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Berry Risk Mapping and Modeling of Native and exotic defoliators in Alaska is a jointly funded project between the Alaska Climate Science Center and the North Pacific Landscape Conservation Cooperative.
Our objective was to quantitatively characterize the landscape of climate-relevant resource decisions in the southwestern United States. We worked with stakeholders to determine actual uses of climate-relevant information used in natural resource decisions. We used content analysis of federal register records of decisions and stakeholder consultative groups to develop a survey of decision makers querying the use of climate information in decisions. We sought to create a classification of decisions attributes, information needs, and decision processes that rely on climate science. We sought to engage stakeholder consultative groups to define mechanisms for best filtering, delivering and interpreting what has become...
Although scientists have identified many ways to reduce the negative effects of climate change on wildlife, this information is not readily available to natural resource managers. For successful wildlife adaptation to climate change, natural resource managers should have current, peerreviewed information to guide their decisions. We conducted a review of over 1300 publications for recommendations to manage wildlife in the face of climate change. We then summarized the findings as the wildlife adaptation menu, a tool to inform planning and decision-making in an accessible format.
America’s remaining grassland in the Prairie Pothole Region (PPR) is at risk of being lost to crop production. When crop prices are high, like the historically high corn prices that the U.S. experienced between 2008 and 2014, the risk of grassland conversion is even higher. Changing climate will add uncertainties to any efforts toward conservation of grassland in the PPR. Grassland conversion to cropland in the region would imperil nesting waterfowl among other species and further impair water quality in the Mississippi watershed. In this project, we sought to contribute to the understanding of land conversion in the PPR with the aim to better target the use of public and private funds allocated toward incentivizing...
A cocktail of land-based sources of pollution threatens coral reef ecosystems, and addressing these has become a key management and policy challenge in the State of Hawaii, other US territories, and globally. In West Maui, Hawai'i, nearly one quarter of all living corals were lost between 1995 and 2008. Onsite disposal systems (OSDS) for sewage leak contaminants into drinking water sources and nearshore waters. In recognition of this risk, the Hawaii State Department of Health (DOH) is prioritizing areas for cesspool upgrades. Independently, we applied a decision analysis process to identify priority areas to address sewage pollution from OSDS in West Maui, with the objective of reducing nearshore coral reef exposure...
Abstract (from http://www.bioone.org/doi/abs/10.2112/JCOASTRES-D-13-00202.1): Traditional long-term (decadal) and large-scale (hundreds of kilometers) shoreline change modeling techniques, known as single transect, or ST, often overfit the data because they calculate shoreline statistics at closely spaced intervals along the shore. To reduce overfitting, recent work has used spatial basis functions such as polynomials, B splines, and principal components. Here, we explore an alternative to such basis functions by using regularization to reduce the dimension of the ST model space. In our regularized-ST method, traditional ST is an end member of a continuous spectrum of models. We use an evidence information criterion...
Abstract (from http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/hyp.10964/abstract): While the effects of land use change in urban areas have been widely examined, the combined effects of climate and land use change on the quality of urban and urbanizing streams have received much less attention. We describe a modelling framework that is applicable to the evaluation of potential changes in urban water quality and associated hydrologic changes in response to ongoing climate and landscape alteration. The grid-based spatially distributed model, Distributed Hydrology Soil Vegetation Model-Water Quality (DHSVM-WQ), is an outgrowth of DHSVM that incorporates modules for assessing hydrology and water quality in urbanized watersheds...
Climate change is already affecting species in many ways. Because individual species respond to climate change differently, some will be adversely affected by climate change whereas others may benefit. Successfully managing species in a changing climate will require an understanding of which species will be most and least impacted by climate change. Although several approaches have been proposed for assessing the vulnerability of species to climate change, it is unclear whether these approaches are likely to produce similar results. In this study, we compared the relative vulnerabilities to climate change of 76 species of birds, mammals, amphibians, and trees based on three different approaches to assessing vulnerability....
Abstract (from http://jcom.sissa.it/archive/15/01/JCOM_1501_2016_A01): Whereas the evolution of snow cover across forested mountain watersheds is difficult to predict or model accurately, the presence or absence of snow cover is easily observable and these observations contribute to improved snow models. We engaged citizen scientists to collect observations of the timing of distributed snow disappearance over three snow seasons across the Pacific Northwest, U.S.A. . The primary goal of the project was to build a more spatially robust dataset documenting the influence of forest cover on the timing of snow disappearance, and public outreach was a secondary goal. Each year's effort utilized a different strategy, building...
Public land managers face the daunting task of incorporating climate change vulnerability assessments into their land use planning. This NW CSC project developed decision support tools to guide resource managers through the process of including future climate projections, climate change vulnerability assessments, and adaptation response strategies and tactics into ongoing and existing planning efforts such as FS forest plan revisions and individual project plans. The tools were developed and tested through direct engagement with resource managers. The tools guide participants through a step-wise process that provides a structured framework to help managers (1) integrate climate projections with other local information...
