Useful to Usable: Developing usable climate science for agriculture

Authors

Linda Stalker Prokopy, Purdue UniversityFollow
J. Stuart Carlton, Texas A&M University
Tonya Haigh, University of Nebraska-LincolnFollow
Maria Carmen Lemos, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor
Amber Saylor Mase, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Melissa Widhalm, Purdue University

Date of this Version

2017

Citation

Climate Risk Management 15 (2017) 1–7

Comments

Copyright 2016 The Authors.

Open access

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.crm.2016.10.004

Abstract

The Useful to Usable (U2U) project was a six-year research and extension project funded by the United States Department of Agriculture to provide both useful and usable climate information for the agricultural (corn) sector in the Midwestern United States. The project adopted an extensive co-production of knowledge and decision-making approach that involved intense iteration with potential end-users, including farmers and a variety of professional agricultural advisors, through focus groups and surveys, feedback at outreach events, and frequent informal interactions to develop both decision support tools and delivery mechanisms that met stakeholder needs. This overview paper for this special issue illustrates some key ways that the co-production process informed the overall project. Subsequent papers in the special issue span the different objectives of the U2U project, including social, climate, and agronomic sciences. A brief overview of these papers is presented here.