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Estimates of weather suitability for the occurrence of mortality in whitebark pine from mountain pine beetles as determined from a logistic generalized additive model of the presence of mortality as functions of the number of trees killed last year, the percent whitebark pine in each cell, minimum winter temperature, average fall temperature, avverage April-Aug temperature, and cummulative current and previous year summer precipitation. Analysis done at a 1km grid cell resolution. Weather suitability index calculated by summing the weather terms in the model. Calculated for 2010 through 2099 based on downscaled data from various emissions scenarios. GCMs include: BCC, CanESM, CCSM, CESM, CESM-BGC, CMCC, CNRM, Had-CC,...
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The research was conducted at eight tidal marshes in coastal estuaries spanning the Washington and Oregon coastlines from Padilla Bay in northern Washington to Bandon located at the mouth of the Coquille River in southern Oregon. The researchers performed bathymetric surveys, created digital elevation models, measured historic rates of mineral and organic matter accumulation, conducted vegetation surveys, deployed water level data loggers, and produced WARMER wetland accretion model projections for each study site. This collection contains data for all of the above across a number of different datasets. Users should investigate the metadata for each item for more information about it's purpose, methods, quality,...
To improve understanding of streamflow permanence in the Pacific Northwest, we have developed a method for predicting the annual probability of year-round streamflow at 30-meter intervals. The approach involves collecting and processing nearly 24,000 streamflow observations into “wet” or “dry” values, and synchronizing them with 291 predictor datasets that represent physical (one-time values) and climatic (monthly or annual values) conditions associated with the upstream area for each 30-meter point along streams in the Pacific Northwest. Both of these datasets are among the first of their kind and shed light on the scientific opportunities that ‘Big Data’ techniques allow for. The predictive models developed from...
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A rapidly changing climate and expanding human footprint is driving increased rates of landscape change in the Pacific Northwest. This makes it challenging for managers to know if and to what extent recovery goals and conservation plans for at-risk species need to be modified to account for changing habitat conditions. Addressing this challenge requires accurate, up-to-date information about landscape change and how it affects the habitat and viability of at-risk species. In addition, managers need to be alerted when trends in habitat conditions approach key ecological thresholds, in order to determine if management goals and plans need to be modified in response to these changes. The goal of this project is to...
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In the Northwest U.S., warming temperatures and changing precipitation patterns will likely result in significantly altered snowpack, stream flows, and water availability. Along with these changes comes an increased risk of “ecological drought”, or periods of water stress that impact ecosystems and the services they provide –which can ultimately impact human communities. More frequent and severe ecological droughts have the potential to push ecosystems beyond their ability to recover, resulting in complete changes in ecosystem composition and function. Ecological drought will only worsen existing management challenges, such as competition for water resources, habitat degradation, invasive species, and more frequent...
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Scientific information about the risks of climate change to important natural and cultural resources is crucial for developing and implementing climate adaptation plans and management actions. Tools that incorporate both science and expert knowledge on adaptation actions can greatly benefit municipal, regional, and other decision makers, as they develop and implement their adaptation plans. In 2018, EcoAdapt created the Climate Change Adaptation Certification Tool, which was designed to support the implementation of climate adaptation plans. Discussions with the Washington State Interagency Climate Adaptation Network have confirmed that this tool was ideal for supporting decision making in the natural and cultural...
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Climate change is one of the most pressing issues facing natural resource management. The disruptions it is causing require that we change the way we consider conservation and resource management in order to ensure the future of habitats, species, and human communities. Practitioners often struggle with how to identify and prioritize specific climate adaptation actions (CAAs). Management actions may have a higher probability of being successful if they are informed by available scientific knowledge and findings; a systematic review process provides a mechanism to scientifically assess management questions. By evaluating specific actions on scientific knowledge and findings, we may be able to increase management...
