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Current stormwater management infrastructure and strategies in the northeastern US are built around historical weather data and not the weather that is expected with climate change, like more frequent extreme rainfall. This matters because stormwater can introduce pollution to streams and can cause flooding. Researchers supported by this Northeast CASC project will combine climate data, stormwater models, and data about urban streams to provide actionable information for managers to identify effective adaptation strategies for stormwater to protect lake and stream ecosystems in the northeastern US. Stormwater, or rainfall that lands on rooftops and pavement and quickly drains away, transports pollution like excess...
Abstract: A significant number of historically existing wetlands that naturally stored rainwater and attenuated flood peaks have now been drained and employed as new farming areas. Beyond the water quality and flow problem, this has resulted in loss of natural habitats of diverse ecological species. Restoring wetlands have hence been proposed as a potential conservation strategy to help attenuate many of these problems. In this study a spatial, multi-objective optimization study of new potential wetlands was carried out to achieve biodiversity improvements in addition to flood reduction benefits and water quality improvements. The Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) was used to simulate flow and water quality,...
Abstract (from ESA): Estimating population size and resource selection functions (RSFs) are common approaches in applied ecology for addressing wildlife conservation and management objectives. Traditionally such approaches have been undertaken separately with different sources of data. Spatial capture–recapture (SCR) provides a hierarchical framework for jointly estimating density and multi‐scale resource selection, and data integration techniques provide opportunities for improving inferences from SCR models. Despite the added benefits, there have been few applications of SCR‐RSF integration, potentially due to complexities of specifying and fitting such models. Here, we extend a previous integrated SCR‐RSF model...
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Overview Fishes of the Adirondack Park face numerous challenges. Summer Suckers are the only endemic vertebrate yet have suffered major range reductions, so we are analyzing their genome, body shape, and spawning timing to verify their uniqueness and current range. Warming patterns are expected to shift their spawning earlier, potentially intersecting with their recent ancestor (White Suckers) to create hybridization and reduced reproductive success. Minnows are more diverse in the Adirondacks, and our analyses suggest that they show three major distributional patterns that reflect post-glacial colonization and temperature preferences. We are analyzing data from hundreds of lakes to discern the rules that structure...
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Society makes substantial investments in federal, Tribal, state, and private programs to supplement populations of valued species such as stocking fish, planting trees, rebuilding oyster reefs, and restoring prairies. These important efforts require long-term commitment, but climate change is making environmental conditions less predictable and more challenging to navigate. Selection of species for population supplementation is often based on performance prior to release, and one or a few species may then be used for decades even as the environment is changing. When these species are propagated in large numbers, they can become the dominant population as well as genetically overtake any local adaptations. Therefore,...
Abstract (from Ecological Society of America): Successful management of natural resources requires local action that adapts to larger‐scale environmental changes in order to maintain populations within the safe operating space (SOS) of acceptable conditions. Here, we identify the boundaries of the SOS for a managed freshwater fishery in the first empirical test of the SOS concept applied to management of harvested resources. Walleye (Sander vitreus) are popular sport fish with declining populations in many North American lakes, and understanding the causes of and responding to these changes is a high priority for fisheries management. We evaluated the role of changing water clarity and temperature in the decline...
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The amount of water flowing through a stream is an important driver of aquatic habitat, but scientists don’t often measure streamflow in the small stream networks that feed larger rivers. Monitoring smaller streams is especially important as climate change is causing them to (a) flood more often and more intensely, and (b) lose habitat as drought events and water temperatures increase. A better understanding of the changing patterns of flow and temperatures in small streams can help decision makers evaluate which streams will provide suitable habitat for plants and animals under a changing climate. Specific goals of this project are to 1) understand how water flow and temperature interact in small streams and 2)...
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Studying the impacts of climate on important ecological responses is a recent priority of monitoring programs throughout the Northeast. Established sampling protocols for data collection, whether to inform estimates of species abundance or occupancy, were designed to evaluate the effects of non-climate stressors (e.g., habitat conversion) and related management actions. Traditional modeling approaches may not accurately identify important relationships between species and climate nor elicit useful information on how these species will be impacted by climate change. Management decisions based on these traditional modeling approaches could have negative and unintended consequences on species and habitat conservation....
