis fue realizado empleando las herramientas de los Sistemas de Información Geográfica. Los resultados permiten una mejor comprensión de los factores climáticos y geográficos que son determinantes de la productividad cafetera, a su vez brindan lineamientos para la ordenación y planificación del territorio.
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