Location: Soil, Water & Air Resources Research
Project Number: 5030-21600-001-014-G
Project Type: Grant
Start Date: Sep 15, 2024
End Date: Sep 30, 2026
Objective:
The objective of this work is to evaluate a variety of climate services, including online webinars and monthly climate outlooks, state vulnerability assessments, as well as interactive tools that provide regional and local climate information relevant to a variety of different agricultural stakeholders. The work will provide a baseline measure of the value of these services, as well as identify areas for improvement in service delivery and development.
Approach:
Phase 1:
Outcomes and impacts will involve developing survey instruments, or a single “drill-down” survey, tailored to the three categories of services provided by the Midwest Climate Hub (MCH). These instruments will build on prior surveys used in the evaluation of the North Central U.S. Climate and Drought webinar series and utilize a societal impacts coding rubric (adapted from Meadow and Owen 2021). Surveys will be distributed to users via Qualtrics by the cooperator.
Phase 2:
Following a review of these survey results, focus-group and listening sessions will be conducted with users to ground-truth findings. In addition, demographic information collected in Phase 1 will be compared with 2022 Census of Agriculture data in order to determine accessibility of products across agricultural stakeholders.
Phase 3:
Project members will review the findings and products developed in Phases 1 and 2 to create a framework and assessment plan. Development will include consultation with other Climate Hubs to ensure the framework and plan are suitable for use across the Hubs and for a variety of different products.
