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Snow conditions are changing dramatically in the mountains of the interior Pacific Northwest, including eastern Washington, northern Idaho, and western Montana. These changes can both benefit and hinder a variety of wildlife species. The timing and extent of seasonal snowpacks, in addition to snow depth, density, and hardness, can impact the ability of wildlife to access forage, their ability to move across the landscape, and their vulnerability to predators, to name a few. In order to respond effectively to changes in snow conditions, wildlife managers need tools to identify areas and promote conditions that maintain late spring and early summer snowpack for some sensitive species. Managers also require an index...
Abstract (from Ecological Applications): Anthropogenic climate change presents challenges and opportunities to the growth, reproduction, and survival of individuals throughout their life cycles. Demographic compensation among life‐history stages has the potential to buffer populations from decline, but alternatively, compounding negative effects can lead to accelerated population decline and extinction. In montane ecosystems of the U.S. Pacific Northwest, increasing temperatures are resulting in a transition from snow‐dominated to rain‐dominated precipitation events, reducing snowpack. For ectotherms such as amphibians, warmer winters can reduce the frequency of critical minimum temperatures and increase the length...
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Natural resource managers are confronted with the pressing challenge to develop conservation plans that address complex ecological and societal needs against the backdrop of a rapidly changing climate. Climate change vulnerability assessments (CCVAs) provide valuable information that helps guide management and conservation actions in this regard. An essential component to CCVAs is understanding adaptive capacity, or the ability of a species to cope with or adjust to climate change. However, adaptive capacity is the least understood and evaluated component of CCVAs. This is largely due to a fundamental need for guidance on how to assess adaptive capacity and incorporate this information into conservation planning...
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As temperature and precipitation patterns change, different species in different areas will be affected in different ways. Some places may serve as refuges for wildlife—places where animals can remain or to which they can easily move to escape the worst impacts of climate change. This project will establish a Refugia Research Coalition to leverage recently funded Northwest CASC research projects on the topic of ecological refugia. The goal of this collaborative effort will be to synthesize our understanding of ecological refugia in the Pacific Northwest and how best to use refugia-related research products as tools for adaptive management planning in the region. Ecological refugia will be an important means of protecting...
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Big sagebrush plant communities are important and widespread in western North America and are crucial for meeting long-term conservation goals for greater sage-grouse and other wildlife of conservation concern. Yet wildfire is increasing in the West, turning biodiverse, shrub-based ecosystems dominated by sagebrush into grasslands containing invasive species such as cheatgrass and less overall plant and animal diversity. These transformations negatively impact people and ecosystems by reducing habitat quality for wildlife and the aesthetic value of the landscape. Understanding how sagebrush communities are already responding and will continue to respond to changes in wildfire, invasive species, and climate is...
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The headwaters of the Columbia River Basin in the Northern Rocky Mountains region is widely recognized as a stronghold for native fish, containing some of the last remaining connected cold-water habitats for species such as the threatened bull trout and native westslope cutthroat trout. However, as temperatures rise, non-native invasive fish species could be poised to prosper in the region as conditions start to favor warm-water species over those that require cooler waters to thrive. The spread of invasive fish species has the potential to devastate native fish populations, stream habitats, and the local cultures and economies that depend on healthy aquatic ecosystems – including the region’s multi-billion dollar...
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Climate change is contributing to an increase in wildfire activity in the western United States, including the Blue Mountains and Eastern Cascades Slopes and Foothills of the Inland Northwest. Some forest ecosystems are changing from forest to non-forest because of severe fires, a hot and dry climate, and/or the absence of a viable seed source. On sites impacted by wildfire, managers are tasked with maintaining timber value, wildlife, recreation, and cultural resources important to society. However, managers contend with multiple constraints in forest restoration. To address these constraints, a network of scientists and managers of the Blue Mountains and Eastern Cascades will co-develop a decision support platform...
Abstract (from Ecography): Climate change vulnerability assessments are an important tool for understanding the threat that climate change poses to species and populations, but do not generally yield insight into the spatial variation in vulnerability throughout a species’ habitat. We demonstrate how to adapt the method of ecological‐niche factor analysis (ENFA) to objectively quantify aspects of species sensitivity to climate change. We then expand ENFA to quantify aspects of exposure and vulnerability to climate change as well, using future projections of global climate models. This approach provides spatially‐explicit insight into geographic patterns of vulnerability, relies only on readily‐available spatial...
