 Welcome and thanks for coming. My name is Joel Smith and I'm an independent consultant connecting in from Boulder, Colorado. And on behalf of the National Academies Committee to advise the US global change research program, the US GCRP. I welcome you to this listening session on global change issues with a specific focus on water related challenges and opportunities. The US GCRP federal agencies coordinate climate and global change research and use the results to create tools and assessments to help people make decisions in the context of global changes. Through this session and others in this five part series. I would like to connect more directly with users and researchers who are building and applying global change information and tools in their work and to gather insights and information that US GCRP can consider as it plans the implementation of its work over the coming decades. In the sessions we are welcoming staff from the US GCRP and agencies that are part of the US GCRP members of the National Academies Committee to advise the US GCRP US GCRP of which I'm honored to be a member, and all of you users and researchers who engaged in building on and applying the types of knowledge and tools that you see it that the US GCRP is charged with developing supporting. So, we can see the agenda slide. Okay, so in today's session, following the introductory remarks by myself and GCRP and that Academy staff and Wayne Higgins from NOAA. We have a series of speakers will provide statements, all of whom have expressed interest in contributing when registering for the session. Everyone here will have opportunities to contribute to an engagement platform that we will introduce shortly. Now, just note representatives from the US GCRP and the committee to advise the US GCRP are attending and listening mode today. So thank you for joining and look forward to hearing from you over the next 90 minutes to 330 Eastern. All right, next slide please. To start, I'd like to recognize that while today we are gathered virtually the National Academies is physically housed on a traditional land of the Nacotstank and Acosta and Piscataway peoples past and present. We honor with gratitude the land itself and the people who have stewarded throughout the generations. We honor and respect the enduring relationship that exists between these peoples, and the nations in this land. We thank them for their resilience, protecting this land and aspire to uphold our responsibilities to their example. We also acknowledge that our understanding of water and global change issues are closely related to and informed by indigenous knowledge and experience. There are many native communities on the frontline of impacts from these changes. Now, as I mentioned earlier, I'm joining you from Boulder, Colorado, which is the traditional land of the Arapaho, Cheyenne and Newt peoples. Next slide please. So I and the other members of the committee to advise the US GCRP are very much looking forward to these sessions to connect directly with researchers and users are using and applying global change information in their work. In particular meetings throughout the year we provide this and other opportunities to engage with and hear from broad audiences to inform this important work. The goals of this series of listening sessions include gathering useful actionable input for US GCRP for implementation of its work, making connections and expanding a group of researchers and users who are directly engaging with the US GCRP. Recognizing connections across researchers users and themes of US GCRP and its products or US GCRP work in his products. And finally informing potential future engagement mechanisms and opportunities, including forms approaches and participants for such engagement. Next slide please. Alright today we're seeking input on how US GCRP may implement its work to better understand and address global change issues. If you're unfamiliar with US GCRP to provide input, we're specifically seeking to connect with a broader audience in these sessions. If you are unfamiliar with US GCRP, we hope you had a chance to view the introductory video on our event pages before the session or encourage you to view it after the session. And requiring for these listening sessions US GCRP requested input and insights on the following themes to inform the development of its strategic priorities and activities. First diversity equity and inclusion. What actions should be prioritized to fully incorporate these values and research community engagement and workforce development. How do we implement them. Advancing science. What are the priority gaps and foundational science methods that require enhanced long term investments. Third use inspired research. How do we ensure that the use that US GCRP science and products are better driven by and connected to users, including for example improve use of consultation collaboration translation dissemination informing climate services, the social economic sciences integration and social economic sciences integration itself as a point what are the priorities for integrating social economic sciences into our programs and to inform critical decisions. So particularly helpful feedback might include ideas on emerging large scale scientific questions related to global change and or response, especially those where interagency collaboration will be critical. Specific information on how science is or is not being used to inform societal response to global change and why, and knowledge gaps and obstacles to implementing scientific tools or knowledges. Please note the US G, the US GCRP is developing its next to Cato's strategic plan and expects to release the draft prospectus with public comment opportunity before the end of 2021 that is by the end of next month. Well, while these listening sessions may help inform the development or implementation of this plan individual feedback on the prospectus should be submitted through the public comment mechanism. And just want to remind all the speakers that to ensure we have time, we're going to be holding you to a five minute limit. Next slide please. All right, our expectations for conduct we are committed to fostering a professional respectful inclusive environment where all participants to fully participate all can participate fully in an atmosphere that is free of harassment and discrimination. Based on any identified identity based factors and please note the specific bullets here I'm not going to read them but we take these all very seriously and if there is any misconduct please report this immediately to Steven Stichter, and his email is right there. And so now I want to turn it over to Steven for some other items to cover before we hear from our speakers. Greetings and thank you Joel for that introduction and welcome. So we next slide please. So we have these sessions as Joe described are really for to seek input from you on how USG CRP implements and carries its work forward over the coming decade. And for to hear from you, we have a couple of different ways that we're going to be interacting during this session. First of all, anybody who is hearing me as successfully gotten on to zoom and so welcome. We encourage you to change your name to change your name to reflect your full name and the affiliation or affiliations that you have so others who may be looking in the in the chat can find you and understand where you have the