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Location Folder Show Tree ROOT _ScienceBase Catalog __National and Regional Climate Adaptation Science Centers ___North Central CASC FY 2011 Projects FY 2012 Projects FY 2013 Projects FY 2014 Projects FY 2015 Projects More... Filters Date Types (for Date Range) Types Citation (30) Map Service (6) OGC WFS Layer (6) OGC WMS Layer (6) OGC WMS Service (6) Contacts North Central CASC Shelley D. Crausbay Conservation Science Partners, Inc Gabriel B Senay Heather Yocum More... Categories Publication (30) Data (3) Tag Types Theme (5) Place (5) Harvest Set (2) USGS Scientific Topic Keyword (2) Tag Schemes None (2) USGS Thesaurus (3) Common geographic areas (3) ISO 19115 Topic Category (2) View Results as: JSON ATOM CSV Browse Folder

Final Report: The Impact of Future Changes in Climate on Breeding Waterfowl Pairs in the US Prairie Pothole Region An estimated 50–80% of North America’s ducks use the millions of wetland basins in the Prairie Pothole Region as breeding habitat. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) National Wildlife Refuge System has conserved approximately 1.3 million hectares of grasslands and wetlands in the United States portion of the Prairie Pothole Region with the primary purpose to support breeding duck habitat. A major assumption inherent to the current conservation approach is that wetlands that have historically provided the highest value to breeding ducks will continue to do so into the future. The dynamic nature of climate in the Northern Great Plains and continued increases in air temperatures and precipitation variability... Categories: Publication; Types: Citation Centering socioecological connections to collaboratively manage post-fire vegetation shifts Climate change is altering fire regimes and post-fire conditions, contributing to relatively rapid transformation of landscapes across the western US. Studies are increasingly documenting post-fire vegetation transitions, particularly from forest to non-forest conditions or from sagebrush to invasive annual grasses. The prevalence of climate-driven, post-fire vegetation transitions is likely to increase in the future with major impacts on social–ecological systems. However, research and management communities have only recently focused attention on this emerging climate risk, and many knowledge gaps remain. We identify three key needs for advancing the management of post-fire vegetation transitions, including centering... Categories: Publication; Types: Citation Western larch regeneration more sensitive to wildfire-related factors than seasonal climate variability To understand the impacts of changing climate and wildfire activity on conifer forests, we studied how wildfire and post-fire seasonal climate conditions influence western larch (Larix occidentalis) regeneration across its range in the northwestern US. We destructively sampled 1651 seedlings from 57 sites across 32 fires that burned at moderate or high severity between 2000 and 2015; sites were within 100 m of reproductively mature western larch. Using dendrochronological methods, we estimated germination years of seedlings to calculate annual recruitment rates. We used boosted regression trees to model the annual probability of recruitment as a function of (i) ‘wildfire-related factors’ including distance to seed... Categories: Publication; Types: Citation Integrating climate-informed planning into State Wildlife Action Plans in the North Central United States State fish and wildlife agencies are required to submit a State Wildlife Action Plan (SWAP) every 10 years to be eligible for grants through the State Wildlife Grant Program. With the next round of revisions due in 2025, the U.S. Geological Survey North Central Climate Adaptation Science Center is evaluating how to best support states with further integrating climate-informed planning in their SWAPs. Here, we summarize how states in the North Central region, which includes Colorado, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wyoming, addressed adaptation planning in their 2015 SWAPs. We review climate adaptation considerations in required SWAP elements one through five, including species, habitats,... Categories: Publication; Types: Citation Fire suppression makes wildfires more severe and accentuates impacts of climate change and fuel accumulation Fire suppression is the primary management response to wildfires in many areas globally. By removing less-extreme wildfires, this approach ensures that remaining wildfires burn under more extreme conditions. Here, we term this the “suppression bias” and use a simulation model to highlight how this bias fundamentally impacts wildfire activity, independent of fuel accumulation and climate change. We illustrate how attempting to suppress all wildfires necessarily means that fires will burn with more severe and less diverse ecological impacts, with burned area increasing at faster rates than expected from fuel accumulation or climate change. Over a human lifespan, the modeled impacts of the suppression bias exceed those... Categories: Publication; Types: Citation Trajectories and tipping points of piñon–juniper woodlands after fire and thinning Piñon–juniper (PJ) woodlands are a dominant community type across the Intermountain West, comprising over a million acres and experiencing critical effects from increasing wildfire. Large PJ mortality and regeneration failure after catastrophic wildfire have elevated concerns about the long-term viability of PJ woodlands. Thinning is increasingly used to safeguard forests from fire and in an attempt to increase climate resilience. We have only a limited understanding of how fire and thinning will affect the structure and function of PJ ecosystems. Here, we examined vegetation structure, microclimate conditions, and PJ regeneration dynamics following ~20 years post-fire and thinning treatments. We found that burned... Categories: Publication; Types: Citation Broadly Shared Information Needs Among Grassland Managers in the North Central