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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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The broadly shared information needs for grassland managers in the North Central region to meet conservation goals in a changing climate are presented and ranked as highly relevant, somewhat relevant, or not relevant for federal, state, tribal, and non-governmental grassland-managing entities.
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Human fossil fuel use and agricultural practices have increased atmospheric nitrogen deposits (e.g., through snow and rain) to mountain ecosystems. This, along with increasing measurable climate warming is affecting soil and water acidity and altering nutrient balances. In this project, North Central CASC-supported researchers will analyze decades of unexplored data, including surface water chemistry from the Loch Vale watershed in Rocky Mountain National Park and other long-term data from Colorado and Wyoming, to understand climate change and atmospheric nitrogen deposition impacts on high-elevation ecosystems. Synthesis workshops with resource management partners will be held to apply the data products and new...
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Lakes, reservoirs, and ponds are central and integral features of the North Central U.S. These water bodies provide aesthetic, cultural, and ecosystem services to surrounding wildlife and human communities. External impacts – such as climate change – can have significant impacts to these important parts of the region’s landscape. Understanding the responses of lakes to these drivers is critical for species conservation and management decisions. Water temperature data are foundational to providing this understanding and are currently the most widely measured of all aquatic parameters with over 400 unique groups monitoring water temperature in U.S. lakes and rivers. However, lake temperature data are lacking at...
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Drought is a complex environmental hazard that impacts both ecological and social systems. Accounting for the role of human attitudes, institutions, and societal values in drought planning is important to help identify how various drought durations and severity may differentially affect social resilience to adequately respond to and manage drought impacts. While there have been successful past efforts to understand how individuals, communities, institutions, and agencies plan for and respond to drought, these studies have relied on extensive multi-year case studies in specific locations. In contrast, this project seeks to determine how social science insights and methods can best contribute to ecological drought...
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Assessing the vulnerability of species to climate change is a key step in anticipating climate impacts on species. Vulnerability assessments characterize species’ future conservation needs and can guide current planning and management actions to support species persistence in the face of climate change. A full assessment of climate vulnerability involves characterizing three essential components: sensitivity, adaptive capacity, and exposure. Assessing sensitivity and adaptive capacity, as well as determining which aspects of exposure to assess all require detailed knowledge of species-specific traits and ecology. Such a detailed understanding is hard to come by, even for well-studied species, thus, developing vulnerability...
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Over the last half-century, grassland bird populations have declined far more than any other bird group in North America. This is because native grasslands were largely replaced with croplands, and many remaining prairies are degraded. Land managers and conservation organizations are racing to preserve and restore these ecosystems to stem further loss of grassland birds. Given limited resources, bird habitat models are needed to help managers prioritize where conservation efforts will be most effective. In addition to habitat loss and degradation from land use change, altered fire regimes, and woody encroachment, increasing greenhouse gas emissions will likely change temperatures and rainfall patterns across North...
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Prescribed burning – planned, controlled fires conducted under weather and fuel conditions designed for safety and effectiveness – is a common practice used to maintain and restore native prairies in the Northern Great Plains. However, climate change will affect the number of days in a year, and when, suitable conditions for prescribed fires occur. For instance, warmer temperatures may shift these “good prescribed-fire days” earlier in the spring and later in the fall, but uncertainty about future climate makes it hard to predict how large shifts will be and if the number of good fire days each year will generally increase or decrease. Further, it’s hard to know whether prescribed fires will continue to achieve...
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Invasions of exotic annual grasses (EAGs like cheatgrass have caused major losses of native shrubs and grasses in western U.S. rangelands. They also decrease the productivity and carbon storage in these ecosystems, which is expected to create dryer soils that may cause further losses in plant productivity. This cycle is the hallmark of desertification – or, fertile lands turning into deserts. Management actions that target EAGs are one of the most widespread land management actions taken in Western U.S. rangelands, but it is unclear which specific actions can simultaneously enhance drought resilience of native plant communities and increase carbon sequestration and storage. This project aims to identify the restoration...
