By: Sarah Terry-Cobo The Journal Record November 22, 2016 0

OKLAHOMA CITY - Two tribal nations' drought planning efforts will help smaller local governments establish long-term policy tools for southern Oklahoma. The Chickasaw Nation and Choctaw Nation's work to develop a groundwater contingency plan could take a more holistic, regional look at that natural resource, said Dawn Jourdan.

"From the tribal perspective, the climate has always changed, it is just happening at a much more rapid pace now," she said.

Jourdan is among several researchers providing social science and earth science research to the tribal task force. The executive associate dean in Texas A&M University's Architecture College organized six workshops to gather input on how tribal citizens value water resources.

The workshops included role-playing games in which people represented different sectors, including agriculture, households, ecotourism, health, land planning and water resources development. Participants can vote on a scale, ranging from whether they want regulators to stay out of water planning decisions or they want incentives for conservation.

Jourdan said her preliminary findings suggest participants prefer water conservation strategies and using technology to help mitigate dwindling supplies. She will complete a report to the tribes in December and said the social science research could be used in the tribes' drought planning strategies.

Tribal governments are savvy at adapting to changing climate conditions because they are closely connected to natural resources, particularly how weather affects wildlife needed for subsistence, she said. Though drought and floods can be difficult to predict, the social science tools are important for establishing how tribes prefer to adapt to changing resources, Jourdan said.

Renee McPherson and her graduate students are providing climate science used in Jourdan's scenarios and providing climate research directly to the tribes, too. McPherson teaches climatology at the University of Oklahoma and directs the South Central Climate Science Center. The drought contingency research can provide tools for tribal governments to use when examining adaptation scenarios, she said.

"They won't read the journal article when it publishes, so it is incumbent upon us to communicate with them," McPherson said. "How do we make sure this tool isn't static, because if it stays the same for 20 years, that is also not helpful."

The Chickasaw Nation and Choctaw Nation received a grant from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation to form a regional task force to study the Arbuckle-Simpson Aquifer. The drought contingency plan is expected to be completed in May 2017.

Chickasaw and Choctaw tribal leaders can provide planning and guidance to smaller rural governments that don't have resources to examine resource planning on a municipal level, Jourdan said. If those decisions were left to the free market, there wouldn't be a long-term vision for resource planning, she said.

"By taking leadership, the Chickasaw Nation ensures there is some community and regional thought about how we share resources," Jourdan said.