A methodology for evaluating the usefulness of global-change information for long-term decision-making: A case study of fisheries management in the Pacific Northwest

My thesis describes a methodological framework that can be used to examine three questions: (1) is the information provided by the GCRP useful for current decisions? (2) can the GCRP be designed to make research results more useful? and (3) are there changes that need to be made to the decision process to make GCRP research more useful? Such an evaluation is warranted by increasing interest in justifying the usefulness of large-scale research programs at the federal level. I perform this evaluation for a case study of salmon management in the Columbia River Basin.;The decision makers noted that their reluctance to include climate-change impacts in their analyses is compounded by the difficulty of accessing GCRP information. I find that information about climate-change impacts to salmon are currently available only as a result of techniques such as forecasting by analogy and qualitative interpretations of extreme climate events. Therefore, if climate-change information is to factor into the analyses (now and in the future), changes are needed in the type of information that is generated and made available to the decision makers.;Another result of my analysis is the discovery that the decision models used for assessing long-term salmon viability currently rely on aggregate estimates of survival rates that are insufficient to predict the impact of climate change on the salmon resource. Therefore, for climate-change information to be included in the analysis, changes are needed to the decision-making tools that would allow for future addition of climate-change impacts.;Decision makers recognize the potential for climate change to influence some of the decision parameters. I was able to confirm this intuition by showing that climate change can influence some decision parameters in the decision models currently relied on by decision makers. However, decision makers feel that the uncertainty regarding so many of the decision parameters precludes adding yet another uncertain parameter to the decision. To confirm that belief, I evaluate a decision both with and without considering climate-change impacts as they are currently predicted. The analyses show that the decision would remain the same under both scenarios.