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The goal of this project was to: (a) archive the relevant AR5 model output data for the southwest region; (b) downscale daily temperature and precipitation to 12 X 12 km cell spatial resolution over the Southwest; (c) assess the precision (degree of agreement) of the simulated models; (d) assess the direction and magnitude of change in projections between AR4 and AR5, as well as assess projections of key extreme climatic events (i.e., extreme drought, extreme seasonal precipitation, extreme high and low temperature events); and (e) assess critical ecosystem impacts (i.e., climate water deficit and fire; hydrological condition of major river systems; impacts on highly valued species).
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In recent decades, average temperatures across the U.S. Southwest have increased substantially and precipitation patterns have increased in variability. The warmer temperatures directly impact water availability within Southwest ecosystems, including earlier snowmelts; reduced snowpacks, soil moisture, and streamflow; and lower humidity. Collectively, this has led to an increase in aridity across this region. This in turn affects terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, increases wildfire severity, and impacts human activities such as agriculture and municipal water use. These well-documented trends are at the forefront of the concerns of natural resource managers in the Southwest. This project aims to strengthen partnerships...
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Stream flow is directly tied to climate, and numerous studies provide substantial evidence that climate change is a threat to future aquatic water flow processes. In the southwestern United States, mountain snow is a primary water source for streams and rivers. However, climate change is threatening the region's mountain snow, leading to reduced snowpack, earlier snowmelt, and more precipitation falling as rain rather than snow. These effects can change the timing, quality, and amount of water flowing in aquatic systems, creating challenges for natural resource managers. The goal of the proposed project is to synthesize existing research and management plans to identify misalignments between aquatic flows and the...
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Wetland conservation in the Upper Mississippi River Basin (UMRB) is a priority for Federal, State, NGO, and Tribal land managers to support migratory bird habitat in Minnesota and Iowa. These wetlands, known as depressional wetlands, also provide ecosystem services associated with flood water storage and enhancing down-stream water quality by storing and processing nutrients. Understanding how conservation efforts and management strategies can impact both wildlife habitat and water quality/quantity issues in the UMRB is critical for helping this region adapt to future precipitation patterns. High intensity rainfall events can cause depressional wetlands to overflow and connect with Mississippi River tributaries....
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The USA National Phenology Network (USA-NPN) and the North Central Climate Science Center (NC CSC) seek to enhance scientific understanding of how climate trends and variability are linked to phenology across spatial scales, with the ultimate goal of being able to understand and predict climate impacts on natural resources. A key step towards achieving this long-term goal is connecting local observations (individual plants or animals) of phenology with those at regional to continental scales (10 km to 10,000 km), which may ultimately be used to better understand phenology across ecosystems and landscapes and thereby inform natural resource management. The specific shorter-term goals of this effort are to process...
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The Prairie Pothole Region spans parts of North and South Dakota, Minnesota, Montana, Iowa and south-central Canada and contains millions of wetlands that provide habitat for breeding and migrating birds. Because it is the continent’s most important breeding area for waterfowl, conservation and management largely focuses on protecting habitat for nesting ducks. However, other wetland-dependent birds also rely on this region, and it is important to understand the degree to which habitat conserved for ducks provides habitat for other species, and how the quality of this habitat will be affected by climate change. Project researchers tested whether waterfowl are effective representatives, or surrogates, for other wetland-dependent...
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Science produced by the National and Regional Climate Adaptation Science Center (CASC) network must ideally be scientifically sound, relevant to a management decision, fair and respectful of stakeholders’ divergent values, and produced through a process of iterative collaboration between scientists and managers. However, research that aims to produce usable knowledge and collaborative approaches that boost usability are not common in academia or federal research programs. As a result, neither the process of creating such research nor the impacts to stakeholders are well understood or well documented. This lack of attention to the processes and impacts of collaborative scientist-stakeholder knowledge production also...
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The USGS National Climate Change and Wildlife Science Center (NCCWSC) is currently engaged in an Ecological Drought initiative, focused on understanding the impacts of drought on natural ecosystems across the country. This project was designed to support the Ecological Drought initiative by creating a USGS EcoDrought Actionable Science Working Group. The goal of this working group was to identify science needs for drought-related decisions and to provide natural resource managers with practical strategies for adapting to and planning for drought. The working group engaged social scientists to garner advice on relevant social science research questions and data needs, as well as to identify any regulatory, institutional,...
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Ecological drought impacts ecosystems across the U.S. that support a wide array of economic activity and ecosystem services. Managing drought-vulnerable natural resources is a growing challenge for federal, state and Tribal land managers. Plant communities and animal populations are strongly linked to patterns of drought and soil moisture availability. As a result, ecosystems may be heavily altered by future changes in precipitation and soil moisture that are driven by climate change. Although this vulnerability is well recognized, developing accurate information about the potential consequences of climate change for ecological drought is difficult because the soil moisture conditions that plants experience are...
