Tribal Climate Tool

University of California MERCED Climate Impacts Group

This tribal climate tool provides maps, graphs and reports that summarize projected changes in climate for specific tribes in the Pacific Northwest and Great Basin.

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Notes from our reviewers

The CLEAN collection is hand-picked and rigorously reviewed for scientific accuracy and classroom effectiveness. Read what our review team had to say about this resource below or learn more about how CLEAN reviews teaching materials.

Teachers will need to provide additional guidance for a higher quality lesson. Students can take a tour of how to navigate this tribal climate tool.
Students analyze credible data (on tribal lands) focused on different climate variables such as precipitation, temperature, snow, soil moisture, stream flow/temperature, vegetation, fire and sea level rise. Students look at climate projections over different time periods based on different emission scenarios. Students can download the datasets that are cited in the documentation. Comments from expert scientist: Tool provides easy way to visualize climate change data across western US for different tribal regions. There is a significant mismatch between the scales shown in the tool and the native resolution of the climate models used to generate the climate change data and scaling methods were not described. Data used is from CMIP5 climate projections while CMIP6 data is now becoming available.
This is a resource tool in accessing current data and projected possible environmental (temperature and precipitation) trends based on high or low emissions in selected regions of the US. Regions are based on Native American tribal lands. Interactive only in that users are able to select the data parameters they wish to view. Structured activity will need to be developed to use this resource as a learning tool. This website provides great data for students to use but students will need detailed instruction and additional support from teacher.