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This capacity-building activity supported three tribal college and university (TCU) mini-­grants to initiate student phenological and meteorological observation projects in support of climate change research, to document impacts of climate change and development of indigenous geography curriculum. Students made observations of culturally and/or traditionally significant plants to generate data sets for use in climate change impact assessment of these plants and plant communities. The activity contributed to the larger national efforts of the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian’s “Indigenous Geography” curricula, by engaging with students at tribal colleges to explore the linkage between the “seasonality”...
The project team, funded by the NC CSC, worked in two river basins in southwestern Colorado (San Juan and Gunnison) to focus on five objectives: 1) understand social-ecological vulnerabilities, 2) create scenarios and models to facilitate decision making, 3) develop actionable adaptation strategies, 4) identify institutional arrangements needed for adaptation, and 5) document and transfer best practices. The team was interested in the intersection of the climate system, the ecological system, and the social system. Social and natural scientists worked together and with many stakeholders to achieve these objectives.
Members of the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho Tribes have been working with an interdisciplinary team of social, ecological, and climate scientists from the North Central CSC, the High Plains Regional Climate Center, and the National Drought Mitigation Center along with other university and agency partners to prepare regular climate and drought summaries to aid in managing water resources on the Wind River Reservation and in surrounding areas.
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In southwestern Colorado, land managers anticipate the impacts of climate change to include higher temperatures, more frequent and prolonged drought, accelerated snowmelt, larger and more intense fires, more extreme storms, and the spread of invasive species. These changes put livelihoods, ecosystems, and species at risk. Focusing on communities in southwestern Colorado’s San Juan and Gunnison river basins, this project will expand opportunities for scientists, land managers, and affected residents to identify actions that can support resilience and adaptation in the face of changing climate conditions. This project builds on the project “Building Social and Ecological Resilience to Climate Change in southwestern...
The Evaporative Demand Drought Index (EDDI) is an experimental drought monitoring and early warning guidance tool. It examines how anomalous the atmospheric evaporative demand (E0; also known as "the thirst of the atmosphere") is for a given location and across a time period of interest. EDDI is multi-scalar, meaning that this period—or "timescale"—can vary to capture drying dynamics that themselves operate at different timescales; we generate EDDI at 1-week through 12-month timescales. This webpage offers a frequently updated assessment of current conditions across CONUS, southern parts of Canada, and northern parts of Mexico; a tool to generate historical time series of EDDI for a user-selected region; introductions...
Abstract (from http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/WCAS-D-15-0042.1): Drought is a natural part of the historical climate variability in the northern Rocky Mountains and high plains region of the United States. However, recent drought impacts and climate change projections have increased the need for a systematized way to document and understand drought in a manner that is meaningful to public land and resource managers. The purpose of this exploratory study was to characterize the ways in which some federal and tribal natural resource managers experienced and dealt with drought on lands managed by the U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) and tribes in two case site examples (northwest Colorado and southwest...
Abstract (from http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0111669): Projected climate change at a regional level is expected to shift vegetation habitat distributions over the next century. For the sub-alpine species whitebark pine (Pinus albicaulis), warming temperatures may indirectly result in loss of suitable bioclimatic habitat, reducing its distribution within its historic range. This research focuses on understanding the patterns of spatiotemporal variability for future projected P.albicaulis suitable habitat in the Greater Yellowstone Area (GYA) through a bioclimatic envelope approach. Since intermodel variability from General Circulation Models (GCMs) lead to differing predictions...
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One of the biggest challenges facing resource managers today is not knowing exactly when, where, or how climate change effects will unfold. In order to plan for this uncertain future, managers have begun to use a tool known as scenario planning, in which climate models are used to identify different plausible climate conditions, known as “scenarios”, for a particular area. In a previous project, researchers with the North Central Climate Science Center worked with natural resource managers at Badlands National Park and on surrounding federal lands to model how different climate scenarios and management activities would impact the area’s resources. The model that was developed answers critical “what if” questions...