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Forested areas in the Western U.S. that are impacted by disturbances such as fire and drought have increased in recent decades. This trend is likely to continue, with the increase in frequency and extent of wildfire activity being especially concerning. Resource managers need reliable scientific information to better understand wildfire occurrence, which can vary substantially across landscapes and throughout time. However, few scientific models capture this variability, and projections of future potential changes in fire occurrence can include some uncertainty. This uncertainty can limit our ability to anticipate potential wildfire impacts on society and ecological systems. Another method to help managers prepare...
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Preparing for and responding to drought requires integrating scientific information into complex decision making processes. In recognition of this challenge, regional drought early warning systems (DEWS) and related drought-information tools have been developed under the National Integrated Drought Information System (NIDIS). Despite the existence of many tools and information sources, however, the factors that influence if a tool(s) is (are) used, which tools are used, and how much benefit those tools provide remain poorly understood. Using the Upper Colorado River DEWS as a case study, this study investigated how water, land, and fire managers select from among many available tools. The Upper Colorado River Basin...
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When climate models are developed, researchers test how well they replicate the climate system by using them to model past climate. Ideally, the model output will match the climate conditions that were actually recorded in the past, indicating that the model correctly characterizes how the climate system works and can be used to reliably project future conditions. However, this approach assumes that models that reliably project past climate conditions will accurately predict future climate conditions, even though the climate system might have changed. This research contributes to generating more reliable local-scale climate projections by testing the assumption that the climatological relationships which existed...
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Wildfires are one of the greatest threats to human infrastructure and the ecosystem services humans value in the western US, but are also necessary in fire-adapted ecosystems. Wildfire activity is widely projected to increase in response to climate change in the Northwest, but we currently lack a comprehensive understanding of what this increase will look like or what its impacts will be on a variety of ecological and hydrologic systems. This project addressed one critical part of those impacts: the islands of unburned vegetation within wildfires. Unburned islands occur naturally as wildfires burn across landscapes, and are important habitat refuges for species -- places where plants and animals survive the fire...
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The Schitsu'umsh people (Coeur d’Alene Tribe of Idaho) have an intimate relationship with their landscape and a rich knowledge of how to interact with the environment in a way that benefits human, plant, and animal communities alike. Such knowledge and practices can provide valuable insight as to how tribal and non-tribal resource managers, communities, and governments can best respond to the effects of a changing climate. This project was a pilot effort to collect and translate indigenous knowledge and practices into shareable formats. Researchers developed documents, images, lesson plans, and innovative, interactive 3-D virtual reality simulations that effectively convey Schitsu’umsh knowledge and practices and...
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The headwaters of the Columbia River Basin in the Northern Rocky Mountains region is widely recognized as a stronghold for native fish, containing some of the last remaining connected cold-water habitats for species such as the threatened bull trout and native westslope cutthroat trout. However, as temperatures rise, non-native invasive fish species could be poised to prosper in the region as conditions start to favor warm-water species over those that require cooler waters to thrive. The spread of invasive fish species has the potential to devastate native fish populations, stream habitats, and the local cultures and economies that depend on healthy aquatic ecosystems – including the region’s multi-billion dollar...
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The Pueblo de San Ildefonso is facing increased wildfire risk under climate change. Recent fires have not only burned culturally significant sites, but they have also resulted in a loss of watershed runoff retention, which has increased erosion and the transport of contaminated sediments and soils on Pueblo lands from the adjacent Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). A priority for the Pueblo is to ensure that wildfires are managed appropriately and, when large fires do occur, that effective measures are taken to control the aftermath of increased flooding and erosion. This project will build on the knowledge of elders and the community to develop a study plan (or study method) to evaluate different landscape...
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Arguably the most direct, intense, and long-lasting modification that humans can make to a landscape is converting rural lands to urbanized areas. As human populations grow, the demand for urbanized areas will increase, and scientists can help natural resource managers plan for these changes by creating models that predict potential patterns of future urbanization. The Southeast U.S. is experiencing particularly rapid population growth, as a favorable winter climate has drawn millions to the region from other areas of the country over the past several decades. However, the Southeast is also at risk from the effects of climate change, particularly along its vast coastline, where over a quarter of the region’s population...
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The pine rockland ecosystem is found only in south Florida and the Bahamas and provides important habitat for numerous rare and endemic plants and animals. These include 18 species that are already federally listed as threatened or endangered and four other species petitioned for listing that are scheduled for development of Species Status Assessments (SSAs). Today, south Florida’s pine rockland ecosystem represents less than 3 percent of its original extent. Threats such as saltwater intrusion from hurricanes and sea-level rise pose the greatest risk to the longevity of this ecosystem. For the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to make decisions about the potential listing of a species, they must be able to forecast...
