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Coastal wetlands and the many beneficial services they provide (e.g., purifying water, buffering storm surge, providing habitat) are changing and disappearing as a result of sea-level rise brought about by climate change. Scientists have developed a wealth of information and resources to predict and aid decision-making related to sea-level rise. However, while some of these resources are easily accessible by coastal managers, many others require more expert knowledge to understand or utilize. The goal of this project was to collate science and models pertaining to the effects of sea-level on coastal wetlands into a format that would be accessible and useful to resource managers. Researchers conducted training sessions...
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Assessing the impact of flow alteration on aquatic ecosystems has been identified as a critical area of research nationally and in the Southeast U.S. This project aimed to address the Ecohydrology Priority Science Need of the SE CSC FY2012 Annual Science Work Plan by developing an inventory and evaluation of current efforts and knowledge gaps in hydrological modeling for flow-­‐ecology science in global change impact studies across the Southeast. To accomplish this goal, we completed a thorough synthesis and evaluation of hydrologic modeling efforts in the Southeast region (including all states of the Southeastern Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies (SEAFWA) including Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky,...
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The Southeastern U.S. spans broad ranges of physiographic settings and contains a wide variety of aquatic systems that provide habitat for hundreds of endemic aquatic species that pose interesting challenges and opportunities for managers of aquatic resources, particularly in the face of climate change. For example, the Southeast contains the southernmost populations of the eastern brook trout and other cold-water dependent species. Climate change is predicted to increase temperatures in the South and is likely to have a substantial effect on extant populations of cold-water biota. Thus, aquatic managers are tasked with developing strategies for preserving cold-water dependent biota, such as eastern brook trout,...
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Reserve design is a process that must address many ecological, social, and political factors to successfully identify parcels of land in need of protection to sustain wildlife populations and other natural resources. Making land acquisition choices for a large, terrestrial protected area is difficult because it occurs over a long timeframe and may involve consideration of future conditions such as climate and urbanization changes. Decision makers need to consider factors including: order of parcel purchasing given budget constraints, future uncertainty, potential future landscape-scale changes from urbanization, and climate. In central Florida, two new refuges and the expansion of a third refuge are in various stages...
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A priority of the Southeast Climate Science Center (SECSC) is to support the planning and implementation of a Southeast Conservation Adaptation Strategy (SECAS). This project examined the decision making context, decision making process, and management planning associated with the restoration of open pine ecosystems in the Southeast. To better understand the planning practice associated with this system, we assessed the quality of 35 management plans from federal, state, and non-governmental agencies. We found that newer plans scored higher than older plans, suggesting agencies may be learning to develop better plans over time and indicating older plans should be prioritized for revision. Plans from federal and...
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Barrier islands protect mainland areas from storm surge, but can erode over time and require restoration. Ship Island, a barrier island off the coast of Mississippi, provides an example of this: the island was battered by Hurricane Camille in 1969 and split into two separate islands. As part of the Mississippi Coastal Improvements Program, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers plans to use approximately 22 million cubic yards of sand to close the gap between East and West Ship Islands. This will restore both the island’s physical integrity and habitat for important species such as sea turtles, shorebirds, and Gulf sturgeon. This project served as a case study to test the usefulness of structured decision-making – a...
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Detecting change in ecosystems requires observations of living and non-living components over time. Many different organizations make observations that are relevant to understanding global change processes, but the data are often not easily discoverable by other interested scientists and managers. This project aimed to pull into a centralized location information about many of these observational networks. In this phase of the project, a publicly available web-based portal was developed that provides a means to discover, search, and connect to many types of environmental and biological data collected in the southeastern United States that are relevant to characterizing potential effects of climate and land use change...
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The southeastern U.S. contains a unique diversity of ecosystems that provide important benefits, including habitat for rare wildlife and plants, improved water quality, and recreation opportunities. Understanding how climate change will affect these ecosystems is vital for knowing how best to protect them and the services they supply. The goal of this project was to assess the climate change vulnerability of 12 key ecosystems in the southeastern U.S. and Caribbean, ranging from Caribbean coastal mangrove to Nashville Basin limestone glade and woodland. Scientists used the existing scientific literature and geospatial analysis to determine each ecosystem’s sensitivity to changes in climate, its exposure level to...
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The gopher tortoise (Gopherus polyphemus) is a familiar species across the southeastern Coastal Plain, but its population has declined significantly over the decades. One reason is that much of its primary habitat, sparse stands of mature pine, has been replaced by development or agriculture. Another is that periodic ground fires, which are important for providing needed forage for the tortoise, have been largely suppressed on the landscape. The gopher tortoise is a “keystone” species, meaning that its disappearance from the landscape would jeopardize the existence of many other species that make use of its underground burrows. Besides tortoise habitat, the uplands of the Coastal Plain contain isolated seasonal...
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We routinely encounter uncertainty when we make decisions – from picking a new morning coffee to choosing where to live. Even decisions that are supported by science contain some level of remaining uncertainty. In the context of conservation and wildlife management, the potential for uncertainty to influence decisions is perhaps most obvious when we think about predicting how actions (or non-actions) will have lasting impacts into the future. Our abilities to precisely predict future climatic and ecological conditions and determine the exact consequences of our actions are, and will remain, limited. Conservation practitioners and land and wildlife managers must navigate these challenges to make science-informed...
    map background search result map search result map USGS-USFS Partnership to Help Managers Evaluate Conservation Strategies for Aquatic Ecosystems Based on Future Climate Projections Assessing Climate-Sensitive Ecosystems in the Southeastern U.S. Evaluating the Use of Models for Projecting Future Water Flow in the Southeast A Handbook for Resource Managers to Understand and Utilize Sea-Level Rise and Coastal Wetland Models Turning Uncertainty into Useful Information for Conservation Decisions Development of the Global Change Monitoring Portal: A Tool for Providing Resource Managers with Global Change Monitoring Data Across the Southeast Science to Support Adaptive Landscape Planning and Decision Making for Gopher Tortoise Conservation Structured Decision-Making as a Tool for Coastal Restoration: A Case Study on Ship Island, Mississippi Informing the Identification of High-Priority Lands for the Everglades Headwaters National Wildlife Refuge Considering Future Climate and Urbanization Assessing Science Needs and Conservation Decisions to Inform the Southeast Conservation Adaptation Strategy (SECAS) Informing the Identification of High-Priority Lands for the Everglades Headwaters National Wildlife Refuge Considering Future Climate and Urbanization Science to Support Adaptive Landscape Planning and Decision Making for Gopher Tortoise Conservation USGS-USFS Partnership to Help Managers Evaluate Conservation Strategies for Aquatic Ecosystems Based on Future Climate Projections A Handbook for Resource Managers to Understand and Utilize Sea-Level Rise and Coastal Wetland Models Evaluating the Use of Models for Projecting Future Water Flow in the Southeast Turning Uncertainty into Useful Information for Conservation Decisions Assessing Science Needs and Conservation Decisions to Inform the Southeast Conservation Adaptation Strategy (SECAS) Development of the Global Change Monitoring Portal: A Tool for Providing Resource Managers with Global Change Monitoring Data Across the Southeast Assessing Climate-Sensitive Ecosystems in the Southeastern U.S.