perspective that you are bringing into the room. Additionally, we will, we are providing live closed captioning of this event. So you can find that under the live transcript button within zoom. You have any any assist need for assistance. Please send a chat to the hosts through the zoom chat or send an email to Rob Greenway my colleague who will be supporting us on the technical side, and at the email that's listed. Please. So our other mode of interaction with you is so the primary focus of what will be happening in the zoom window is we have a series of speakers who will be talking about their recommendations and thoughts for USG CRP. And we also want to give everyone who is in this room, the opportunity to provide their insights and contributions. So I invite you at this point in time to go ahead and join our Slido Slido platform. And either by pointing if you're using a mobile device for your interaction, you can point it to this QR code. Alternatively, you can go to Slido.com and enter this, the code which is pound sign 881326. And in the chat there's also a link directly to Slido. We will first ask you to provide your first and last names. And then once you get into into Slido we'll be using the Q&A component. And polls are listed but we're just going to be focusing on the Q&A today. With the Q&A we're asking the same questions that we're asking the speakers or what are your, what are your insights recommendations and comments for USG CRP as it as it moves into this next decade of work on how they do what they do. Any comments about future strategic plan inputs should be held for the for the public session that will be open. Or the public comment period that will be open once that draft strategic plan plan prospectus has been released. Within the Slido session, we will be adding points from the from the speakers and we ask you to add your points as well. And you also have the opportunity to add replies to other questions or questions and comments, even though we're, it's in the question and answer we encourage you to put statements and recommendations, rather than questions, we're not the USG CRP and the we are in listening mode so we won't be specifically answering questions in this session. Finally, in the Slido platform you can watch, you can order the comments either by the most recent comments that people have put in or popular because that reflects the upvotes that other participants may be giving to comments and questions. And finally, we do ask that you be respectful in all of your engagement on this platform and all of our platforms. Next slide please. We are as you would have seen at the beginning when you signed on we are recording this session, and we will be making this, this recording available more broadly. So a note please note this claimer about that recording. And additionally, the inputs that we received through the Slido platform will be part of the public access record for this event. So, comments and names of people who provide the comments will be included in that public public record. So please keep that in mind when adding your comments and contributions. Finally, the we've asked the speakers who are coming today though they are coming from an organization we've asked them to speak from their own from their own perspective, it may well reflect their organizations, but that the speakers are coming as as individuals for presentations. So thank you, and please, please provide us with rich and enthusiastic commentary and engagement throughout this session. With that, I would like to invite Wayne Higgins on Wayne is representing the USG CRP in welcoming you into this session way. Thank you very much. I really appreciate this opportunity to say hello, and thank you. So good afternoon, good morning to our West Coast participants. My name is Wayne Higgins. I am the chair of the subcommittee on global change research. Now the subcommittee consists of representatives from the 13 agencies that make up the US global change research program. From Joel we refer to the organization as the USG CRP. So you can think of the subcommittee as the board of directors for USG CRP. So I'm here today representing those 13 agencies that make up USG CRP. And we want you to know that we are very serious about our legislative mandate, which is to assist the nation and the world to stand, assess, predict and respond to human induced and natural processes of global change. So on behalf of USG CRP. I really want to say thank you for your interest for your time and your expertise. So again your input will be heard and considered as we draft this new 10 year strategic plan for USG CRP. It will be valid for the period from 2022 to 2031. In addition to staff from the national academies, there are a number of federal agency representatives and also USG CRP national coordination office staff here today as well. And they will be listening very carefully and taking notes that will inform our discussions and writing this new plan. The new plan as has been mentioned will be completed late next year in 2022. And as Joel mentioned earlier between now and then you can expect to see a prospectus, prospectus being a high level outline of the plan, and that will come out for public comment in the next month. And you'll also see a full draft of the plan that will be released for public comment and for review by the national academies in the middle of 2022. So please watch for these opportunities to comment on both the prospectus and the draft plan. And finally, on behalf of the USG CRP, I want to express our sincere thanks to the staff of the national academies for organizing these listening sessions, and specifically today to Steven Stickter, your host, as well as Amanda Stout and Amanda Purcell. And I also want to extend my thanks to Katie Reeves and Julie Morris from the USG CRP National Coordination Office for their roles in making this possible today. So again, we look forward to your comments and suggestions and I thank you very much. Back to you Steve. Actually I'll go ahead thank you. Thanks Wayne for those remarks and now it's our turn to hear from you. Let me just go over the ground rules here to make it fair to everyone to make sure that we have time for all for at least 12 speakers to speak we're going to have some strict time limits. You each have been allocated three to five minutes to give you remarks, and I will let you know when you have 30 seconds left that is when you're four minutes and 30 seconds into it. And if need be, I hope I don't have to do it I will jump in when you've exceeded your five minutes and get us on to the next speaker. I'm just going to introduce you by name, please introduce your institution or your affiliation or background as you wish. So, let me now first turn to David Bihar. Good morning. Good afternoon, everyone. David Bihar. I'm the climate program director at the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission. It's a department of the city and county of San Francisco. I also, so my focus is on climate adaptation. It's going to be my focus in these remarks I was the founding chair of the water utility climate alliance will be hearing from Miranda Cashman. I'm a little more about wuka. In a minute I'm also currently chair of the Bay Area climate adaptation network which is a network of local governments and community based organizations focused on adaptation in the Bay Area. And finally, I'm, I'm also co chair