Abstract (from AGU 100): Periodic oscillations between El Niño and La Niña conditions in the Pacific Basin affect oceanographic and meteorological phenomena globally, with impacts on the abundance and distribution of marine species. However, El Niño effects on estuarine hydrology and tidal wetland processes have seldom been examined rigorously. We used detailed wetland elevation and local inundation data from 10 tidal wetlands located along the Pacific coast of the United States to assess changes in flooding during the 2015–2016 El Niño and to determine decadal‐scale relationships between estuarine sea‐level anomalies and Pacific Basin climate indices for this region. During the 2015–2016 El Niño all sites experienced...
Abstract (from SpringerLink): Western climate science and Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) represent complementary and overlapping views of the causes and consequences of change. In particular, observations of changes in abundance, distribution, phenology, or behavior of the natural environment (including plants and animals) can have a rich cultural and spiritual interpretation in Indigenous communities that may not be present in western science epistemologies. Using interviews with Indigenous elders and other Traditional Knowledge holders, we demonstrate that assumptions about the nature, perception, and utilization of time and timing can differ across knowledge systems in regard to climate change.Our interviewees’...
Abstract (from Oxford Academic): Fire refugia are landscape elements that remain unburned or minimally affected by fire, thereby supporting postfire ecosystem function, biodiversity, and resilience to disturbances. Although fire refugia have been studied across continents, scales, and affected taxa, they have not been characterized systematically over space and time, which is crucial for understanding their role in facilitating resilience in the context of global change. We identify four dichotomies that delineate an overarching conceptual framework of fire refugia: unburned versus lower severity, species-specific versus landscape-process characteristics, predictable versus stochastic, and ephemeral versus persistent....
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Healthy shellfish beds provide important ecosystem services, support local economies, and promote human well-being and sense of place. For Coast Salish Tribes, including the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community (SITC), clams are a highly valued traditional food, playing a key role in Coast Salish worldviews. Clam harvests also provide: opportunities for tribal members to exercise their treaty rights; access to a local source of protein; and educational opportunities where elders can share teachings with youth that honor and reinforce community values like stewardship and reciprocity. However, clams and clam habitats are threatened by climate change and ocean acidification. Recent research reports a decline in native...
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A persistent management question is whether current climate adaptation planning will remain robust when facing a growing number of invasive species. The concern is that current management strategies that focus exclusively on single invasive species and overlook climate-driven biological interactions, may lead to poor decisions. By delivering actionable science, this project directly informs specific planning, management and decision needs of tribal and governmental partners working in the Columbia River Basin. First, we assess the information needs for, and barriers to, effective aquatic invasive species management in the face of climate change in the Columbia River Basin. This helps synthesize knowledge and build...
During droughts, localized areas of the landscape (drought refugia) retain surface water and soil moisture needed to sustain wildlife and vegetation. Remote sensing from satellite imagery offers powerful tools to identify refugia and study their responses to changing weather patterns over time. This talk will present two recent applications of remote-sensing analysis related to drought refugia research in southern Oregon. In one study, hydrologic resilience of springs was inferred using remote sensing of groundwater-dependent vegetation in a semi-arid sage steppe ecosystem. In another, refugia from drought and mountain pine beetle were identified in lodgepole pine and whitebark pine forest. Efforts are currently...
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The Northwest Climate Adaptation Science Center (NW CASC) offers both regular skills-building webinar series and individual applied science webinars. NW CASC’s applied science webinars cover a range of topics and lessons learned from NW CASC-funded projects, while its skills-building webinar series are designed to promote a deeper understanding of actionable science approaches by emphasizing the process behind effective engagement between research and management communities. NW CASC actionable science webinar series topics include an introduction to actionable science, social science tools for making science actionable, communications approaches to amplify actionable science, early career considerations for co-producing...
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A change in wildfire regimes and the expansion of invasive grasses are degrading sagebrush ecosystems, altering wildlife habitats, and threatening property and human livelihoods. In response, land managers often treat large areas of land with fuel reduction or post-fire seeding treatments in an attempt to reduce these risks. However, the trajectories of ecosystem change following treatment are inconsistent across the sagebrush steppe. In some places, treatments are successful, leading to a decrease in invasive grasses which allows native plants to recover. In other places, treatments either have no effect or they facilitate the spread of invasive grasses. Under some climate conditions, native grasses and forbs do...
Abstract (from esa): Western U.S. wildfire area burned has increased dramatically over the last half‐century. How contemporary extent and severity of wildfires compare to the pre‐settlement patterns to which ecosystems are adapted is debated. We compared large wildfires in Pacific Northwest forests from 1984 to 2015 to modeled historic fire regimes. Despite late twentieth‐century increases in area burned, we show that Pacific Northwest forests have experienced an order of magnitude less fire over 32 yr than expected under historic fire regimes. Within fires that have burned, severity distributions are disconnected from historical references. From 1984 to 2015, 1.6 M ha burned; this is 13.3–18.9 M ha less than expected....