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Wild turkey is a culturally and economically important game species that has shown dramatic population declines throughout much of the southeastern U.S. A possible explanation for these declines is that the timing of nesting has shifted to earlier in the year while hunting seasons have remained the same. Wild turkeys are the only gamebird in the contiguous United States that are hunted during the reproductive season, so premature harvest of adult male turkeys may disrupt reproductive behaviors and reduce population growth. In addition to hunter harvest, climate change can also impact population growth of wild turkeys. Local and broad-scale regional changes in precipitation and temperature associated with a changing...
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Climate in the southeastern U.S. is predicted to be changing at a slower rate than other parts of North America; however, land use change associated with urbanization is having a significant effect on wildlife populations and habitat availability. We sought to understand the effect of global warming on both beneficial and pest insects of trees. We used urban warming as a proxy for global warming in as much as many cities have already warmed as much, due to heat island effects, as they are expected to warm due to climate change by 2050 or even 2100. We were able to develop good predictive models of how warming influences beneficial and pest insects for cities in the Southeast and across the east coast more generally....
map background search result map search result map Understanding How Warming Temperatures Will Impact Trees and Insects Using Cities as a Proxy Assessment of Available Climate Models and Projections for the Southwest Region Understanding How Climate and Land Use Change Will Impact Wetland-Dependent Birds: Are Waterfowl Effective Surrogates for Other Species? Testing Downscaled Climate Projections: Is Past Performance an Indicator of Future Accuracy? Disappearing Refugia: Identifying Trends and Resilience in Unburned Islands under Climate Change Collecting and Applying Schitsu’umsh Indigenous Knowledge and Practices to Climate Change Decision Making Eco-drought Actionable Science Working Group Predicting Climate-Induced Expansions of Invasive Fish in the Pacific Northwest: Implications for Climate Adaptation of Native Salmon and Trout Developing Future Habitat Condition Scenarios for Wildlife in the Imperiled Pine Rockland Ecosystem of South Florida Improving Scenarios of Future Patterns of Urbanization, Climate Adaptation, and Landscape Change in the Southeast How and Why Upper Colorado River Basin Land, Water, and Fire Managers Choose to Use Drought Tools Approaches to Evaluate Actionable Science for Climate Adaptation Incorporating USGS Web Cameras into the Phenocam Network to Enhance Scientific Understanding of Phenological Trends and Variability Assessing the Climate Vulnerability of Wild Turkeys Across the Southeastern U.S. Actionable Science to Understand the Effects of Recent Temperature Increases to Inform Natural Resources Management in the Southwestern United States Drought and Disturbances as Drivers of Long-Term Ecological Transformation and Risk Landscape Management Practices on the Pueblo de San Ildefonso Climate-Driven Connectivity Between Prairie-Pothole and Riparian Wetlands in the Upper Mississippi River Watershed: Implications for Wildlife Habitat and Water Quality Future of Aquatic Flows: Endangered streams: Understanding misalignments between aquatic flows and management strategies to inform adaptation efforts Developing High-Resolution Soil Moisture Projections for the Contiguous U.S. Landscape Management Practices on the Pueblo de San Ildefonso Developing Future Habitat Condition Scenarios for Wildlife in the Imperiled Pine Rockland Ecosystem of South Florida How and Why Upper Colorado River Basin Land, Water, and Fire Managers Choose to Use Drought Tools Collecting and Applying Schitsu’umsh Indigenous Knowledge and Practices to Climate Change Decision Making Understanding How Warming Temperatures Will Impact Trees and Insects Using Cities as a Proxy Disappearing Refugia: Identifying Trends and Resilience in Unburned Islands under Climate Change Understanding How Climate and Land Use Change Will Impact Wetland-Dependent Birds: Are Waterfowl Effective Surrogates for Other Species? Assessment of Available Climate Models and Projections for the Southwest Region Future of Aquatic Flows: Endangered streams: Understanding misalignments between aquatic flows and management strategies to inform adaptation efforts Climate-Driven Connectivity Between Prairie-Pothole and Riparian Wetlands in the Upper Mississippi River Watershed: Implications for Wildlife Habitat and Water Quality Actionable Science to Understand the Effects of Recent Temperature Increases to Inform Natural Resources Management in the Southwestern United States Drought and Disturbances as Drivers of Long-Term Ecological Transformation and Risk Assessing the Climate Vulnerability of Wild Turkeys Across the Southeastern U.S. Improving Scenarios of Future Patterns of Urbanization, Climate Adaptation, and Landscape Change in the Southeast Approaches to Evaluate Actionable Science for Climate Adaptation Predicting Climate-Induced Expansions of Invasive Fish in the Pacific Northwest: Implications for Climate Adaptation of Native Salmon and Trout Testing Downscaled Climate Projections: Is Past Performance an Indicator of Future Accuracy? Eco-drought Actionable Science Working Group Developing High-Resolution Soil Moisture Projections for the Contiguous U.S. Incorporating USGS Web Cameras into the Phenocam Network to Enhance Scientific Understanding of Phenological Trends and Variability