Region 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. Categories: Data, Publication; Types: Citation, Map Service, OGC WFS Layer, OGC WMS Layer, OGC WMS Service; Tags: Colorado, Grasslands, Information Needs, Kansas, Landscapes, All tags... Montana, Nebraska, North Central Region, North Dakota, Resource Managers, South Dakota, USGS Science Data Catalog (SDC), Wildlife Biology, Wyoming, biota, Fewer tags Designing and delivering climate training for natural resource managers: Increasing climate literacy and action through education and engagement Responding to climate impacts and expanding adaptation efforts necessitates getting the right knowledge and tools in the hands of land managers and decision-makers. In 2022–2023, several regional US Geological Survey Climate Adaptation Science Centers partnered with the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) Science Applications Program on the first targeted climate training series designed for the FWS Grassland Ecosystem Team. This training spanned multiple months and formats with self-paced virtual lessons, webinars, and an in-person workshop. As the FWS Grassland Ecosystem Team is tasked with conservation planning for grassland birds and other species, the focus of the workshop was an interactive collaborative activity... Categories: Publication; Types: Citation A Framework for Developing the Next Generation Interactive Soil Moisture Forecasting System Using the Long-Short Term Memory Model Soil moisture is crucial for agriculture and hydrology, but its accurate prediction is challenging due to inadequate representation of various complex land surface processes and meteorological influences. In this research, we employ the Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) framework, a specific architecture of deep learning networks that is effective in processing time series data, for predicting soil moisture. We have developed the Next Generation Interactive Soil Moisture Forecasting System to advance skillful soil moisture predictions at sub-seasonal timescales by leveraging advanced analytics and deep learning, with LSTM at its core. We combined the state-of-the-art climate model's (Community Earth System Model Version... Categories: Publication; Types: Citation Resource stewardship objectives and actions for climate change-sensitive cultural and natural resources in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve: Outputs from January–February 2022 climate change adaptation strategy development This report presents climate change-informed resource stewardship strategies for diverse Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve natural and cultural resources. The strategies were developed in early 2022 by park staff and other subject-matter experts in a scenario-based climate change adaptation planning process. Strategy development was facilitated by National Park Service (NPS) climate change adaptation specialists. Strategies address critical climate change implications for park resources identified in an immediately preceding (fall-2021) climate-resource scenario development process. The overall, nearly-year-long scenario- and strategy-development process was entirely virtual due Categories: Publication; Types: Citation Evaluation of PlanetScope-detected plant-specific phenology using infrared-enabled PhenoCam observations in semi-arid ecosystems Phenology detection from remotely sensed data remains challenging in semi-arid ecosystems due to the unique spatial heterogeneity and irregular temporal growth in plants. PlanetScope imagery, with fine spatial and temporal resolutions, is revolutionizing the earth observation sector. It has demonstrated its effectiveness in monitoring phenology dynamics across various terrestrial ecosystems. However, the quality and accuracy of PlanetScope data for depicting plant growth development and detecting phenological metrics (phenometrics) in semi-arid environments have not been systematically examined. In this study, we evaluated the capability of PlanetScope for monitoring plant-specific phenology across the semi-arid... Categories: Publication; Types: Citation Predicting spring phenology in deciduous broadleaf forests: NEON phenology forecasting community challenge Accurate models are important to predict how global climate change will continue to alter plant phenology and near-term ecological forecasts can be used to iteratively improve models and evaluate predictions that are made a priori. The Ecological Forecasting Initiative's National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) Forecasting Challenge, is an open challenge to the community to forecast daily greenness values, measured through digital images collected by the PhenoCam Network at NEON sites before the data are collected. For the first round of the challenge, which is presented here, we forecasted canopy greenness throughout the spring at eight deciduous broadleaf sites to investigate when, where, and for what model... Categories: Publication; Types: Citation SSEBop Evapotranspiration Estimates Using Synthetically Derived Landsat Data from the Continuous Change Detection and Classification Algorithm The operational Simplified Surface Energy Balance (SSEBop) model has been utilized to generate gridded evapotranspiration data from Landsat images. These estimates are primarily driven by two sources of information: reference evapotranspiration and Landsat land surface temperature (LST) values. Hence, SSEBop is limited by the availability of Landsat data. Here, in this proof-of-concept paper, we utilize the Continuous Change Detection and Classification (CCDC) algorithm to generate synthetic Landsat data, which are then used as input for SSEBop to generate evapotranspiration estimates for six target areas in the continental United States, representing forests, shrublands, and irrigated agriculture. These synthetic... Categories: Publication; Types: Citation The dynamic feasibility of resisting (R), accepting (A), or directing (D) ecological change Ecological transformations are occurring