of the sea level rise grand challenge committee of the world climate research program which is focused on understanding what science we need to work on the resilience of coastal communities around the planet. I think that I've noticed in this work among science entities who lead research regarding the impacts of climate change like to like the GCRP, your strategic plan about to be updated goal to says we should inform or you should inform decisions and provide the scientific basis to inform and enable timely decisions on adaptation and mitigation. The American Geophysical Union strategic plan calls for moving science from quote usable to use. And finally the WCRP strategic plan sets a goal of bridging climate science and society. So linking climate science to societal needs particularly regarding the need to adapt is a top of mind theme for those science entities out there and we appreciate that and that's very important. Very quickly I'm going to review the input on advancing science that was requested. I think and I'm going to go through these really quickly because I don't think this is the most important part of what I'm going to talk about. But in terms of the science the hard science itself we need better work on highlight high end sea level rise past work has been a little bit problematic in that area. And that's a very important component of adaptation to sea level rise. Interim precipitation trends in the southwest are poorly understood extreme storms are increased increasingly top of mind, both on the east and west coasts. We need a better understanding of meteorological drought in the future its intensity its duration its frequency etc. Hydrologic modeling under low flow conditions is particularly challenging we need a little bit of research on that. In terms of emissions we need to ensure robust treatment of the pathway that we're on today as a planet which is 2.7 degrees centigrade in the year 2100. It's not adequate anymore to present our CP 2.6 and our CP 8.5 which are two of the least likely outcomes that we should expect to be living in over the next 100 years. I think feedback feedback on use inspired research, I think more important than the substantive science issues I just mentioned which I think we're all aware of is the process of discerning exactly what decision makers need for our decision making processes. You need to meet decision makers where they live to provide actionable information for assessing vulnerability for educating our public's and then finally when it comes time to implementing adaptation action which will be both expensive and difficult politically sociologically economically. This means engaging with adaptation practitioners in the production of actionable science. In particular, create connectivity with communities outside the federal government often talk about the top agencies in the federal government like that are operations oriented like your reclamation is, you know, when they get information from federal science entities they feel a little bit like the rich getting richer. Think about those entities like us that are much less resourced that really need actionable information and engage with those communities outside the federal government. This means doing the hard work of co-production, working with us to understand our questions before initiating at least some of your science. And so that co-production conversation is the thing that everyone talks about but it's difficult. It's more difficult than research in some ways and it's time consuming but that's the investment we'd like to see USGCRP collectively and the agencies that make up the GCRP individually to invest in. We need to expand the provision of climate translation and climate services that needs to scale up to meet the need that's growing. You know how to do that you have the recent program and know we have the climate adaptation science centers in USGS, which feature people and data both. They've demonstrated that professional engagement with practitioners can work and be successful, but now we need to scale that up we need greater investment. And I think that the need is not so much for product as for process. And so David, we have a few seconds left. Got it. Engagement co-production climate services are not in and of themselves research we know that, but their investments that lead to research that meets the needs of an increasing number of communities that are trying to understand how to adapt to the challenge of climate change which is the 21st century challenge. Thank you, Joe. Right on time. All right, I'd like to now call on Lucia Rodriguez. Hello. Can you, I hope you can hear me well. Yes, we can. Perfect. Well, thank you so much for this opportunities and honor to talk today. David, they have brought very, very important points, but today I want to give a couple points of concern that sometimes they're left out of the discussion, especially in regards to water use issues. While water scarcity has to be a critical component of our research efforts. I think that we should also focus on water quality and how our changing climate will affect our water sources. And of course, who or which communities will be created affected by this. I have two other points I would like to discuss regarding water quality and our climate crisis, both related to an increase in the frequency and magnitude of our off the road and flooding events, and how climate change will affect our water, water, water sources. The first one is something that we have already experienced and we are experiencing, experiencing more often. I'm an assistant professor in the New Jersey Institute of Technology in New Jersey. And even in the storm with with either floating here, a community just next to to me, they had a boil water advisory for four weeks following the storm. So this, this increased flooding events and following by drought will affect the operation of our water and with water treatment plans, and our already aging infrastructure. We have already increased experience also New Jersey led crisis and drinking water, in part as a result of our changing water sources, decreasing the pH, the illusion of corrosion control, and also as a consequence of sent to the old water distribution systems. This has already also been seen in other parts of the US, we change the water quality of our drinking water sources, we change the effectiveness of our corrosion control. This is not a place in our lead service lines, but it's still, there are several sources of lead is still in our houses, and it is critical that we understand how changes in the feed water quality will affect lead mobilization. As I mentioned already, flooding events will affect the capacity of treatment of our water and with water treatment plans and our distribution systems. We also live in an area where we have, where we have combined sewer systems. So we cannot continue to retrofit our, our utilities, but rather invest in improving them. Finally, I will also mention how climate change extensive drought events and floating will affect the contaminants in already impacted lands. Like super fun sites, we expect climate change to drive an increase in temperature decrease in pH salinity ionic strength that will affect our ecological diversity and microbial populations. This will affect the biochemical reactions that control the equilibrium of some of these contaminants in this affected lands. And it has