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The goal of this project was to identify climate-related scientific information needs in the North Central region that will support the management of key species and help avoid species declines. Researchers worked closely with state fish and wildlife agencies, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, tribes, and other relevant natural resource management and conservation agencies to identify priority information needs and to design and implement studies that will address these needs. Researchers identified stakeholders, including those engaged by the North Central Climate Science Center USGS Liaisons project. Researchers worked with stakeholders to identify priority conservation targets. Selected targets were those...
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In the North Central U.S., drought is a dominant driver of ecological, economic, and social stress. Drought conditions have occurred in the region due to lower precipitation, extended periods of high temperatures and evaporative demand, or a combination of these factors. This project will continue ongoing efforts to identify and address climate science challenges related to drought, climate extremes, and the water cycle that are important for natural resource managers and scientists in the North Central region, to support adaptation planning. To accomplish this goal, researchers sought to (1) provide data and synthesis on drought processes in the region and on how evaporative stress on ecosystems will change during...
Ecological niche models predict plant responses to climate change by circumscribing species distributions within a multivariate environmental framework. Most projections based on modern bioclimatic correlations imply that high-elevation species are likely to be extirpated from their current ranges as a result of rising growing-season temperatures in the coming decades. Paleoecological data spanning the last 15,000 years from the Greater Yellowstone region describe the response of vegetation to past climate variability and suggest that white pines, a taxon of special concern in the region, have been surprisingly resilient to high summer temperature and fire activity in the past. Moreover, the fossil record suggests...
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In the North Central U.S., the rate and extent of changing climate conditions has been increasing in recent decades. These changes include shifting precipitation patterns, warming temperatures, and more frequent extreme events, such as droughts and floods. As these changes occur, managers face different challenges and have different needs, depending on the resources they manage. For example, water managers are focused on responding to changes in water availability, while wildlife managers may be more concerned with changing habitat conditions – whether it be for migratory waterfowl, coldwater fish, or large mammals. In the face of these changes, managers are seeking effective strategies for managing resources....
The NC CSC project "Wind River Indian Reservation’s (WRIR) Vulnerability to the Impacts of Drought and the Development of Decision Tools to Support Drought Preparedness" supports tribal resource managers working with university and government partners to co-develop science, decision support tools, and a management plan for drought.
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Pinyon-juniper woodlands are a major part of western landscapes and are valued for recreational use, cultural resources, watershed protection, and wildlife habitats. These woodlands have been identified by several stakeholders, including natural resource management entities, federal and state agencies, and numerous tribal nations, as important ecosystems that are currently threatened by land treatments, changes in disturbance regimes such as drought and fire, and widespread tree mortality. Currently there exist competing objectives for the management of these systems, including the desire to preserve pinyon-juniper viability as climate conditions continue to shift, as well as the need to track these systems to ensure...
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Managing natural resources is fraught with uncertainties around how complex social-ecological systems will respond to management actions and other forces, such as climate. Modeling tools have emerged to help grapple with different aspects of this challenge, but they are often used independently. The purpose of this project is to link two types of commonly-used simulation models (agent-based models and state-and-transition simulation models) and streamline the handling of model inputs and outputs. This innovation will provide researchers with the capability to simulate the interactions of wildlife, vegetation, management actions, and other drivers, and thus answer questions and inform decisions about how best to...
An increase in land conversion from grassland to cropland in the United States has attracted attention in recent years. According to Claassen et al. (2011a), grassland to cropland conversion is concentrated in the Northern Plains, including Kansas, Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota, which encompasses only 18% of U.S. rangeland but accounted for 57 percent of U.S. rangeland to cropland conversion during the study period of 1997 to 2007. Focusing on land cover data in the Western Corn Belt, Wright and Wimberly (2013) also pointed out that grassland conversion was mostly concentrated in the Dakotas, east of the Missouri River and between 2006 and 2011.