Abstract (from http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v5/n9/full/nclimate2699.html): Contemporary climate change is causing large shifts in biotic distributions1, which has the potential to bring previously isolated, closely related species into contact2. This has led to concern that hybridization and competition could threaten species persistence3. Here, we use bioclimatic models to show that future range overlap by the end of the century is predicted for only 6.4% of isolated, congeneric species pairs of New World birds, mammals and amphibians. Projected rates of climate-induced overlap are higher for birds (11.6%) than for mammals (4.4%) or amphibians (3.6%). As many species will have difficulty tracking shifting...
Headwater stream ecosystems are vulnerable to numerous threats associated with climate and land use change. In the northeastern US, many headwater stream species (e.g., brook trout and stream salamanders) are of special conservation concern and may be vulnerable to climate change influences, such as changes in stream temperature and streamflow. Federal land management agencies (e.g., US Fish and Wildlife Service, National Park Service, USDA Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management and Department of Defense) are required to adopt policies that respond to climate change and may have longer-term institutional support to enforce such policies compared to state, local, non-governmental, or private land managers. However,...
Abstract (from ScienceDirect): Natural resource plans play a critical role in guiding the sustainable management of forest ecosystems. However, little is known about the quality of management plans. In this study, we evaluated and compared the quality of 35 management plans from federal, state, and nongovernment groups managing longleaf pine ecosystems in the Southeast United States. We developed a plan evaluation tool consisted of five components: (1) Problem and Objective Statement, (2) Fact Base, (3) Actions and Implementation, (4) Integration with Other Plans, and (5) Stakeholder Participation, to examine to what extent plans incorporated planning best practices. We tested a hypothetical model for understanding...
Abstract (from IOP Science): Global agriculture is challenged to increase soil carbon sequestration and reduce greenhouse gas emissions while providing products for an increasing population. Growing crop production could be achieved through higher yield per hectare (i.e. intensive farming) or more hectares (extensive farming), which however, have different ecological and environmental consequences. Multiple lines of evidence indicate that expanding cropland for additional production may lead to loss of vegetation and soil carbon, and threaten the survival of wildlife. New concerns about the impacts of extensive farming have been raised for the US Corn Belt, one of the world's most productive regions, as cropland...
Abstract (from http://econpapers.repec.org/paper/agsaaea16/235895.htm): We evaluate the regional-level agricultural impacts of climate change in the Northern Great Plains. We first estimate a non-linear yield-weather relationship for all major commodities in the area: corn, soybeans, spring wheat and alfalfa. We separately identify benevolent and harmful temperature thresholds for each commodity, and control for severe-to-extreme dry/wet conditions in our yield models. Analyzing all major commodities in a region extends the existing literature beyond just one crop, most typically corn yields. Alfalfa is particularly interesting since it is a legume-crop that is substitutable with grasses as animal feed and rotated...
Abstract (from http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11069-015-1698-6): Chronic erosion in Hawaiʻi causes beach loss, damages homes and infrastructure, and endangers critical habitat. These problems will likely worsen with increased sea level rise (SLR). We forecast future coastal change by combining historical shoreline trends with projected accelerations in SLR ( IPCC RCP8.5) using the Davidson-Arnott profile model. The resulting erosion hazard zones are overlain on aerial photos and other GIS layers to provide a tool for identifying assets exposed to future coastal erosion. We estimate rates and distances of shoreline change for ten study sites across the Hawaiian Islands. Excluding one beach (Kailua) historically...
Abstract (from http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0739456X16657160): Sea-level rise (SLR) presents risks to communities and ecosystems because of hazards like coastal erosion. In order to adapt, planners and the public seek estimates of shoreline change with high confidence and accuracy. The complexity of shorelines produces considerable uncertainty in the timing, location and magnitude of change. We present and discuss a probabilistic shoreline model for SLR planning. Using the coast of Maui as an illustrative case, we compare this model to a common deterministic model. We discuss the advantages of a probability-based model for SLR adaptation, including for prioritizing actions, phasing, visualizing risk...
Fish and wildlife are at the heart of Washington State’s rich ecological, economic, and cultural heritage. The incredible diversity of species and the habitats that sustain them helps to define Washington’s distinct character and in part reflects the long standing conservation ethic of its citizens – one that has endured the challenges posed by a growing human population, increasing demands for land, water, and other natural resources, and now the very real threat of climate change. A growing body of scientific evidence indicates that climate change is already having a significant impact on natural systems across the region, and further changes are likely in the coming decades (CIG 2009; Mote and Salathé 2010)....