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Prairies were once widespread across North America, but are now one of the most endangered and least protected ecosystems in the world. Agriculture and residential development have reduced once extensive prairies into a patchwork of remnant prairies and “surrogate” grasslands (e.g., hayfields, planted pastures). Grassland ecosystems and many grassland-dependent birds are also particularly vulnerable to rapid shifts in climate and associated changes in drought and extreme weather. The Central Flyway is a vast bird migration route that comprises more than half of the continental U.S., and extends from Central America to Canada, and harbors the greatest diversity of grassland birds in North America. Throughout this...
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The fast pace of change in coastal zones, the trillions of dollars of investment in human communities in coastal areas, and the myriad of ecosystem services natural coastal environments provide makes managing climate-related risks along coasts a massive challenge for all of the U.S. coastal states and territories. Answering questions about both the costs and the benefits of alternative adaptation strategies in the near term is critical to taxpayers, decision-makers, and to the biodiversity of the planet. There is significant public and private interest in using ecosystem based adaptation approaches to conserve critical significant ecosystems in coastal watersheds, estuaries and intertidal zones and to protect man-made...
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The Hemlock Woolly Adelgid (HWA) is an insect causing extensive hemlock tree die-offs in the northeast, and a lack of information on climate adaptation practices is hindering effective forest management. With the overall goal of fostering resilient forests that support northeastern hemlock ecosystems and wildlife, researchers supported by this Northeast-CASC project will work with land managers to identify information gaps and to develop management plans and a decision support tool tailored to the specific ecological, economic, and cultural management goals of different forests. The Hemlock Woolly Adelgid (HWA) is an invasive insect that has caused extensive hemlock death from Georgia to Maine in many of the densest...
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Project Overview Climate change threatens plants and animals across the US, making it important to have tools that can efficiently assess species’ vulnerabilities. In this project, CASC scientists and NatureServe are collaborating to update a popular Climate Change Vulnerability Index to include the latest scientific data, improved metrics, and new user-friendly technology. The tool will help state biologists and scientists prioritize conservation efforts, and in time for preparing updates to State Wildlife Action Plans that are due by 2025. Project Summary Climate change is impacting our nation’s plants and animals. To take preventative actions, public land managers need to know which species are most threatened,...
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Much of the cranberry bog farmland in Massachusetts used to be Atlantic white cedar ecosystems, which provide important habitat, water filtration, and cooling effects on the landscape. Researchers supported by this Northeast CASC project will experiment with modern restoration strategies and integrate Indigenous cultural stewardship practices to build and sustain climate-resilient Atlantic white cedar wetland forests. The project will result in new knowledge and practical guidance for effective restoration and sustainable management of these ecosystems as retired cranberry bogs continue to be converted back into their original state. Atlantic white cedar (AWC) ecosystems naturally filter and store water, cool the...
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As the climate continues to change, vulnerable wildlife species will need specific management strategies to help them adapt to these changes. One specific management strategy is based on the idea that some locations that species inhabit today will remain suitable over time and should be protected. The climate conditions at those locations will continue to be good enough for species to survive and breed successfully and are referred to as climate refugia. Another management strategy is based on the idea that species will need to shift across the landscape to track suitable conditions and reach climate refugia locations as climate and land uses change over time. The more opportunities we can give species to safely...
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The NE CASC Fellows Program is a training initiative to develop skills in engagement, communication, and collaboration to help inform climate change adaptation for natural and cultural resources management. Students and postdocs from the NE CASC consortium universities make up the fellows cohort and hail from diverse disciplines, including ecology, engineering, and earth and environmental sciences. Our common goal is to fulfill the mission of the NE CASC, which is to deliver science to help wildlife, ecosystems, and people adapt to a changing climate. Our challenge is to identify and build relationships with stakeholder partners to collaboratively design research that will meet their climate adaptation needs.
Abstract (from SpringerLink): The resilience of socio-ecological systems to sea level rise, storms and flooding can be enhanced when coastal habitats are used as natural infrastructure. Grey infrastructure has long been used for coastal flood protection but can lead to unintended negative impacts. Natural infrastructure often provides similar services as well as added benefits that support short- and long-term biological, cultural, social, and economic goals. While natural infrastructure is becoming more widespread in practice, it often represents a relatively small fraction within portfolios of coastal risk-reducing strategies compared to more traditional grey infrastructure. This study provides a comprehensive...