Public Summary: The area burned by wildfires is expected to increase in many watersheds of the world over the next century as a function of climate change. Increased sedimentation due to soil erosion in burned watersheds can negatively impact downstream aquatic ecosystems and the quality and supply of water. At least 65% of the water supply in the western USA originates in watersheds covered by trees, shrubs, and/or grasses that are prone to wildfire16. Understanding how changing fire frequency, extent, and location will affect watersheds, reservoirs, and the ecosystem services they supply to communities is therefore of great societal importance. A primary threat to socio-ecological systems in this region from...
Abstract (from http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/hyp.11144/full): The extensive forests that cover the mountains of the Pacific Northwest, USA, modify snow processes and therefore affect snow water storage as well as snow disappearance timing. However, forest influences on snow accumulation and ablation vary with climate, topography, and land cover and are therefore subject to substantial temporal and spatial variability. We utilize multiple years of snow observations from across the region to assess forest-snow interactions in the relatively warm winter conditions characteristic of the maritime and maritime-continental climates. We (1) quantify the difference in snow magnitude and disappearance timing...
Abstract (from http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2015WR017873/abstract): Spatially distributed snow depth and snow duration data were collected over two to four snow seasons during water years 2011–2014 in experimental forest plots within the Cedar River Municipal Watershed, 50 km east of Seattle, Washington, USA. These 40 × 40 m forest plots, situated on the western slope of the Cascade Range, include unthinned second-growth coniferous forests, variable density thinned forests, forest gaps in which a 20 m diameter (approximately equivalent to one tree height) gap was cut in the middle of each plot, and old-growth forest. Together, this publicly available data set includes snow depth and density observations...
Abstract (from http://www.publish.csiro.au/WF/WF16165): Interannual variability in burn severity is assessed across forested ecoregions of the western United States to understand how it is influenced by variations in area burned and climate during 1984–2014. Strong correlations (|r| > 0.6) between annual area burned and climate metrics were found across many of the studied regions. The burn severity of individual fires and fire seasons was weakly, but significantly (P < 0.05), correlated with burned area across many regions. Interannual variability in fuel dryness evaluated with fuel aridity metrics demonstrated weak-to-moderate (|r| >0.4) relationships with regional burn severity, congruent with but weaker than...
Streams are classified as perennial (flowing uninterrupted, year-round) or intermittent (flowing part of the year) or ephemeral (flowing only during rainfall events). The classifications of “streamflow permanence” were primarily established in the middle 20th century and are often outdated and inaccurate today if they were not adjusted for changes in land use, wildfires, or climate. Understanding where streams are perennial is important for a variety of reasons. For example, perennial streams receive special regulatory protections under a variety of statutes, and provide important habitat for fish, wildlife, and other species. To predict the likelihood that streams are perennial, we compiled nearly 25,000 observations...
Abstract: Restoration of degraded wet meadows found on upland valley floors has been proposed to achieve a range of ecological benefits, including augmenting late‐season streamflow. There are, however, few field and modelling studies documenting hydrologic changes following restoration that can be used to validate this expectation, and published changes in groundwater levels and streamflow following restoration are inconclusive. Here, we assess the streamflow benefit that can be obtained by wet‐meadow restoration using a physically based quantitative analysis. This framework employs a 1‐dimensional linearized Boussinesq equation with a superimposed solution for changes in storage due to groundwater upwelling and...
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Mountain meadows in the western United States provide key habitats for many plant and wildlife species, many of which rely exclusively on these areas. Mountain meadows are also treasured by the public and provide beautiful areas to view wildflowers and wildlife on public lands such as national parks. However, mountain ecosystems are expected to be disproportionately affected by climate change. There is a limited understanding of how mountain meadows are changing, how temperature and precipitation may be driving those changes, and how this will impact sensitive species that inhabit these landscapes. Natural resource managers have an immediate need to understand these relationships to conserve or restore habitats...