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Tribal nations in the Pacific Northwest have distinctive, long-standing relationships with their aboriginal lands and associated resources. These relationships are being disrupted by changing climate conditions. Most scientific information about changes in forests and other ecosystems have not been directed toward addressing the concerns of tribal communities. For example, they lack culturally-specific information pertaining to tribal knowledge systems, cultural practices, livelihoods, food and water security, and economies. Furthermore, ensuring that research is conducted in ways that are relevant to tribes is difficult when those who produce these studies lack experience in working with tribes, and are unfamiliar...
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The Northwest Climate Adaptation Science Center (NW CASC) is hosted by the University of Washington on behalf of a multi-university consortium, enabling the federal government and Northwest natural and cultural resource managers to leverage the research capacity, expertise and infrastructure of public agencies and universities across Washington, Oregon, Idaho and western Montana. Each NW CASC Consortium partner (listed below) brings unique expertise in promoting regional climate resilience and is dedicated to building capacity within resource management agencies and among the next generation of researchers for addressing climate impacts. University of Washington The NW CASC is hosted by the University of Washington...
The large, highly glacierized Copper River basin is an important water resource for the south‐central region of Alaska. Thus, information is needed on the reaction of its hydrologic timing and streamflow volumes to historical changes in climate, in order to assess the possible impact of future changes. However, the basin is remote, and therefore, it has proved difficult to collect field data in a frequent temporal and spatial manner. An extension of the distributed‐parameter, physical‐process code Precipitation Runoff Modeling System, PRMSglacier, has been specifically developed to simulate daily hydrology without requiring extensive input data. In this study, PRMSglacier was used to characterize the hydrology of...
map background search result map search result map Big Sagebrush Response to Wildfire and Invasive Grasses in the 21st Century Predicting Climate-Induced Expansions of Invasive Fish in the Pacific Northwest: Implications for Climate Adaptation of Native Salmon and Trout Examining the Effects of Climate on American Indian Uses of Forests in Pacific Northwest and Northern California Establishing a Refugia Research Coalition (RRC) for Collaborative Refugia-Related Research and Management in the Pacific Northwest Estimating the Spatial and Temporal Extent of Snowpack Properties in Complex Terrain: Leveraging Novel Data to Adapt Wildlife and Habitat Management Practices to Climate Change Evaluating Species’ Adaptive Capacity in a Changing Climate: Applications to Natural-Resource Management in the Northwestern U.S. NW CASC Research Consortium Partners: Leveraging Regional Research Capacity & Expertise NW CASC Actionable Science Webinars: Actionable Science Approaches and Findings Clam Gardens: An Indigenous Community-Driven Climate Adaptation Strategy to Manage Aquatic Species and Habitats in the Pacific Northwest Trajectories of Change: How Climate, Wildfire, and Management Drive Shrubland Ecosystem Transitions A Multi-Scale Decision Support Platform for Adaptive Management of Post-Fire Landscapes in the Inland Northwest Anticipating Climate-Driven Spread and Impact of Multiple Interacting Invasive Species in the Columbia River Basin Anticipating Climate-Driven Spread and Impact of Multiple Interacting Invasive Species in the Columbia River Basin Examining the Effects of Climate on American Indian Uses of Forests in Pacific Northwest and Northern California Establishing a Refugia Research Coalition (RRC) for Collaborative Refugia-Related Research and Management in the Pacific Northwest NW CASC Research Consortium Partners: Leveraging Regional Research Capacity & Expertise NW CASC Actionable Science Webinars: Actionable Science Approaches and Findings Estimating the Spatial and Temporal Extent of Snowpack Properties in Complex Terrain: Leveraging Novel Data to Adapt Wildlife and Habitat Management Practices to Climate Change Evaluating Species’ Adaptive Capacity in a Changing Climate: Applications to Natural-Resource Management in the Northwestern U.S. A Multi-Scale Decision Support Platform for Adaptive Management of Post-Fire Landscapes in the Inland Northwest Trajectories of Change: How Climate, Wildfire, and Management Drive Shrubland Ecosystem Transitions Big Sagebrush Response to Wildfire and Invasive Grasses in the 21st Century Predicting Climate-Induced Expansions of Invasive Fish in the Pacific Northwest: Implications for Climate Adaptation of Native Salmon and Trout