Science is critical to society's ability to prepare for, respond to, and recover from environmental crises. Natural and technological disasters such as disease outbreaks, volcanic eruptions, hurricanes, oil spills, and tsunamis require coordinated scientific expertise across a range of disciplines to shape effective policies and protocols. Five years after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, new organizational frameworks have arisen for scientists and engineers to apply their expertise to disaster response and recovery in a variety of capacities. Here, we describe examples of these opportunities, including an exciting new collaboration between the Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography (ASLO) and the Department of the Interior's (DOI) Strategic Sciences Group (SSG). Recognizing the need for strategic science following the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010, the Secretary of the DOI stood up an experimental Strategic Sciences Working Group. The Strategic Sciences Group (SSG) was later formally established by Secretarial Order 3318 in 2012. The SSG provides the DOI with a standing capacity to rapidly assemble multidisciplinary teams of scientists (“crisis science teams”) which effectively act as “pop-up think tanks” (Fig. 1) to construct interdisciplinary scenarios of environmental crises affecting DOI resources. The scenarios are used to support DOI decision making during environmental crisis response and recovery (Fig. 1). Through facilitated discussion, the SSG staff guides the crisis science team in building scenarios that identify the potential short- and long-term environmental, social, and economic consequences of the crisis, and determine points where intervention could alter outcomes. These scenarios and intervention points are shared with decision makers. The Strategic Sciences Working Group building scenarios on the consequences of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill (2010). Credit: Gary Machlis. Scenarios are useful tools for exploring a range of potential consequences of a real or hypothetical event. Scenarios have been used by the military, the private sector, emergency managers, and the natural disaster community for long-term planning and stakeholder engagement. Scenarios developed by the SSG Hurricane Sandy Crisis Science Team identified cascading chains of potential consequences associated with this event (Fig. 2). Each consequence was assigned a qualitative uncertainty value from 1 (unlikely) to 5 (certain; Fig. 2). For example, the Hurricane Sandy Crisis Science Team determined that overwash and breaches of barrier islands were certain to occur as a result of the storm (assigned a value of 5), leading to advance of bay shoreline (beach growth as a result of sand redeposition following the storm; assigned a value of 5), and to the probable creation of new habitat (assigned a value of 3). This information was used to develop interventions which were delivered to decision makers during briefings and in the final SSG Hurricane Sandy report. Example chain of consequences: Changes in coastal geomorphology as a result of Hurricane Sandy. Credit: Department of the Interior, 2013. Interventions, or actions taken by decision makers which can influence outcomes in the coupled human-natural system, are an important product of the scenario-building process. Interventions allow decision makers to identify where new policies or actions might have the most impact in preventing or mitigating an anticipated chain of consequences. To date, the SSG approach has been applied to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill (2010) and Hurricane Sandy (2013). The Deepwater Horizon team developed 21 interventions for the mid- to long-term recovery of the Gulf of Mexico region; examples included comprehensive assistance to fishermen, engagement of marginalized coastal communities in the recovery process, and the creation of a local leadership and strategic recovery program. The Hurricane Sandy team developed 17 interventions for recovery in the hardest hit areas of New York and New Jersey which included the implementation of both ecosystem-based and engineered risk-reduction projects to protect coastal communities and ecosystems from future storms, and mapping and measuring the protection services of key ecosystems such as dunes and wetlands. By treating the affected community as a coupled human-natural system, multidisciplinary SSG crisis teams apply their expertise to include the environmental, social and economic consequences of an event, and identify strategic actions to mitigate those consequences. A new collaboration with SSG has created the opportunity for members of the ASLO to join these crisis science teams in response to a future environmental crisis to help build interdisciplinary scenarios and identify intervention points. Because these teams are small with specific expertise matched to the particular crisis setting, the SSG does not maintain databases of potential volunteers or recruit volunteers in advance. In the event that the SSG is deployed to a crisis by the Secretary of the DOI, SSG staff will reach out to ASLO along with other societies to identify potential team members. The SSG staff then selects and invites participants. To learn more about the DOI SSG, please see: http://www.doi.gov/strategicsciences or contact us at: ssg@ios.doi.gov. Read a personal account of an SSG Hurricane Sandy Crisis Science Team member: http://blog.nature.org/science/2013/10/31/science-sandy-hurricane-disaster-response/ Teresa Stoepler, AAAS Science & Technology Policy Fellow, U.S. Geological Survey; tstoepler@usgs.gov Kris Ludwig, Staff Scientist, U.S. Geological Survey; kaludwig@usgs.gov