Crazy weather with buckets of rain followed by summer droughts. Invasive species taking over farmer’s fields. Indiana’s incidence of Lyme disease tripling in five years.

Scientists see these signs and harbor no doubt that climate change already has had an impact on our lives.

To help better prepare Indiana to meet this challenge, Indiana University announced plans Wednesday to create a $55 million Environmental Resilience Institute to forecast environmental change and predict how it will affect Indiana’s businesses and residents.

Use the phrase “climate change” in certain circles these days, and the debate can rapidly become both heated and political. But IU Vice President for Research Fred H. Cate said he did not think that would pose a problem.

“For the purposes of this project, it does not matter what you think is the cause of climate change,” Cate said. “In every county in the state, the majority believe that climate change is a reality. There’s a fight over how we got here; no fight at all over that we are here.”

President Donald Trump has not been a friend to environmental scientists, undoing a number of policies enacted by former President Barack Obama, including one that directed federal agencies to take steps to mitigate the effects of climate change.

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The IU proposal, however, long predates the Trump White House, Cate said.

However, the current administration’s cutting back on collecting data makes this initiative even more critical, Cate said.

“There aren’t lot of people who sit around the university or anywhere else and think about environmental change in those terms. What we see is a lot of people who are confronting elements of environmental change,” he said. “The innovative part of this initiative is bringing those people together. “

The Institute will focus on three main objectives, said IU distinguished professor of biology Ellen Ketterson, who will lead the ”Prepared for Environmental Change” initiative.

Scientists will aim to provide accurate forecasts for both the short term and long term to help businesses and communities gird for the future. Law school professors will join with those in the liberal arts and the School of Public and Environmental Affairs to advise government and businesses and those in communication will focus on sharing the message and encouraging public engagement.

“We don’t want to throw climate change wording at people, when in a sense they already have information they need,” Ketterson said. “Our common purpose is to take expertise … and be adequately prepared for the change that we know is coming.”

In her own work, Ketterson has seen climate change at play. She studies a snowbird, called a junco, which spends its winters in the United States and summers in Canada. As the winters have grown milder, these birds don’t migrate as far south as they used to in the colder months.

The change in the weather has led the birds to start breeding earlier in the year. Originally baby birds hatched when insect life, i.e. their main food source, proliferated. Now, due to the warmer winters, insects develop faster and there may not be as many to sustain the new birds. Like many other bird species, the junco population has declined, though not as much as other birds have, making them a good model for resilience.

But the research that the institute conducts will not be purely academic, but will partner with state officials and businesses in their endeavors.

IU scientists are already partnering with Citizens Energy Group on one such project, a water re-use model for Pleasant Run Creek. In recent years, the water levels at the creek have declined, so Citizens will work with IUPUI experts to find a way to recycle water from the White River into the smaller waterway. Doing that, the thinking goes, will help revitalize the surrounding neighborhoods.

Citizens has worked with IU before on a project to halt the brain drain of engineers from the state. That educational initiative has direct implications for how Citizens does business, said John Trypus, the company’s director of underground engineering and construction. Much of their work involves consultants, and often they have to go outside the state to find those experts.

“Currently we are implementing capital programs upwards of $300 million a year,” he said. “The more (Indiana university graduates) stay, the more we can work with local consultants that have that knowledge and power.”

Staying local can be even more critical when it comes to plants than engineers and that will be another area for the institute to tackle.

Invasive species, such as stilt grass, already have taken hold. Originally native to China, this grass species migrated to Knoxville, Tenn., about 30 years ago in packing material, Ketterson said.

Only recently did it figure out how to move north into Indiana fields. Now, researchers are trying to find ways to control its spread.

“If there were one message, it is that everything is connected to everything else and if you change one thing, you’re going to change lots of things,” Ketterson said. “To solve these problems, people need to start thinking in that systems way, in that everything is connected to everything else way. And that’s no small task.”

The environmental initiative is the second large-scale project that Indiana University has funded through its $300 million Grand Challenges Program. Last year, the Precision Health Initiative, which researches tailored treatments for disease tailored to individual patients, received $120 million.

Call IndyStar reporter Shari Rudavsky at (317) 444-6354. Follow her on Twitter and Facebook.