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Species are adapted to particular environmental conditions, but are threatened as climate change shifts habitat conditions. One way species can respond is by moving to new suitable locations, known as climate-driven range shifts. But some species can move more easily and/or more quickly than others, and some landscapes are more difficult to cross. In the upper Midwest, the movement potential of many species is reduced by broad expanses of row-crop agriculture, roads and other types of development that fragment the remaining habitat. It is important to sustain and improve connectivity across landscapes so they can continue to support biodiversity and ecosystem services like water filtration, carbon storage, pollinator...
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Sea-level rise and storms cause major changes on coastal landscapes, including shifts in elevation, ecosystem type (for example, dunes and tidal wetlands), soils, and plant communities. Because these changes can have impacts on human communities, the local economy, and ecosystems, understanding how, when, and why these changes occur can be important for informing policy and natural resource management decisions. However, much is still unknown in our understanding of and ability to forecast coastal landscape change, and many current modeling approaches do not include important feedbacks between the physical landscape and the species inhabiting it. Examples of these types of feedbacks include the rapid development...
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Despite the proven efficacy of geothermal energy as a city-scale heating and cooling resource, the relative newness of most city-scale applications using diverse technologies has resulted in limited widespread adoption. We aim to develop authoritative information suitable for city-managers and other decision-makers. Geothermal resources are ubiquitous and diverse, with technologies available both for harvesting ambient heat or for storing thermal energy. These local low-carbon, baseload energy sources provide resilience, security, and jobs. The project team proposes to accelerate understanding and possibly energy-solution adoption by developing an international systematic nomenclature to describe the range of...
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Summary: Extreme flooding can threaten life and property in flood-prone areas, as well as cause damage to critical infrastructure along roadways and canals. The effective management of these areas, and appropriate design of structures along rivers and streams, relies on understanding the magnitude and frequency of floods at gaged locations, and the ability to estimate these data at ungaged streams. Peak flow analysis and development of regional regression equations to estimate peak flow frequency and magnitude for New York have not been updated using any new data collected since 1999 (Lumia, 2006). As more data and newer technology have become available there is a need to update these data. The updated regression...
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A revolution is underway in seismology that transforms fiber-optic cables into arrays of thousands of seismic sensors. Compared to the traditional monitoring networks using inertial seismometers, the fiber-optic approach can increase the spatial data density by orders of magnitude and enable data processing methodologies that require a high-fidelity wavefield. The Working Group aims to advance the USGS, along with several academic and industry partners, towards effective utilization of fiber-optic sensing techniques to understand earthquake hazards and improve monitoring and real-time warning systems. We will conduct synthesis studies that demonstrate the potential gains for various applications, including earthquake...
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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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Inland fisheries have tremendous cultural, economic, and subsistence value. However, climate change brings new stresses to land-locked fisheries that raise novel challenges for resource managers. One fundamental challenge in inland fisheries is how to best assess and manage data-limited fisheries when resources are finite and uncertainty is pervasive. To address this challenge, we will use quantitative models to examine whether indicators of fish population status commonly-measured by managers can serve as a “short-cut” to more data- and capacity-intensive approaches. Further, we will work and communicate directly with state and Tribal fisheries managers to better understand the challenges they face when making...
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Scientific information can be used to help individuals, communities, and governments alike make more informed decisions. However, for people to become aware of the science that could inform their decisions and its relevance to their lives and decisions, it must be communicated effectively. Multiple obstacles prevent this from happening, including scientists’ lack of time and communication expertise, among other barriers. This pilot project is a novel internship program that pairs student interns with USGS scientists to assist with field-based natural or physical science research in Alaska, while also providing support to the teams of interns and scientists to generate creative and durable science communication...
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In Hawaiʻi, a large percentage of historically forested areas have been lost, driven in part by changes in land use, such as the conversion of forests into pastures for livestock. This transformation has not only resulted in widespread loss of native biodiversity and important ecosystem functions but has also increased the risk of fire on the landscape. Though targeted restoration efforts have the potential to increase the abundance of native forests and to return important functions, a few key obstacles remain. First, existing restoration knowledge is often experiential and thus inaccessible. Second, restoration efforts face the challenges of a changing climate that is increasing temperatures and the occurrence...
