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This story map explores the work being conducted in the project, Can We Conserve Wetlands Under a Changing Climate? Mapping Wetland Hydrology Across an Ecoregion and Developing Climate Adaptation Recommendations. Explore the story map to learn more about the work being done to understand how wetlands may change in the future.
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As the impacts of climate change amplify, understanding the consequences for wetlands will be critical for their sustainable management and conservation, particularly in arid regions such as the Columbia Plateau. The depressional wetlands in this region (wetlands located in topographic depressions where water can accumulate) are an important source of surface water during the summer months. However, their health depends directly on precipitation and evaporation, making them susceptible to changes in temperature and precipitation. Yet few tools for monitoring water movement patterns (hydrology) in and out of these landscapes currently exist, hindering efforts to model how they are changing. This project provided...
Categories: Project;
Types: Map Service,
OGC WFS Layer,
OGC WMS Layer,
OGC WMS Service;
Tags: 2015,
CASC,
Columbia Plateau,
Completed,
Data Visualization & Tools, All tags...
Data Visualization & Tools,
Drought, Fire and Extreme Weather,
Drought, Fire and Extreme Weather,
Extreme Weather,
Extreme Weather,
Northwest,
Northwest,
Northwest,
Northwest CASC,
Oregon,
Projects by Region,
Science Tools for Managers,
Science Tools for Managers,
Washington,
Water, Coasts and Ice,
Water, Coasts and Ice,
Wetlands,
Wetlands,
climate change,
hydrologic dynamics,
wetlands, Fewer tags
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Depressional wetlands in the Columbia Plateau are valuable habitats because they maintain surface water into or throughout the dry summers. The source of that moisture—surface runoff from surrounding areas, or groundwater in local aquifers—may determine if these wetlands are seasonal, permanent, or semi-permanent. Helping these wetlands continue to provide habitat and other services requires understanding how these flooding and drying patterns (their hydrology) have changed in the past, and how projected changes in climate might affect them. The goal of this project was to develop wall-to-wall maps of wetlands across the region, coupled with detailed 30-year hydrographs of historical (1984-2014) fluctuations in...
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