Skip to main content
Advanced Search

Filters: Tags: 2012 (X)

250 results (49ms)   

Filters
Date Range
Extensions
Types
Contacts
Categories
Tag Types
Tag Schemes
View Results as: JSON ATOM CSV
thumbnail
In the desert southwest biodiversity is facing a changing landscape due to human population growth, expansion of energy development, and from the persistent effects of climate change among other threats. The 2012 Desert LCC science needs document recognized the importance of modeling and predicting habitat area, fragmentation and corridor network connectivity for a broad range of wildlife taxa. Tools and methods from conservation planning are available to address some of these issues, but tools to evaluate the expected benefits of corridors in mitigating climate change effects are only in their infancy. This USGS project will use quantitative spatial analysis and principles from landscape ecology to determine where...
Categories: Data, Project; Types: Downloadable, Map Service, OGC WFS Layer, OGC WMS Layer, OGC WMS Service, Shapefile; Tags: 2012, AZ-01, AZ-02, AZ-03, AZ-04, All tags...
thumbnail
In practice, there are a number of challenges associated with formal consideration of the environment in water planning in large parts of the Desert LCC region. In Arizona, for example, there is no legal requirement to include the environment in water management or planning efforts (Megdal et al. 201 0). Therefore, there is little incentive to develop the additional tools and resources required to include the environment as a water demand sector. Appropriate inclusion of the environment into water planning requires conducting planning at a scale and geography that matches regional hydrology rather than political boundaries. Therefore, without explicit policy guidance from state government, regional stakeholders...
Final Report Executive Summary: The Nature Conservancy and a team of 14 academic partners (the project team) received funding from the Bureau of Reclamation’s WaterSMART program and the Desert Landscape Conservation Cooperative in 2012 to conduct this Gila River Flow Needs Assessment. The assessment describes the existing condition of the Gila River in the Cliff-Gila Valley and examines the potential impacts of CUFA diversion and climate change on the riparian and aquatic ecosystem. The project team was assisted by 35 academic, agency and consulting scientists who have expertise in some aspect of the Gila River’s hydrology and ecology. This larger team of scientists provided input on a review draft of this assessment...
thumbnail
To understand potential climate change impacts on ecosystems, water resources, and numerous other natural and managed resources, climate change data and projections must be downscaled from coarse global climate models to much finer resolutions and more applicable formats. This project conducted comparative analyses to better understand the accuracy and properties of these downscaled climate simulations and climate-change projections. Interpretation, guidance and evaluation, including measures of uncertainties, strengths and weaknesses of the different methodologies for each simulation, can enable potential users with the necessary information to select and apply the models.
thumbnail
In the Southeast, where rapid human development is increasingly dividing natural areas, habitat fragmentation and loss threaten the health and even genetic viability of wildlife populations, and interrupt migration routes. Climate change is projected to exacerbate fragmentation by further disrupting landscapes. To make matters worse, it is also expected to shift the range of many species, forcing animals capable of adapting by moving to expand into new areas to find more suitable temperatures and adequate food supplies – a challenge made difficult, if not impossible, by disconnected landscapes. Maintaining connectivity between habitats is a key strategy for conserving wildlife populations into the future, and sound...
thumbnail
Climate change is expected to alter stream temperature and flow regimes over the coming decades, and in turn influence distributions of aquatic species in those freshwater ecosystems. To better anticipate these changes, there is a need to compile both short- and long-term stream temperature data for managers to gain an understanding of baseline conditions, historic trends, and future projections. Unfortunately, many agencies lack sufficient resources to compile, conduct quality assurance and control, and make accessible stream temperature data collected through routine monitoring. Yet, pooled data from many sources, even if temporally and spatially inconsistent, can have great value both in the realm of stream temperature...