Since 2014, the High Plains Regional Climate Center, along with several partners, has worked with the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho tribes of the Wind River Indian Reservation in western Wyoming. The reservation is located in an arid, mountainous region that is prone to water resource issues. Through input from numerous workshops, webinars, and calls with tribal representatives, the HPRCC created a series of quarterly climate summaries to help the tribes make better informed on-reservation water management decisions. This Decision Dashboard is complementary to the summaries, allowing for more real-time monitoring of climate and drought conditions. This work was funded by the North Central CSC, through the...
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One of the biggest challenges facing resource managers today is not knowing exactly when, where, and how climate change effects will unfold. While models can be used to predict the types of impacts that climate change might have on a landscape, uncertainty remains surrounding factors such as how quickly changes will occur and how specific resources will respond. In order to plan for this uncertain future, managers have begun to use a tool known as scenario planning. In this approach, a subset of global climate model projections are selected that represent a range of plausible future climate scenarios for a particular area. Through a series of facilitated workshops, managers can then explore different management...
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The north-central region of the U.S. has experienced a series of extreme droughts in recent years, with impacts felt across a range of sectors. For example, the impacts of a 2002 drought are estimated to have resulted in a $3 billion loss to the agricultural sector in Nebraska and South Dakota. Meanwhile, the ecological impacts of drought in the region have included increased tree mortality, surges in the outbreak of pests, and intensifying forest fires. Located within this region is the Missouri River Basin, an important agricultural production area home to approximately 12 million people, including 28 Native American tribes. Tribal governments and multiple federal agencies manage land and natural resources in...
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The North Central Climate Science Center (NC CSC) is committed to bringing the best possible climate science to bear in order to inform decisions made by Department of the Interior (DOI) planners and other land and resource managers across the country. To help accomplish this mission, key partnerships have been established between the NC CSC and the DOI Landscape Conservation Cooperatives (LCCs) in the North Central region of the U.S. Whereas the eight Climate Science Centers have a greater emphasis on climate science delivery, the LCCs focus more generally on defining research needs for conservation, and on science and tool delivery to support conservation outcomes. In order to help connect the landscape-scale...
map background search result map search result map Foundational Science Area: Helping People and Nature Adapt to Climate Change in the North Central U.S. Model-Based Scenario Planning to Inform Climate Change Adaptation in the Northern Great Plains Building Collaboration Between the North Central CSC and Regional Partners Through Liaison Teams Building Social and Ecological Resilience to Climate Change in Southwestern Colorado: Phase 2 Enabling Climate-Informed Planning and Decisions about Species of Conservation Concern in the North Central Region: Phase 1 Foundational Science Area: Maximizing Stakeholder Engagement to Support Climate Adaptation in the North Central U.S. Foundational Science Area: Ecological Drought, Climate Extremes, and the Water Cycle in the North Central U.S. Informing Climate Change Adaptation Planning in National Parks Ecology and Management of Pinyon-Juniper Woodlands: State of the Science Improving Projections of Wildlife and Landscapes for Natural Resource Managers Improving Projections of Wildlife and Landscapes for Natural Resource Managers Informing Climate Change Adaptation Planning in National Parks Building Social and Ecological Resilience to Climate Change in Southwestern Colorado: Phase 2 Model-Based Scenario Planning to Inform Climate Change Adaptation in the Northern Great Plains Foundational Science Area: Helping People and Nature Adapt to Climate Change in the North Central U.S. Building Collaboration Between the North Central CSC and Regional Partners Through Liaison Teams Enabling Climate-Informed Planning and Decisions about Species of Conservation Concern in the North Central Region: Phase 1 Foundational Science Area: Maximizing Stakeholder Engagement to Support Climate Adaptation in the North Central U.S. Foundational Science Area: Ecological Drought, Climate Extremes, and the Water Cycle in the North Central U.S. Ecology and Management of Pinyon-Juniper Woodlands: State of the Science