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One of the most visible signs of climate change is less mountain snow. In the Western U.S., deep snow has historically been a cornerstone of life for many plants and animals. For example, snow can provide denning shelter for certain species like the wolverine, and snowmelt provides dependable water to mountain streams that are home to fish like the bull trout. Yet snow losses driven by warming temperatures are already causing land and water managers to rethink whether certain species can thrive in the future. A recently completed study by this research team helped the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service investigate whether wolverines will have enough snow to survive in two areas of the Rocky Mountains. In June 2020,...
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The National Park Service (NPS) is responsible for managing livestock grazing in 94 units, and several park grazing management planning efforts are currently underway. However, there is a recognized need to update grazing management practices to address potential future effects of management practices and climate change. The goal of this project is to outline the steps required for developing NPS grazing management plans, to identify information needs and availability for these planning processes, and to initiate a scenario-based pilot project for meeting these needs at a given park unit. This will serve as an important step toward developing a transferable process to help parks ensure that grazing management practices...
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The bison, which has long served as the symbol of the Department of the Interior, became the official national mammal of the United States in 2016. Bison played a key role in shaping the grasslands of the Great Plains for millennia, but today they are confined to unnaturally small ranges. National parks, including four in the Great Plains, provide a major last bastion for wild bison. Herds in Badlands National Park and Wind Cave National Park in South Dakota, Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve in Kansas, and Theodore Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota are wild in that their movements are unconstrained within their park’s designated bison range, they receive no supplemental feed, minerals, or veterinary attention,...
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The Climate Adaptation Science Centers have conducted numerous training and skills development activities to support tribal and indigenous partners as they seek to use scientific information and techniques to understand and respond to climate change impacts. Because these activities were generated in different CASC regions, with different tribal / indigenous stakeholders, climate change contexts, and training needs, and because the CASC network encourages innovation, these activities were not developed or implemented in a nationally consistent format. This project seeks to identify relevant activities, gather related materials and links that might benefit others seeking to implement similar activities, provide a...
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Natural & cultural resource managers are facing a slew of new challenges for managing public lands stemming from climate change and human-driven stressors like invasive species, fragmentation, and new resource uses. In some cases, the very landscapes and species they are managing are changing in significant ways, transforming from one set of conditions to another. As a result, previously successful management strategies may become less effective, or in some cases ineffective. New and transforming conditions leave managers in a bind on how to respond to transforming public lands and natural resources. On the most basic level managers have three choices of how to respond: resist change, accept change, or direct change...
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Amphibians are a group of animals facing especially severe declines due to many factors including climate change and a common pathogen, the amphibian chytrid fungus. To make informed decisions about amphibians, wildlife managers need to identify species facing the greatest threats and the actions that will most effectively minimize impacts of those threats. Although some amphibian species are relatively well-studied, for most, data to inform management decisions are lacking. Therefore, tools to assist managers must be applicable to amphibian species across a range of data availability and susceptibility to climate change and other threats. In this project, researchers will determine which amphibians in the North...
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Sagebrush steppe is one of the most widely distributed ecosystems in North America. Found in eleven western states, this important yet fragile ecosystem is dominated by sagebrush, but also contains a diversity of native shrubs, grasses, and flowering plants. It provides critical habitat for wildlife like pronghorn and threatened species such as the greater sage-grouse, and is grazed by livestock on public and private lands. However, this landscape is increasingly threatened by shifts in wildfire patterns, the spread of invasive grasses, and changing climate conditions. While sagebrush is slow to recover after fires, non-native grasses such as cheatgrass thrive in post-fire conditions and the spread of these species...
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The Greater Yellowstone Area (GYA) is an iconic landscape with national parks, iconic species like grizzly bears and elk, and over 11,500 square miles of forest. While fires are a natural part of the GYA, climate change and land management legacies are increasing the frequency and size of severe fires. Climate change interacts with these fires to shift conifer forests to non-forested grassland and sagebrush ecosystems. These transformations impact species habitat, carbon storage, and other management goals on public lands. However, managing for “natural ecosystems” is not always possible in the face of climate change. The Resist-Accept-Direct framework (RAD) can help: under RAD, managers can resist change to maintain...
