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USGS researchers from the North Central CASC and the Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center recently collaborated with the National Park Service Climate Change Response Program to develop a new product that communicates the results from a collaborative effort—involving resource managers, subject-matter experts, and a larger climate change adaptation team—to identify potential climate impacts and management responses in Badlands National Park. The researchers used scenario planning and ecological simulation modeling to anticipate management challenges and identify options for Badlands National Park and adjacent federal and tribal lands in the coming decades (through 2050). The ecological simulation models help...
Although drought is a natural part of climate across the north-central United States, how drought is experienced and responded to is the result of complex biophysical and social processes. Climate change assessments indicate drought impacts will likely worsen in the future, which will further challenge decision-making. Here, a drought management decision typology is empirically developed from synthesis of three in-depth case studies using a modified grounded-theory approach. The typology highlights 1) the entity or entities involved, 2) management sectors, 3) decision types, 4) spatial and temporal scale(s) of decision-making, and 5) barriers that inhibit decision-making. Findings indicate similarities in decision...
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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. To help federal land managers address this need, the North Central CASC has been working with the National Park Service to pioneer an approach for incorporating climate science and scenario planning into NPS planning processes, in particular Resource Stewardship Strategies (RSS). These strategies serve as a long-range planning tool for a national park unit to achieve its desired natural and cultural resource conditions, and are used to guide a park’s full spectrum of resource-specific management plans and day-to-day management activities. To support adaptation planning within...
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Changing climate conditions such as increasing droughts, floods, and wildfires, hotter temperatures, declining snowpacks, and changes in the timing of seasonal events are already having an impact on wildlife and their habitats. In order to make forward-looking management decisions that consider ongoing and future projected changes in climate, managers require access to climate information that can be easily integrated into the planning process. Co-production, a process whereby scientists work closely with managers to identify and fill knowledge gaps, is an effective means of ensuring that science results will be directly useful to managers. Through a multi-phase project, researchers are implementing co-production...
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Grasslands in the northern Great Plains are important ecosystems that support local economies, tribal communities, livestock grazing, diverse plant and animal communities, and large-scale migrations of big game ungulates, grassland birds, and waterfowl. Climate change and variability impact how people and animals live on and interact with grasslands, and can bring more frequent droughts, fires, or new plant species that make managing these landscapes challenging. Understanding how climate change and variability will impact grassland ecosystems and their management in the 21st century first requires a synthesis of what is known across all of these scales and a gap analysis to identify key areas of focus for future...
Abstract (from http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/10.1175/WCAS-D-16-0121.1): Much of the academic literature and policy discussions about sustainable development and climate change adaptation focus on poor and developing nations, yet many tribal communities inside the United States include marginalized peoples and developing nations who face structural barriers to effectively adapt to climate change. There is a need to critically examine diverse climate change risks for indigenous peoples in the United States and the many structural barriers that limit their ability to adapt to climate change. This paper uses a sustainable climate adaptation framework to outline the context and the relationships of power and authority,...
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Prairies were once widespread across North America, but are now one of the most endangered and least protected ecosystems in the world. Agriculture and residential development have reduced once extensive prairies into a patchwork of remnant prairies and “surrogate” grasslands (e.g., hayfields, planted pastures). Grassland ecosystems and many grassland-dependent birds are also particularly vulnerable to rapid shifts in climate and associated changes in drought and extreme weather. The Central Flyway is a vast bird migration route that comprises more than half of the continental U.S., and extends from Central America to Canada, and harbors the greatest diversity of grassland birds in North America. Throughout this...
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As climate change progresses, profound environmental changes are becoming a widespread concern. A new management paradigm is developing to address this concern with a framework that encourages strategic decisions to resist, accept, or direct ecological trajectories. Effective use of the Resist-Accept-Direct (RAD) framework requires the scientific community to describe the range of plausible ecological conditions managers might face, while recognizing limits to our ability to predict precisely where or how specific climatic changes may unfold or how complex environmental systems will respond - the climatic future does not fully determine the ecological one. Recent advances have improved development and delivery...
Monitoring vegetation phenology is critical for quantifying climate change impacts on ecosystems. We present an extensive dataset of 1783 site-years of phenological data derived from PhenoCam network imagery from 393 digital cameras, situated from tropics to tundra across a wide range of plant functional types, biomes, and climates. Most cameras are located in North America. Every half hour, cameras upload images to the PhenoCam server. Images are displayed in near-real time and provisional data products, including timeseries of the Green Chromatic Coordinate (Gcc), are made publicly available through the project web page (https://phenocam.sr.unh.edu/webcam/gallery/). Processing is conducted separately for each...
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The Northwest and North Central Climate Adaptation Science Centers (NW and NC CASCs) work in partnership with regional natural resource management communities to provide high priority science information and products needed for climate adaptation. In parallel with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) Region 6, the NW and NC CASCs prioritize science to inform sagebrush steppe and grassland ecosystem conservation, emphasizing the application of climate adaptation strategies that support at-risk populations and human-ecological communities within these ecosystems. To improve their ability to deliver effective and actionable science, the NW and NC CASCs must continually engage with regional partners and stakeholders...