already been shown that changes in redox conditions going from drought to flooding events will affect the mobility and increase the mobility of these contaminants. How can we prevent this from happening when it's already happening. Finally, and just in the last minute, I want to mention that obviously this concern will greatly affect already impacted communities that have already suffered of environmental justice issues, legacy contamination that is still recovering from a pandemic. They have job and for the securities and they should be the priority, the foremost of our efforts. There's a few studies that have shown that underrepresented communities have less trust in our drinking water systems. These studies have also failed to study what is the source of the water, what is the water coming from, and what are others factors that might be affecting this trust. So with that, I want to thank you. And I will take, if you want, I will be happy to continue the discussion. Thank you. Thank you very much, Dr Rodriguez. I'd like to next call on Miranda Cashman. Hello. Thank you so much. Sorry, let me just get everything in place. Thank you. All right. First, let me say thank you so much for allowing me to share in this forum. My name is Miranda Cashman. I'm a project manager at the New York City Department of Environmental Protection. I'm actually here somewhat on behalf of the Water Utility Climate Alliance or WUCA, which David Bihar mentioned earlier in his comments. So just to give you a little bit more background on WUCA itself because we think WUCA could be a great collaborator and going forward with federal agencies. The Water Utility Climate Alliance was founded in 2007 between 12 of the nation's largest water providers and WUCA's mission is to collaboratively advance water utility climate change adaptation. And the role that WUCA plays has been critical and, you know, vital for New York City DEP for identifying commonalities across the water sector. And if you want to learn more about WUCA or look at any of our products such as the leading practices in climate adaptation guide, which has gotten a lot of press recently, you can go to our website, WUCAonline.org, which is WUCAonline.org. So I'm here kind of on behalf of them, but these are also my own thoughts to contribute to this forum. We as water sector practitioners could really benefit from more active collaboration and this really just strengthens what David Bihar said in his comments. One of the main challenges we face is turning scientific knowledge into actionable science. And many times we're given these like prolific scientific conclusions that actually end up having somewhat limited use in adaptation planning for water utilities. And we need some more support from federal agencies to develop research from the beginning that directly advances decision making and planning for critical water infrastructure. So one suggestion is to bring water utilities like WUCA or utilities themselves into the research process early on because we could communicate the challenges and research questions that we are interested in, and what our user needs are. And we really do want to play a more active role in this early stage when research ideas are developed. So an example of this is New York City DEP is a stormwater utility as well. And so we face urban flooding challenges. So, you know, Hurricane Ida has already been mentioned and in the context of Hurricane Ida and urban flooding. We need some more data and guidance about precipitation intensity, both historical surveys and high resolution precipitation projections, which we completely recognize is hard to do. You know, there are limitations to methodology, there's scientific uncertainty. But we think that the more dialogue between the utilities and the climate science community is absolutely vital to making, you know, better decisions for the infrastructure that we we manage. So at this point, kind of shifting gears into equity. I'd like to include some comments from another WUCA member, and grad Nick Nagel, who is the climate policy advisor at Seattle Public Utilities, and had some ideas about how the water sector can better address equity challenges. We're creating targeted workforce development and contractor support for blue green jobs at and with water utilities. Second, expanding partnerships with BIPOC led community based organizations to build capacity and improve outcomes from utility projects. And this once again highlights the importance of open communication pathways in all areas of the water sector, and at all stages of adaptation. Prioritizing water infrastructure projects and programs designed to generate multiple benefits for communities. For example, this could be stormwater management improvements and open space jobs and community connectivity. And this type of multi benefit approach has been shown to be extremely beneficial. WUCA has actually done a lot of work in that area. But you know, tying all of these kind of suggestions together it's really critical for us to have support from federal partners to prioritize goals such as these and building momentum in the equity space. So thanks to and for contributing some of those ideas. I kind of raised through a lot of the points I had but just to close out. We at WUCA we strive to break down silos right WUCA work has shown that there are broad questions and themes that are shared by many in the water sector, even if actual implementation is very community and neighborhood specific. There are these broad themes that are common among us. The diversity of the utilities within WUCA does end up strengthening our coalition and gives us a unique perspective. So we think that expanding these early in the process collaborations between utilities, federal partners, the scientific community, and even local neighborhood communities will strengthen the water sector, and give us a holistic and inclusive path forward to protecting critical infrastructure. So thank you so much. All right. Thank you very much. I want to just turn the floor to Steven for brief reminder to folks. Yes, I just wanted to remind everybody that we do have a platform with Slido you can find a link to join Slido in the chat. And I'm gathering some of the comments from from speakers and adding them to that but we're looking for everybody to contribute and make comments on on the ideas and recommendations and considerations in that platform as well. So thank you. And for the speakers, I welcome you all also going into the platform and entering comments that relate to your oral contributions. All right, Joe. Thank you. Thanks. Thanks to and also, yeah, the speakers to if you don't mind please in the chat summarize key points safe, about three or so but that that will help us all and in taking notes making sure we're highlighting what is important to you. And now let me call on. Bob are sevens I hope I'm pronouncing your name correctly. Thank you so much. Yeah, my, so my name is Meghna Barbara Stevens. And good morning everyone and good afternoon for those in the East Coast. So I'm an associate professor here at Oregon State University. Today I just want to talk a little bit about some of the research that I do and how it relates to some of the issues we're dealing with in the USG CRP efforts. So a lot of the work that I work with my colleagues is related to trying to do more participatory planning to help communities, especially