IU's Hoosier Life Survey, with responses from 90 of the state's 92 counties, is one of the nation's most comprehensive statewide public-opinion surveys of environmental change to date. It offers a rich source of insights to scientists, public officials, and the general public on how climate change affects Hoosiers in their everyday lives.
The Hoosier Resilience Index is yet another tool the ERI has created to help Indiana towns, cities, and counties address climate change vulnerabilities. The index places community-specific information at the fingertips of local leaders, providing data for every town, city, and county in the state. The data include information about extreme heat and precipitation projections, flood plain and land use maps, and demographic information of vulnerable neighborhoods. Additionally, the index offers local governments a self-assessment to understand current community preparedness.
To help protect the state's water supplies under climate change, the Future Water gateway supported by ERI shows users a highly detailed model of the Wabash River Basin under different climate scenarios. According to the model, increasing temperatures due to climate change are likely to reduce the amount of water in Indiana's soil and streams at critical times of the year for farmers, despite modest projected increases in average annual rainfall.