thumbnail
Regional assessments of the impacts of climate change on both human systems and the natural environment require high-resolution projections to see the effects of global-scale change on the local environment. This project sought to address a critical and generally overlooked assumption inherent to these projections of regional, multi-decadal climate change: that the statistical relationship between global climate model simulation outputs and real, observed climate data remain constant over time. Utilizing a “perfect--‐model” experimental design and the output of two high-resolution global climate model simulations, this study evaluated and reported on the ability of three different methods to simulate current and...
thumbnail
Snow is extremely important to a wide range of natural processes in Alaska. Snow cover helps regulate the earth’s temperature and stores water on the landscape. As it melts, snow hydrates the soil and replenishes the freshwater supplies of streams and lakes, providing water for vegetation, wildlife, and human activities such as agriculture and electricity generation. Understanding present and future snow conditions under climate change is critical for managing Alaska’s natural resources, yet many scientists, land managers, and policymakers lack this information at useful scales. Hence, the goal of this project was to produce an advanced snow modeling system for part of the Arctic that predicts a variety of factors...
thumbnail
In response to the potential impacts of climate and land use change to the Nation’s ecosystems, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) launched a series of Rapid Ecoregional Assessments (REAs) in 2010. The REAs are focused on improving our understanding of the current state of ecosystems and how conditions may be impacted by changes in climate, land use, and other stressors. Researchers with the North Central CSC and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) provided climate science support to the Wyoming Basin REA. The Wyoming Basin REA is a landscape-scale ecological assessment of over 33 million acres in Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, Idaho, and Montana. This region has some of the highest quality wildlife...
thumbnail
Fire in the western U.S. poses one of the greatest threats to human and ecological communities alike. In fact, fire management is the largest single expenditure of land management funds on federal lands. Now, climate change is altering wildfire patterns. Climate change in the West is creating warmer and drier conditions, resulting in an increase in the amount of dead vegetation available to fuel fires. This project sought to assess the vulnerability of forests in the southwestern U.S. to climate change and wildfire, in order to understand how these ecosystems might become altered as a result. Researchers (a) examined how climate change impacts wildfires in the region, to better understand fire risk; (b) identified...
thumbnail
The number of fish collected in routine monitoring surveys often varies from year to year, from lake to lake, and from location to location within a lake. Although some variability in fish catches is expected across factors such as location and season, we know less about how large-scale disturbances like climate change will influence population variability. The Laurentian Great Lakes in North America are the largest group of freshwater lakes in the world, and they have experienced major changes due to fluctuations in pollution and nutrient loadings, exploitation of natural resources, introductions of non-native species, and shifting climatic patterns. In this project, we analyzed established long-term data about...
thumbnail
Executive Summary: Riparian ecosystems are vital components of the semi-arid landscape because woody riparian plants provide resources that are absent in adjacent vegetation types. Historically, flood played a key role in shaping the composition and structure of riparian forests. In recent decades, however, the frequency and magnitude of floods has decreased and the timing of peak discharge has been altered. In addition, wildfire has increased in importance as an agent of disturbance along many streams. We initiated this study to increase our understanding of fire, flood, and drought processes at our Middle Rio Grande study sites and develop tools that managers of other systems can use to project the response of...
thumbnail
The concept of adaptive management provides a set of good business principles to guide strategic habitat conservation, but these principles are only useful if they are put into practice through a complimentary set of business operations. To that end, if conservation is going to be successful operating at landscape scales, the conservation community must start thinking and functioning like a conservation enterprise. Much more emphasis must be placed on developing and supporting business operations that facilitate the flow of information and other resources at landscape scales. Just like successful national and global businesses, we need to develop an information supply chain to support the communication, coordination,...
thumbnail
Natural resource agencies in the Upper Midwest are facing difficult decisions concerning how to effectively support climate change adaptation and prepare managers for current and future stressors. An initial aspect of this project resulted in completion of a report: Management Options for Conservation Lands in an Era of Climate Change, in which the authors examine the current literature on climate change adaptation objectives, strategies, and actions that are feasible to implement in ecosystems of the Upper Midwest and Great Lakes. Yet, there is limited understanding of the factors that constrain and promote climate change adaptation by local land managers. We utilized a mixed-methods approach, which included a...