Abstract: Wetland restoration mitigates effects of agricultural development on water quality, flooding, and habitat loss. Multi-objective optimization for wetland locations and sizes has not included objective functions for water quality, hydrology, and habitat in unison, limiting analysis of trade-offs among these ecosystem services. This study establishes two methods to improve the accuracy of simulating wetland restoration with an optimization-simulation framework for analysis of trade-offs: identification of wetland type and constraining wetland and drainage area configurations to potential field-scale wetlands in the study area. Determination of a wetland habitat type used characteristics of the Hydrogeomorphic...
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Indigenous Nations are particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change, due in part to their reliance on healthy ecosystems to provide culturally significant plants that are used for traditional foods, medicines, and materials. Further, many Indigenous communities have an under-resourced capacity for climate adaptation, resulting in significant environmental justice impacts that range from health disparities to heightened disaster risks. There is growing recognition across the globe of the important role of traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) in climate change resilience and the innovative solutions that lie at the intersection of Indigenous and western knowledge. However, Indigenous knowledge has...
Abstract (from arXiv): This paper introduces a novel framework for combining scientific knowledge of physics-based models with neural networks to advance scientific discovery. This framework, termed as physics-guided neural network (PGNN), leverages the output of physics-based model simulations along with observational features to generate predictions using a neural network architecture. Further, this paper presents a novel framework for using physics-based loss functions in the learning objective of neural networks, to ensure that the model predictions not only show lower errors on the training set but are also scientifically consistent with the known physics on the unlabeled set. We illustrate the effectiveness...
Abstract (from Ecological Society of America): Population dynamics are often correlated in space and time due to correlations in environmental drivers as well as synchrony induced by individual dispersal. Many statistical analyses of populations ignore potential autocorrelations and assume that survey methods (distance and time between samples) eliminate these correlations, allowing samples to be treated independently. If these assumptions are incorrect, results and therefore inference may be biased and uncertainty underestimated. We developed a novel statistical method to account for spatiotemporal correlations within dendritic stream networks, while accounting for imperfect detection in the surveys. Through simulations,...
map background search result map search result map Strategies for Reducing the Vulnerability of Grassland Birds to Climate Change within the Central Flyway Evaluating Ecosystem-Based Adaptation Options for Coastal Resilience Fellows Program Mapping Connections across Ecosystems in the Northeast to Inform Climate Refugia Putting the Sampling Design to Work: Enhancing Species Monitoring Programs in the Face of Climate Change Climate-Adaptive Population Supplementation (CAPS) to Enhance Fishery and Forestry Outcomes Integrating Streamflow and Temperature to Identify Streams with Coldwater Refugia in the Northeast Indigenous-led Restoration and Stewardship of Culturally Significant Plants for Climate Change Adaptation in the Northeast Adirondack Fish Conservation: Safeguarding Summer Suckers, Understanding Minnow Diversity, Limiting Smallmouth Bass Invasions, Developing Climate-Adapted Stocking Climate Smart Forest Adaptation in the Wake of Hemlock Woolly Adelgid Restoring Climate-Resilient Atlantic White Cedar Wetland Forests in the Northeast: Lessons from Culture and Science Designing Climate-Resilient Stormwater Management in Northeastern US Cities to Support Stream Ecosystems Developing a Next-Generation Climate Change Vulnerability Index in Support of Climate-Informed Natural-Resource Management Restoring Climate-Resilient Atlantic White Cedar Wetland Forests in the Northeast: Lessons from Culture and Science Climate-Adaptive Population Supplementation (CAPS) to Enhance Fishery and Forestry Outcomes Climate Smart Forest Adaptation in the Wake of Hemlock Woolly Adelgid Designing Climate-Resilient Stormwater Management in Northeastern US Cities to Support Stream Ecosystems Mapping Connections across Ecosystems in the Northeast to Inform Climate Refugia Integrating Streamflow and Temperature to Identify Streams with Coldwater Refugia in the Northeast Putting the Sampling Design to Work: Enhancing Species Monitoring Programs in the Face of Climate Change Adirondack Fish Conservation: Safeguarding Summer Suckers, Understanding Minnow Diversity, Limiting Smallmouth Bass Invasions, Developing Climate-Adapted Stocking Fellows Program Indigenous-led Restoration and Stewardship of Culturally Significant Plants for Climate Change Adaptation in the Northeast Strategies for Reducing the Vulnerability of Grassland Birds to Climate Change within the Central Flyway Developing a Next-Generation Climate Change Vulnerability Index in Support of Climate-Informed Natural-Resource Management Evaluating Ecosystem-Based Adaptation Options for Coastal Resilience