rural communities, work on exploring ways to manage their water systems where there's water infrastructure to try and plan for adaptation to climate change. And one of the things that we often face when engaging with our stakeholders is, well, what can I do or what can we do as a community when we when we don't have enough resources, or we don't have enough technical expertise. And so what we've learned over time is that planning for adaptation to climate change can be very overwhelming for communities, especially small communities that have limited resources. And so, folks have to think about how are they how are they going to coordinate these planning efforts across different levels of governments where they are public private sectors, or even individuals in households and there are plenty of barriers that usually stand in their way. And then the gap from the knowledge that is a reason to be doing as researchers to action for both planning activities or implementing solutions or adaptation actions still continues to remain wide. So the potential solution that I wanted, I think could be really helpful in helping researchers and also practitioners in this area of engaging stakeholders in planning for adaptation. I think it's storytelling. And so I think it would be really helpful, just based on our experience that if there were ways where USG CRP could create products or multiple mechanisms for documenting, telling and disseminating diverse knowledge to action stories in small communities or big communities that can be understood by non technical persons, and also showcase how communities can use the different USG CRP products to first of all initiate how do you get started on planning efforts in a community that is so small. Maybe I need to partner with other communities on that effort, and then coordinate planning efforts as well as maintain these planning efforts, both at multiple levels where it comes to same, you know, efforts that are focused on the public sector or private sector or governmental or even household and individual actions right. So how do you sort of maintain those planning efforts over time at multiple levels. And storytelling can be a really powerful approach that I think USG CRP and other groups can use to identify and as well as disseminate examples of communities where the public, as well as a local state or federal or even tribal and tribal decision makers may have collaborated in the past or are beginning to collaborate or continue to collaborate in different ways and multiple levels so that they can sort of create multiple adaptive water management strategies using these products. Some of the other core benefits that I think storytelling can also help communities is to help public as well as other stakeholders in these communities. Highlight some of the synergies in the actions that if they're taken at multiple levels, whether it's governmental or individual household level, how together they can help prepare the regions of these multiple communities to successfully manage the diverse risks to their water systems, whether it's, you know, wildfires or drought or a combination of risks. As well as these stories can help them identify what kinds of gaps or trade off the conflicts that they may run into in their own communities. They may require new or additional technological societal investments on the main in fact have to change maybe laws and policies or changes to how we manage water in the current world using very siloed water organization institutions. So are there ways to create new efforts where we can sort of break down those silos, as well as resolve barriers that makes this to equitable just and culturally sensitive adaptation. The other benefit I think the storytelling can really help is to sort of also help educate communities that hey, this is not a perfect process. You know, adaptation process is not perfect, we have to try, we have to learn from our mistakes or learn from our successes and then change our actions for improving resilience over time. So it's important for folks to understand when they look at these stories that certain risks and vulnerabilities may still remain in their communities, especially if there are systemic pressures against change. So, overall, the summary of my messages that you know these storytelling and really help communities learn from each other and I think there needs to be a much more better investment in how we develop document and share these stories in communities that may use these USGCRP products. That's it. Thank you. Thank you very much. I'm impressed all our speakers of time time the remarks are quite impressively alright next like to call on Anna Carolina Moran. Again, sorry if I'm mispronouncing your name. No worries, thank you can you can you hear me well. Yes, we can. I just want to summarize my points as we requested there in the chef and I'm Carolina Moran, I am the resiliency officer for South Florida water management district. And I just want to emphasize three points here and I will be reiterating a lot of what Mr. Barahar and also some other speakers already emphasize here today. The first point is related to decision making support. How can we get access to information that would better inform our programs, especially other deep uncertainty. We have advanced hydrological hydraulic modeling efforts going on in our agency and it's extremely important that we understand the climate projections the boundaries. We need to be evaluating this range of uncertainty in some of the variables that we are dealing with, you know, so the need to take into account those factors in a joint probabilistic approach. So that's number one like having tools and better information that we can really inform our age and age models. Point two is related to that but I'm more specifically dealing with the need for advanced regional climate projections, including but not limited to sea level rise rainfall evapotranspiration. In this would happen through increased resolution global climate water results that are able to capture local and regional influencing factors and really climate processes that have huge interference in the way we are reading those results. We have one example of a recent product that we have been developing with the USGS for the past year on determining future extreme rainfall events and we evaluated three different downscaling products and we have still, I would say relatively large uncertainty range in the way we look at that for participating future rainfall. And I think there is need for us to be able to have additional tools that would guide us on how can we get a, I would say the better more consensus on how we read that and utilize those products in our efforts. And then we also have, I have a third point here, and I have some background noise I apologize but so my third point is how can we access resources and tools to review, validate and maybe enhance our efforts our local efforts we have to and efforts going on in our agency now. First one we are looking at data that we monitor. So our agency has a very large monetary program and we are trying to evaluate trends and correlation between those data sets to see if they relate somehow to some of the climate signals and media determining influencing factors. So it would be really helpful if we had tools and efforts that to to inform what we are doing here. And we're going to be proposing the development