| Summary: | Scenarios are used to think ahead in rapidly changing, complex, and competitive environments, and make crucial decisions in absence of complete information about the future. Currently, at many regional scales of governance, there is a growing need for legitimate tools that enable the actors (e.g., governments, corporations, organized interests) at local-scales to address pressing concerns in the midst of uncertainty. This is particularly true of areas experiencing rapidly changing environments (e.g., drought, floods, diminishing sea ice, erosion) and complex social problems (e.g., remote communities, resource extraction, threatened cultures). Scenario exercises produce neither forecasts of what is to come nor are they visions of what participants would like to happen. Rather, they produce pertinent evidence-based information related to questions of “what would happen if.” and thus provide the possibility of strategic decision- making to plan research that promotes community resilience. Financial support by the National Science Foundation (ArcSEES Program #1263850) is gratefully acknowledged.
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