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Ecological systems are already responding to modern changes in climate. Many species are moving in directions and at rates that correspond with recent climatic change. Understanding how species distributions and abundances are likely to be altered can inform management and planning activities resulting in more robust management. We projected climate-driven changes in the abundances and distributions of 31 focal bird species in Oregon and Washington using the latest downscaled CMIP5 climate projections and corresponding vegetation model outputs. We mapped these future projections and integrated them into an existing web-based tool (http://data.pointblue.org/apps/nwcsc/) to allow managers and planners to access and...
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The Northwest Climate Conference (formerly called the Pacific Northwest Climate Science Conference) is the premier climate science event for the region, providing a forum for researchers and practitioners to share scientific results and discuss challenges and solutions related to the impacts of climate change on people, natural resources, and infrastructure in the Northwest. Conference participants include policy- and decision-makers, resource managers, and scientists from academia, public agencies, sovereign tribal nations, non-governmental organizations, and the private sector. More information can be found at the conference website: http://pnwclimateconference.org. The Second Annual Pacific Northwest Climate...
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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....
Greater sage-grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus) is a candidate for listing under the Endangered Species Act because of population and habitat fragmentation coupled with inadequate regulatory mechanisms to control development in critical areas. In addition to the current threats to habitat, each 1 degree celsius increase due to climate change is expected to result in an additional 87,000 km2 of sagebrush (Artemisia spp.) that will be converted to unsuitable habitat for sage-grouse. Thus, the future distribution and composition of sagebrush landscapes is likely to differ greatly from today’s configuration. We conducted a large, multi-objective project to identify: (1) characteristics of habitats required by sage-grouse,...
Final Report for the Third Annual Pacific Northwest Climate Science Conference
Categories: Publication; Types: Citation; Tags: Northwest CASC, conference
Abstract (from http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate2252.html): Climate change will decrease worldwide biodiversity through a number of potential pathways1, including invasive hybridization2 (cross-breeding between invasive and native species). How climate warming influences the spread of hybridization and loss of native genomes poses difficult ecological and evolutionary questions with little empirical information to guide conservation management decisions3. Here we combine long-term genetic monitoring data with high-resolution climate and stream temperature predictions to evaluate how recent climate warming has influenced the spatio-temporal spread of human-mediated hybridization between...
map background search result map search result map Understanding Climate Change Vulnerability in the Pacific Northwest: A Comparison of Three Approaches Support for the Second Annual Pacific Northwest Climate Science Conference Visualizing the Future Abundance and Distribution of Birds in the Northwest The Available Science Assessment Process (ASAP): Evaluating the Science behind Climate Adaptation Actions Extremes to Ex-Streams: Informing Ecological Drought Adaptation in the Northwest Weather suitability for mountain pine beetle outbreaks in whitebark pine forests, 2010-2099, Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem Study Area Field and model data for studying the effects of sea-level rise on eight tidal marshes in coastal Washington and Oregon An Alert System for Managing At-Risk Species in Cascadia under Climate Change Developing a Climate Adaptation Checklist to Inform Natural Resource Management From Water to Wildlife: Linking Water Timing and Availability to Meadows and Wildlife in a Changing Climate Field and model data for studying the effects of sea-level rise on eight tidal marshes in coastal Washington and Oregon Weather suitability for mountain pine beetle outbreaks in whitebark pine forests, 2010-2099, Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem Study Area Visualizing the Future Abundance and Distribution of Birds in the Northwest Support for the Second Annual Pacific Northwest Climate Science Conference The Available Science Assessment Process (ASAP): Evaluating the Science behind Climate Adaptation Actions From Water to Wildlife: Linking Water Timing and Availability to Meadows and Wildlife in a Changing Climate Extremes to Ex-Streams: Informing Ecological Drought Adaptation in the Northwest Developing a Climate Adaptation Checklist to Inform Natural Resource Management An Alert System for Managing At-Risk Species in Cascadia under Climate Change Understanding Climate Change Vulnerability in the Pacific Northwest: A Comparison of Three Approaches