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State Wildlife Action Plans are intended to provide proactive planning and guidance for the management of rare or imperiled species, including Species of Greatest Conservation Need. States must update their State Wildlife Action Plans every 10 years, but planners often lack the capacity or resources to integrate climate change into their planning. Revised State Wildlife Action Plans for most states in the North Central region are due by 2025. Providing support and building capacity for climate-informed State Wildlife Action Plans will be most useful now, before revisions are underway in most states. To increase the capacity for state wildlife agencies, this project identified areas expected to be resilient against...
map background search result map search result map Eco-drought Actionable Science Working Group Improving the Success of Post-Fire Adaptive Management Strategies in Sagebrush Steppe Supporting the National Park Service Midwest Region Bison Management Plan Understanding Historical and Predicting Future Lake Temperatures in North and South Dakota Developing and Testing a Rapid Assessment Method for Understanding Key Social Factors of Ecological Drought Preparedness Integrating Climate Considerations into Grazing Management Programs in National Parks Synthesis of CASC-Led Climate Training Activities for Tribes and Indigenous Communities Drought and Disturbances as Drivers of Long-Term Ecological Transformation and Risk A Framework for Guiding Management Decisions for Amphibians in an Uncertain Future Climate Science and Adaptation Planning Support for State Wildlife Action Plans (SWAPs) in the North Central Region Estimating Future High-Mountain Snowpack to Inform Terrestrial and Aquatic Species Status Assessments, Recovery Plans, and Monitoring A Climate Vulnerability Assessment Framework for Data-Poor Species Cross-Park RAD Project (CPRP): A Case Study in Four National Parks Investigating How Institutional Context and Emotions Shape Manager Decisions to Resist, Accept, or Direct Change in Transforming Ecosystems Broadly Shared Information Needs Among Grassland Managers in the North Central Region Climate Effects on Prescribed Fire Implementation and Efficacy in Northern Mixed-Grass Prairie Using the Resist-Accept-Direct Framework to Manage Wildfires, Carbon Storage, and Ecological Transformations in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem What Will Grassland Bird Communities Look Like Under a Changing Climate? Assessing the Impacts of Rangeland Restoration on Carbon Sequestration and Co-Benefits for Drought Resilience in the Sagebrush Steppe and Mixed Grass Prairie Developing High-Resolution Soil Moisture Projections for the Contiguous U.S. Interpreting Global Change Impacts on Southern Rocky Mountain Alpine and Subalpine Ecosystems for Effective Resource Management Interpreting Global Change Impacts on Southern Rocky Mountain Alpine and Subalpine Ecosystems for Effective Resource Management Integrating Climate Considerations into Grazing Management Programs in National Parks Supporting the National Park Service Midwest Region Bison Management Plan Using the Resist-Accept-Direct Framework to Manage Wildfires, Carbon Storage, and Ecological Transformations in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem Understanding Historical and Predicting Future Lake Temperatures in North and South Dakota Improving the Success of Post-Fire Adaptive Management Strategies in Sagebrush Steppe Assessing the Impacts of Rangeland Restoration on Carbon Sequestration and Co-Benefits for Drought Resilience in the Sagebrush Steppe and Mixed Grass Prairie Climate Effects on Prescribed Fire Implementation and Efficacy in Northern Mixed-Grass Prairie Estimating Future High-Mountain Snowpack to Inform Terrestrial and Aquatic Species Status Assessments, Recovery Plans, and Monitoring Drought and Disturbances as Drivers of Long-Term Ecological Transformation and Risk A Framework for Guiding Management Decisions for Amphibians in an Uncertain Future Climate Science and Adaptation Planning Support for State Wildlife Action Plans (SWAPs) in the North Central Region A Climate Vulnerability Assessment Framework for Data-Poor Species Broadly Shared Information Needs Among Grassland Managers in the North Central Region What Will Grassland Bird Communities Look Like Under a Changing Climate? Cross-Park RAD Project (CPRP): A Case Study in Four National Parks Investigating How Institutional Context and Emotions Shape Manager Decisions to Resist, Accept, or Direct Change in Transforming Ecosystems Eco-drought Actionable Science Working Group Developing and Testing a Rapid Assessment Method for Understanding Key Social Factors of Ecological Drought Preparedness Synthesis of CASC-Led Climate Training Activities for Tribes and Indigenous Communities Developing High-Resolution Soil Moisture Projections for the Contiguous U.S.