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Climate And Culture: Values, Risk Perception, And Climate Change Adaptation In Delta County, Colorado, Tara Kane Prendergast

Architecture and Planning ETDs

This thesis contributes to literature on climate risk perception and adaptive capacity. It is an investigation into the relationship between values, climate risk perception, and agricultural practices at the community scale. Findings indicate that cultural values have a strong influence on both climate risk perception and the specific practices agriculturalists employ to contend with the environmental conditions they find themselves operating within. They also suggest that environmental conditions – specifically the prevalence of microclimates, topographical complexity, and significant preexisting variability – play an important role in influencing agriculturalists’ perception and climate management.

A qualitative project, this paper is based on …