as a result of climate change, challenging traditional approaches to land management decision-making. The resist–accept–direct (RAD) framework helps managers consider how to respond to this challenge. We examined how the feasibility of the choices to resist, accept, and direct shifts in complex and dynamic ways through time. We considered 4 distinct types of social feasibility: regulatory, financial, public, and organizational. Our commentary is grounded in literature review and the examples that exist but necessarily has speculative elements because empirical evidence on this newly emerging management strategy is scarce. We expect that resist strategies will become less... Categories: Publication; Types: Citation SpatialNSM Software: Spatial estimates of soil-climate properties using a modified Newhall simulation model We developed a framework to estimate high-resolution spatiotemporal soil moisture (monthly, annual, and seasonal) and temperature-moisture regimes. Our approach uses the Newhall simulation model (NSM) which we fully describe in the Larger Citation. For our analyses, we developed and used open-source software (spatial_nsm) relying on Python^TM^ that was translated from jNSM software (v. 1.6.1; U.S. Department of Agriculture 2016)---a java implementation of the NSM relies on aspatial climate stations. Our software allows for spatial estimates, supports additional parameters to inform the model, and improves upon elements of the originating software. Briefly, the NSM is an accounting system of water movement in a vertical... Categories: Publication; Types: Citation Estimating multivariate ecological variables at high spatial resolution using a cost-effective matching algorithm Simulation models are valuable tools for estimating ecosystem response to environmental conditions and are particularly relevant for investigating climate change impacts. However, because of high computational requirements, models are often applied over a coarse grid of points or for representative locations. Spatial interpolation of model output can be necessary to guide decision-making, yet interpolation is not straightforward because the interpolated values must maintain the covariance structure among variables. We present methods for two key steps for utilizing limited simulations to generate detailed maps of multivariate and time series output. First, we present a method to select an optimal set of simulation... Categories: Publication; Types: Citation Challenges and Future Directions in Quantifying Terrestrial Evapotranspiration Terrestrial evapotranspiration is the second-largest component of the land water cycle, linking the water, energy, and carbon cycles and influencing the productivity and health of ecosystems. The dynamics of ET across a spectrum of spatiotemporal scales and their controls remain an active focus of research across different science disciplines. Here, we provide an overview of the current state of ET science across in situ measurements, partitioning of ET, and remote sensing, and discuss how different approaches complement one another based on their advantages and shortcomings. We aim to facilitate collaboration among a cross-disciplinary group of ET scientists to overcome the challenges identified in this paper and... Categories: Publication; Types: Citation Refuge identification as a climate adaptation strategy to promote fish persistence during drought Climate change is leading to global increases in extreme events, such as drought, that threaten the persistence of freshwater biodiversity. Identification and management of drought refuges, areas that promote resistance and resilience to drought, will be critical for preserving and recovering aquatic biodiversity in the face of climate change and increasing human water use. Although several reviews have addressed the effects of droughts and highlighted the role of refuges, a need remains on how to identify functional refuges that can be used in a drought management framework to support fish assemblages. We synthesize literature on drought refuges and propose a framework to identify and manage functional refuges... Categories: Publication; Types: Citation Climate drivers of rapid ecological change at the landscape scale over the last 21,000 years in the Middle and Southern Rockies, U.S.A. These model objects are the outputs of three Boosted Regression Tree models (for three different time periods) to explore the role of climate change and variability in driving ecological change and transformation. Response variables were the proportion of sites in each ecoregion with peak rates of change at 100-year time steps. Predictor variables included temperature anomaly, temperature trend, temperature variability, precipitation anomaly, precipitation trend, precipitation variability and ecoregion, also at 100-yr time steps. Models focused on the most distant time periods (0-21000 BP and 7500 - 21000 BP) show that rapid vegetation change was initiated across these landscapes once a 2 ℃ temperature increase... Categories: Publication; Types: Citation, Map Service, OGC WFS Layer, OGC WMS Layer, OGC WMS Service; Tags: The Rockies, atmospheric and climatic processes, climate change, vegetation Incorporating projected climate conditions to map future riparian refugia Identifying areas expected to remain buffered from climate change and maintain biodiversity and ecological function (i.e., climate refugia) is important for climate adaptation planning. As structurally diverse transitional zones between terrestrial and aquatic environments, riparian areas are often biological hotspots and provide critical corridors for species movement, particularly in arid and semi-arid regions. In our study region in the western and central USA, identifying riparian areas that could serve as climate refugia is a priority for wildlife managers. We mapped areas with connected riparian habitats that, based on landscape diversity and projected changes in summer temperatures and landscape runoff, are... 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