In the Northwest U.S., warming temperatures and changing precipitation patterns will likely result in significantly altered snowpack, stream flows, and water availability. Along with these changes comes an increased risk of “ecological drought”, or periods of water stress that impact ecosystems and the services they provide –which can ultimately impact human communities. More frequent and severe ecological droughts have the potential to push ecosystems beyond their ability to recover, resulting in complete changes in ecosystem composition and function. Ecological drought will only worsen existing management challenges, such as competition for water resources, habitat degradation, invasive species, and more frequent and severe wildfires. [...]
Summary
In the Northwest U.S., warming temperatures and changing precipitation patterns will likely result in significantly altered snowpack, stream flows, and water availability. Along with these changes comes an increased risk of “ecological drought”, or periods of water stress that impact ecosystems and the services they provide –which can ultimately impact human communities.
More frequent and severe ecological droughts have the potential to push ecosystems beyond their ability to recover, resulting in complete changes in ecosystem composition and function. Ecological drought will only worsen existing management challenges, such as competition for water resources, habitat degradation, invasive species, and more frequent and severe wildfires. Natural resource managers therefore need to consider ecological drought and its impacts in their long-term planning efforts.
This project will support resource managers by synthesizing and assessing available information on effective climate adaptation actions and tools that can be used to address ecological drought in the Northwest. Researchers will identify the ecological and socioeconomic conditions under which specific adaptation actions are most suited, in order to support reliable and timely decision-making. This project will result in both a detailed synthesis report and a user-friendly fact sheet highlighting key adaptation actions. These results will be shared with resource managers, scientists, and policy makers and made easily accessible online.
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ColumbiaRiver_AlanCressler.jpg “Columbia River - Credit: Alan Cressler”
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Climate change will increase the risk of ecological drought with projected changes likely to result in cascading impacts on species, habitats, and ecosystem services, including tree mortality, increases in wildfires, and altered water and nutrient cycling processes. These impacts will exacerbate current resource management challenges such as conflicts over water resources, land use and degradation, invasive species, maintaining agricultural yields, and managing wildfires. We propose to evaluate and synthesize the scientific body of research on ecological drought adaptation actions available to and in use by resource managers in the Northwest (i.e. Washington, Oregon, Idaho, western Montana). Products will include a state-of-the-science synthesis report on ecological drought climate adaptation actions and a management-focused fact sheet on effective ecological drought adaptation actions for the Northwest region. Knowing which adaptation actions can be best implemented at different scales and in various ecosystems will help resource managers to identify and leverage funding opportunities, create new or enhance existing partnerships, and communicate and coordinate with other agencies and organizations to prioritize on-the-ground ecological drought responses. Primary users of the results and products include scientists, resource managers, and policy makers responsible for responding to the challenges presented by ecological drought. This proposed project directly supports the need of the Northwest Climate Science Center to provide scientific research and synthesis to support natural resource management in a changing climate.