of a regional climate model to determine future extreme rainfall as well as part of our efforts and again, we appreciate the opportunity to collaborate and exchange information and knowledge in this area here. So, to end up my points, I think, again, reiterating a lot of what was said here already, more dialogue, better collaboration and co production and believe other teaming points. And I appreciate the opportunity to provide the comments here today. Thank you. I kind of appreciate you spotting us some time is anything there's another minute if you'd like to add anything else but otherwise we can move ahead. Don't worry, those were my points. Thank you. All right, very good. So I apologize there may be some confusion about the order we will get to everybody I sure everybody was on that we'll get to all of you. Let me call on Kate Brahman next. Are you ready Kate. Yes. All right, all floors yours. Thank you. My name is Kate Brahman. I am with the University of Alabama at the new global water security center, we are a DOD funded center here in Alabama and the goal of this center is very much about taking data and water data into use really for the security community. And I think this is important not just for security but more broadly as USG CRP thinks about investing in future science. And one of the things that we're really seen is that it's not just about being responsive to user needs but really working with users to understand their questions and this is something that's come up in earlier points. But it's something that we found is really critical. There's a need to invest in actually helping users understand what it is they need to know in order to adapt to a changing water future. Another piece of what we've seen that's important that I hope that that everyone's able to think about is that it's often not actually increased precision. That's the most important thing and the thing that we need to invest in the most. I'm not answering what are really the right questions, particularly the ones that link climate impacts and changing climate and water impacts to human and biophysical impacts there and so making that linkage across the biophysical and social sciences is something we're excited to see more of. And finally, I'd like to urge more emphasis on some of the day to day technical products that are already in use but could be updated to reflect changing climate and changing water futures. You would be shocked at how often I talked to state and local folks who are trying to do water management and all they want is to see Atlas 14 updated with new climate data and I think these kinds of everyday work a day product products are some of the most important ways we can get new climate science out to folks who are really going to use it and for whom it's really important for adaptation. And I want to reiterate my thanks for having the chance to speak here and really all of the comments that have come before. I think most of what I'm saying is not different than that and so I will end now. Thank you so much. I muted myself sorry Kate thank you very much. I appreciate it. All right, I would now like to call on Ali Bahadur Ali are you there. Ali is not there. Let me then next. And we can come back to you Ali if you if you come online. Peg Fershaw is big there. All right. We'll come I'll come back at the end and we'll circle back and see more a layer. All right, keep going through the list here. Ryan Hollins. I'm here thank you. Great. Thank you for the opportunity to provide comment today. As a private citizen and a geographer and computer scientists working in the climate space. My work focuses on several aspects of water quality and impacting of a changing climate on our water infrastructure. The approach my team, and I take is sort of a systems a systems engineering perspective, and given the breadth of the topic here I'm going to focus my comments on the two themes of advancing science and use inspired research. Given the rapid population growth we're seeing and a changing climate, we're seeing additional stresses put on the availability and the distribution of water resources across the globe. And we've seen huge impacts to both water quality and to water infrastructure like water treatment plants and wastewater treatment plants. So I'd argue that we need mature scalable technologies for continuous monitoring of water contaminants in our waterways, and also monitoring of water use as that changes given decreasing water resources in the West increased water resources elsewhere. In addition to researching and evaluating these scalable approaches, like remote sensing and imagery analysis for water use. We also need research and development around new materials that can both detect or sense chemical contaminants and remediate these contaminants. In combination with traditional means of means of sampling new technologies need to be developed for low cost real time sensing for contaminants such as peripheral alpha substances or PFAS or dioxin and broad scale application of these technologies can really help to screen for chemicals and both understand how extreme weather events are changing the distribution and movement of chemical contaminants and how our water infrastructure is being impacted by new emerging contaminants. So at our infrastructure angle here, we think we need more research and development on sensor technologies to make our water treatment plants and wastewater treatment plants more resilient to these environmental threats. So we're going to look at how we can implement water infrastructure with actuators to enable sort of real time resilience and increase the resilience of our stormwater management systems. This of course comes with with certain risks in a more connected smart water system. There's more risks for for attacks and cyber vulnerabilities. So also looking at the, the trade offs and the risks and implementing some of the smart infrastructure we think is important to kind of shift focus another area of concern here would be water use and emerging technologies to reuse water. So while there's been a lot of academic research on, for instance, antibiotics in water, antibiotic metabolites and genes detected in surface water. We don't yet have a systematic systematic way to detect or monitor for these chemicals or the presence of gene genes in water effluent and surface waters. So this is an increasing and significant problem. And we think that additional research and looking at monitoring for these contaminants in situ or even remotely would would help us as these events increase in frequency and duration. And, you know, robust data on chemical contamination writ large is really needed across the country, including data on the area sample historic measurements, the geophysical conditions. And data, if shared can help understand what remediation technologies are available to water utilities to communities. And we can really learn from both the lessons learned and the mistakes and the successes across different states. I want to thank you for your time. I've really appreciated the comments from the other panelists and, and really would love to have a further discussion and for you to consider some of these critical areas of research and development. Thanks. Thank you very much. So, we actually have done pretty well in this and our speakers have been very timely. In addition, there are some people who were signed up and I'm