thumbnail
Full life-cycle vulnerability assessments are identifying the effects of climate change on nongame migratory birds that are of conservation concern and breed in the upper Midwest and Great Lakes region. Full life-cycle analyses are critical, as current efforts likely underestimate the vulnerability of migratory land birds due to a focus on assessing only one component of the annual cycle. The approach provides a framework for integrating exposure to climate changes, sensitivity to these changes, and the potential for adaptation in both winter and summer seasons, and accounts for carry-over effects from one season to another. The results of this work will inform regional management by highlighting both local and...
thumbnail
The rapid expansion of pattern tile drainage (PTD) to enhance agricultural production in the Prairie Pothole Region (PPR) has the potential to negatively impact ecosystem services provided by wetlands. To better understand and assess these impacts we will develop a spatial database to provide a regional characterization of areas at risk to PTD. Spatial information in conjunction with existing data and models will be used to make preliminary projections on the effects of PTD on cosystem services such as duck production, water storage and water quality. Spatial information will be used to identify study sites that will be instrumented to quantify and model the effects of PTD systems on wetland hydrology; this information...
map background search result map search result map Understanding the Varying Responses of Fish Populations to Future Climate Analysis of Downscaled Climate Simulations and Projections and Their Use in Decision Making for the Southwest The Vulnerability of Forests to Climate Change and Wildfire in the Southwestern U.S. Comparing and Evaluating Different Models to Simulate Current and Future Temperature and Precipitation NorEaST: A Tool to Understand the Responses of Fish to Changes in Stream Temperature Understanding Habitat Connectivity to Inform Conservation Decisions Science to Support an Assessment of Future Climate Impacts on Wildlife in Wyoming Assessment of Pattern Tile Drainage on Wetland Hydrology and Ecosystem Services in the Prairie Pothole Region Modeling and Predicting Future Changes in Snowfall and Snow Cover in Alaska Corridors, Climate Change, and Conservation Planning in the Desert Southwest Watershed Management Planning Materials and A Demonstration in the Upper Gila River Watershed Report: Great Lakes Information Management and Delivery System Report: Barriers and Opportunities to Managing for Disturbance and Environmental Change in the Upper Midwest Report: Full life cycle vulnerability assessments for the birds of the upper Midwest and Great Lakes Final Reports: Modeling Woody Plant Regeneration and Debris Accumulation under Future Streamflow and Wildfire Scenarios in the DLCC Watershed Management Planning Materials and A Demonstration in the Upper Gila River Watershed Final Reports: Modeling Woody Plant Regeneration and Debris Accumulation under Future Streamflow and Wildfire Scenarios in the DLCC Science to Support an Assessment of Future Climate Impacts on Wildlife in Wyoming Report: Barriers and Opportunities to Managing for Disturbance and Environmental Change in the Upper Midwest Modeling and Predicting Future Changes in Snowfall and Snow Cover in Alaska Analysis of Downscaled Climate Simulations and Projections and Their Use in Decision Making for the Southwest The Vulnerability of Forests to Climate Change and Wildfire in the Southwestern U.S. Understanding the Varying Responses of Fish Populations to Future Climate Assessment of Pattern Tile Drainage on Wetland Hydrology and Ecosystem Services in the Prairie Pothole Region Report: Great Lakes Information Management and Delivery System Report: Full life cycle vulnerability assessments for the birds of the upper Midwest and Great Lakes Corridors, Climate Change, and Conservation Planning in the Desert Southwest NorEaST: A Tool to Understand the Responses of Fish to Changes in Stream Temperature Understanding Habitat Connectivity to Inform Conservation Decisions Comparing and Evaluating Different Models to Simulate Current and Future Temperature and Precipitation