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The Cascadia Subduction Zone, located in the U.S. Pacific Northwest and southwestern British Columbia, has hosted magnitude ≥8.0 megathrust earthquakes in the geologic past, a future earthquake is imminent, and the potential impacts could cripple the region. Subduction zone earthquakes represent some of the most devastating natural hazards on Earth. Despite substantial knowledge gained from decades of geoscience research, the size and frequency of Cascadian earthquakes remain controversial, as do the physics of earthquake rupture, the effects of earthquake shaking, and the effect of resultant tsunamis. This translates into major uncertainties in earthquake hazard assessments that can lead to ineffective preparedness...
This repository contains a package in Program R which allows for snow depth measurements using a "virtual" snow stake. The package detected the edges of a snow stake in a reference image and superimposes the edges of the snow stake onto other images. The R package is also available on GitHub at https://github.com/kaitlynstrickfaden/edger.
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Terrestrial evapotranspiration (ET), the second-largest component of the terrestrial water cycle, links water, energy, and carbon cycles and influences the productivity and health of our ecosystems. Despite the importance of ET, the dynamics of ET across a spectrum of spatiotemporal scale and their controls are uncertain. During an international ET workshop held in November 2021 by AmeriFlux, the scientific community identified key challenges to improve our understanding of ET dynamics. Participants underscored the need for an integrated understanding of ET across the different research disciplines: in-situ measurements, remote sensing, and modeling. Here, we propose the synthesis of the three research areas to...
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Water levels in the Great Lakes are fluctuating in ways that we have not seen in the past, with both historically low- and high-water levels occurring in the last decade. Expectations are that larger and more frequent water-level fluctuations will occur in response to climate change. The increased variability in lake levels has implications for the management of invasive plants found in the coastal wetlands that surround the Great Lakes, with some species benefiting from periods of low water levels. Phragmites australis, a prominent invasive grass that disrupts fish and wildlife habitats, thrived during the most recent period of low lake levels. However, periods of high lake levels could provide managers with opportunities...
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Subsurface preferential flow (PF = water bypassing the soil matrix) provides rapid flowpaths for water and any substances transported with it, thereby profoundly impacting the recharge of aquifers, the spreading of contaminants, the health of the soil, and the functioning of ecosystems. It involves a complexity of processes that are poorly understood to the degree that current science provides no reliable way to predict its occurrence and magnitude. This effort will address the fundamental question of where and when PF occurs, taking advantage of two recent scientific developments: availability of high frequency (at least every 30 minutes), multi-depth soil moisture data suitable to detect preferential flow events...
    map background search result map search result map Methods for Estimation Flood Magnitude and Frequency at Ungaged Streams in New York, excluding Long Island Climate Effects on Prescribed Fire Implementation and Efficacy in Northern Mixed-Grass Prairie Assessing the Impacts of Rangeland Restoration on Carbon Sequestration and Co-Benefits for Drought Resilience in the Sagebrush Steppe and Mixed Grass Prairie Climate Adaptation for Data-Limited Inland Fisheries Climate Smart Restoration: Establishing Baselines and Developing Adaptive Management Approaches Prioritizing Sites for Habitat Restoration to Enhance Connectivity in the Upper Midwest A Decision-Support Tool for Invasive Plant Management Under Fluctuating Great Lakes Water Levels Alaska's Changing Habitats: A Multi-System Approach for Understanding Climate Impacts in High Latitude Regions Climate Smart Restoration: Establishing Baselines and Developing Adaptive Management Approaches Methods for Estimation Flood Magnitude and Frequency at Ungaged Streams in New York, excluding Long Island Prioritizing Sites for Habitat Restoration to Enhance Connectivity in the Upper Midwest Climate Adaptation for Data-Limited Inland Fisheries 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 A Decision-Support Tool for Invasive Plant Management Under Fluctuating Great Lakes Water Levels Alaska's Changing Habitats: A Multi-System Approach for Understanding Climate Impacts in High Latitude Regions