going to just double for everybody bear with me I'm just going to read some names here and just see if you're online. And I'm going to read your name and give you a second unmute yourself let let me know if you're if you're here and able to offer remarks so Nicholas flocking. Yes, I'm here. You are here all right. The floor is yours. Thank you. I thought you're going to go through a list I unmuted myself and went back to it. Thank you. So, well, thank you for the National Academies and to the US GCRP for for hosting this listening session and collecting input from the public. My name is Nick flocking I recently left Noah, where I was a policy advisor to the no administrator. So, so Wayne it's actually good to see you again. Today I'm here on behalf of one of my clients tomorrow IO. And my clients, my comments today are focused on the topics advancing science and using inspired research. In short, my suggestion suggested answer to both these questions is to encourage engagement with the private sector. While this is not a novel idea, I would still encourage this body and many of the attendees here could benefit from this as well to reinvigorate that effort, especially in developing decadal and global change research plans. All the agencies represented here through the US GCRP are working hard to advance climate and weather observations modeling and predictions. In fact, many of the US GCRP agencies like Noah NASA NSF, all ones that I work directly with the last couple years have great relationships with each other, and in many ways depend on each other for the researched operations to research ecosystem. However, that's only part of the picture. The US sector can invest more money faster in research and development and government and mark and the market forces that drive the necessary efficiency to move from research to commercial viability is something agencies just cannot experience. Thankfully, there's been several leaders in government over the last couple decades, who recognize the importance of partnerships beyond federal agencies programs like the commercial weather data pilot, provide opportunity for private companies to build trust with federal agencies, enhancing federal research and operations. Noah NASA and even the Air Force have each benefited from those types of pilot programs. So the questions, what are the priority gaps that require enhanced long term investment and how to ensure US GCRP uses inspired research. Another, like I said at the top is simple, look at the private sector. There's countless innovators developing novel technologies and sensing techniques that can fill gaps in scientific research, and many ways, the private sector is going to be who finds those gaps first. For example, tomorrow I oh is launching the only known satellite constellation equipped with precipitation radar operational constellation satellite. Does that matter. The topic of this conversation today is water. Look at the success of TRM GPM and rain cube. All of those single satellite radar systems with a low revisit rate showed the importance of precipitation radar for research, but they did not provide the coverage to be operational. National academies and US GCRP agencies don't need to develop this capacity. It already exists. The National Academy should be creative, and all the agencies and organizations represented here should be creative in finding mutually beneficial ways to build companies. When executed well, NAS would gain opportunity, gain access to proprietary unique data sets with the potential to significantly improve research at a global scale, and private sector companies gain the opportunity to build public trust and prove their data matters. With that, I conclude. Thank you very much for your time and consideration appreciating part of the group today. Thank you very much. And again, apologies. We're some of the folks we thought we might join in or not and I want to give a chance that there are some others on our list so what I'm going to do is I have three names showing up here I'm going to read your names and give you a moment to just, if you're online just to let me know if you are. So, Patricio Ibarra Munizaga. Patricio are you here. All right, if you missed it, don't want to come back to you. So, Patricio, I'm going to introduce Dobra, Dobra Wolski. Sorry, I'm mangling your name, or an final one I have is sissy ma. Okay, let me just see then is there. Are there any other. Is anyone else online, they would like to offer remarks, or let me just offer that first. The speakers have already gone. If you would like to clarify something or respond to something you heard another speaker say I'd say just go ahead and unmute your mic and and let me know. Let's take notes as any do any of the speakers who went wish to go. Yeah, excuse me one second. I'm Mr. Dobra Wolski and Mr. Patricio can hear me I'm going to promote you so that you can talk. So we may not be able to see you on video but you'll be able to see that timer for five minutes okay. Oh that's great. Okay, super so let me just. Okay, Mr. Ibarra Munizaga is it. I'm going to have you go first when you're promoted. Okay, they both are now allowed to talk they should be able to speak. Okay, Patricio. All right how about James do Dobra Wolski. Are you there. Hi there this is Jim Dobra Wolski. All right sorry for mangling your name Jim. That's okay. Thank you very much so I am a national program leader in water, and I work for the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture, and we are a small agency with a big budget. And a lot of competitive research we also support the land grant institutions with only risk based research and long term research, but also extension and outreach and education. We have a very active water program, we have been active in my time which has been 15 years with the agency looking at water quality and quantity effects and influenced by climate change. And, and we will we will continue to do that. We are about 1.7 billion dollar agency. The water part of our portfolio right now is focused on a program called water quantity and quality. It also is picked up in some climate change related programs that are available to universities and others laboratories and what have you. And we have developed a synthesis of a lot of the work that we did in the last 13 to 14 years. And we are still pretty far behind in the information concerning climate change, and both water quality and quantity under that large umbrella. We're looking forward to folks providing us with proposals to that effect. We are obviously focused on reducing the water food culture by 50% some cases, and also increasing the productivity at the same time. And so we're looking for folks to provide us with some technologies that allow us to reduce the, the fresh water that agriculture now manages across the country, which is about 70 to 80%. And replacing some of that with water sources, such as recycled water, brackish groundwater, treated agricultural return flow, used water from, from mining. And so, you know, we'll we'll be looking forward to folks providing us with proposals toward that end. We're also very interested in how constituents of chemical of CERN are impacting, I have the potential to impact crops that are grown fresh that might be irrigated with recycled water or waste water that is treated. So we're also looking at those issues. And all of this is focused on trying to alleviate the effects of and to adapt to climate change. Because obviously, you know, water is going to is one of the biggest issues in climate change. And, and in the future, we're going to have a lot more competition for water. But we're still going to have to have irrigated agriculture as our way of increasing the productivity into the future. So we look forward to your proposals to US National Institute of Food and Agriculture. Thank you very much. All right, thank you so much, Jim. Appreciate it. All right, Patricio Ibarra Monazago. Sorry, I'm mangling your name too. Are you there? Okay. How about Sissy Ma? Yes, I'm here. Final speakers. You just made it in. Okay, gates are closing. So all the floor is yours. Go ahead. Yeah. Hi, thanks for the opportunity. I'm Sissy Ma from EPA, Office of Research and Development. I'm also the co-lead for chapter four for the IPCC, the report coming up next year. And also in the task force with water federation environment, the task force of integrated planning task force. So, rather our work is involving in the integrated management of water systems or any systems, but particularly today the topic is water. So when we talk about water under the climate change impact, we need to consider water energy net nutrient nexus. So water energy is closely related. And how can we adapt water system under climate change effects. So a lot of the call is for transformative paradigm change. The system we have right now, the wastewater treatment plan, drinking water treatment plan, are we doing the best treatment plan, deliver drinking water, wastewater treatment is not cheap. A lot of energy is used in the system. When we make that system more efficient and energy recover from the water system on wastewater. And water reuse don't have to deliver long distance of water. So this kind of things are how to evaluate water system under this kind of climate change impact. At the same time, adaptation mitigation and not causing more environment, the climate change impact like emitting more global warming gases, while solving the water problem. So, this is a good great opportunity and hopefully US GCRP can invest in the transformative paradigm shift kind of approach, and to have, you know, more sustainable water systems in the future. So, thanks. That's my comments. Thank you. Thank you very much, Dr. Ma appreciate it. David Bihar understand would like to offer an additional comment David if you don't mind can you do that so within about 60 seconds. Yes, no problem. You invited it so I'll bring it and that is the listening sessions very valuable. But I would also invite consideration on the part of the panel the National Academy's panel to have a conversation with folks like the water utility climate alliance and others who might want to assist in probably brainstorming the approaches to co-production and user inspired generating user inspired science with the participation of users as part of your reporting process. Miranda Cashman from New York City DEP mentioned that water utility climate alliance would be a candidate for that there are many others as well of course, and if there's a way to kind of envision how that can happen. Yeah, and yes, successfully with USG CRP as a kind of conglomerating entity of federal science. I think it'd be a really powerful part of the report and recommendations that you're making, as well as potentially. I don't know, I guess it's too late for the strategic plan but if for implementation of the new strategic plan. Thanks John. Thank you David appreciate it. Um, just get my video on here. Thank you. Thank you so much, everybody. That was that was just great. I mean, they were just really a lot of thoughtful comments. Uh, I'm not going to try to summarize them. That would not do them justice. And in fact, I'll be honest. I think it managing this. I do want to go back and actually see what's the recording because there was a lot here and see the notes that were taken. But I really appreciate this. I appreciate everybody taking your time. Also appreciate you working with us as we as I realized we took this few of you out of order and thanks for your patience with that. Um, and, uh, just say this is a great. This is the first of our five sessions. And I have to say, I think this is after a very productive, very helpful start. So with that, I want to thank all of you for being here. And I want to turn it over to Steven to discuss some final points and next steps. So thank you very much. Great. Um, thank you Joel for walking us through all of that and for all of the presenters and contributors, um, in today's session. So, um, Nikki, can you bring on this, the remaining slides? Um, so next steps. Um, so first of all, I, I do want to follow up to what, um, David, just David's comments just now, we will not actually be producing a report out of this, um, this series of sessions. Uh, what we're trying to do in having these as a pilot and this is a pilot effort that we're, that we're undertaking here is to identify new ways that we can have and additional ways that we can have engagement and input, um, into USGCRP in the process. So there are some existing mechanisms that are going to continue the, uh, certainly the products of, um, that USGCRP is producing. And then also the formal advice that the committee is giving to USGCRP through things such as our, um, the recent report that we produced, um, this, the committee produced earlier this year. Um, and so this is an additional input to all of this work, um, and a pilot as well. So we're learning, we're learning as we're getting the input from you. Um, so while there will not be a formal report coming out of this process itself, um, the inputs that, um, that you were giving are being heard by USGCRP staff, um, and agencies that are involved with USGCRP as well as the committee. So it will, it will be part of the inputs that they are taking into the next steps. Um, additionally, um, before the end of the year, USGCRP will be providing a draft prospectus on their strategic plan and there will be an opportunity for a formal, public comment period on that strategic plan. Next steps, following up on today's session, um, is that everybody who registered for this session will receive a follow-up link, uh, or email with links. And I appreciate, um, you following up and providing additional insights, both on a questionnaire that provides another opportunity to provide input to USGCRP, um, as well as an evaluation to help us understand how to make these, these pilots turn into a more sustainable, uh, input mechanism. Um, we will also be posting the video and, uh, the transcript of the sessions to the event page for this event, and the easiest way to get there is to, um, look for, you go to the national academies and search for USGCRP, um, or look on the, um, board on atmospheric science and climate, um, events for the link at the bottom of the page. Um, and, um, finally, um, this is, and one, if you can go to the next slide, um, this is the first of five sessions. Uh, the sessions will be structured in a similar way, um, but each of the sessions will have a different primary theme to what we, the inputs that we are seeking around global change. Um, so we encourage you to participate in any and all of these sessions, um, and to please help us spread the word on these sessions. Um, so thank you for joining us today and we hope to see you in our, in future sessions as well.