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The sagebrush ecosystem is home to diverse wildlife, including big-game and Greater sage-grouse. Historic and contemporary land-uses, large wildfires, exotic plant invasion, and woodland expansion all represent threats to this multiple-use landscape. Efforts of federal and state agencies and private landowners across the landscape are focused on restoration and maintenance of conditions that support wildlife, livestock, energy development, and many other uses. However, this semi-arid landscape presents challenges for management due to highly variable patterns in growing conditions that lead to differences in plant composition, fuel accumulation, and vegetation recovery. Much of this variability is created by soil...
Abstract (from IOP Science): Global agriculture is challenged to increase soil carbon sequestration and reduce greenhouse gas emissions while providing products for an increasing population. Growing crop production could be achieved through higher yield per hectare (i.e. intensive farming) or more hectares (extensive farming), which however, have different ecological and environmental consequences. Multiple lines of evidence indicate that expanding cropland for additional production may lead to loss of vegetation and soil carbon, and threaten the survival of wildlife. New concerns about the impacts of extensive farming have been raised for the US Corn Belt, one of the world's most productive regions, as cropland...
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As climate change looms large, the Aaniiihnen and Nakoda people of the Fort Belknap Indian Community are undertaking a climate change impact assessment in the Little Rocky Mountains to better prepare for the future. This mountain range is home to numerous food and medicinal species of cultural importance. It is critical to understand how climate change has affected and will affect availability of these species and the cultural implications for the Tribe in order to enhance food sovereignty and cultural resiliency, improve tribal health, and maintain local biodiversity. The project will assess the presence and distribution of valued species including subalpine fir, juneberry, chokecherry, and others, while engaging...
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Surface-water availability has been identified as one of the biggest issues facing society in the 21st century. Where and when water is on the landscape can have profound impacts on the economy, wildlife behavior, recreational use, industrial practices, energy development, and many other aspects of life, society, and the environment. Projections indicate that surface-water availability will be generally reduced in the future because of multiple factors including climate change, increased drought frequency and severity, and altered water and land use. Thus, it is important resource managers understand which areas are most vulnerable to reduced water availability impacts, and to what extent current conditions may...
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The USA National Phenology Network (USA-NPN) and the North Central Climate Science Center (NC CSC) seek to enhance scientific understanding of how climate trends and variability are linked to phenology across spatial scales, with the ultimate goal of being able to understand and predict climate impacts on natural resources. A key step towards achieving this long-term goal is connecting local observations (individual plants or animals) of phenology with those at regional to continental scales (10 km to 10,000 km), which may ultimately be used to better understand phenology across ecosystems and landscapes and thereby inform natural resource management. The specific shorter-term goals of this effort are to process...
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Science produced by the National and Regional Climate Adaptation Science Center (CASC) network must ideally be scientifically sound, relevant to a management decision, fair and respectful of stakeholders’ divergent values, and produced through a process of iterative collaboration between scientists and managers. However, research that aims to produce usable knowledge and collaborative approaches that boost usability are not common in academia or federal research programs. As a result, neither the process of creating such research nor the impacts to stakeholders are well understood or well documented. This lack of attention to the processes and impacts of collaborative scientist-stakeholder knowledge production also...
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The USGS National Climate Change and Wildlife Science Center (NCCWSC) is currently engaged in an Ecological Drought initiative, focused on understanding the impacts of drought on natural ecosystems across the country. This project was designed to support the Ecological Drought initiative by creating a USGS EcoDrought Actionable Science Working Group. The goal of this working group was to identify science needs for drought-related decisions and to provide natural resource managers with practical strategies for adapting to and planning for drought. The working group engaged social scientists to garner advice on relevant social science research questions and data needs, as well as to identify any regulatory, institutional,...
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Ecological drought impacts ecosystems across the U.S. that support a wide array of economic activity and ecosystem services. Managing drought-vulnerable natural resources is a growing challenge for federal, state and Tribal land managers. Plant communities and animal populations are strongly linked to patterns of drought and soil moisture availability. As a result, ecosystems may be heavily altered by future changes in precipitation and soil moisture that are driven by climate change. Although this vulnerability is well recognized, developing accurate information about the potential consequences of climate change for ecological drought is difficult because the soil moisture conditions that plants experience are...
map background search result map search result map Eco-drought Actionable Science Working Group Enabling Climate-Informed Planning and Decisions about Species of Conservation Concern in the North Central Region: Phase 2 Refining Guidance for Incorporating Climate Science and Scenario Planning into National Park Service Resource Stewardship Strategies Understanding Local Resistance and Resilience to Future Habitat Change in the Sagebrush Ecosystem Approaches to Evaluate Actionable Science for Climate Adaptation Synthesis of Climate Impacts and Adaptation on Grassland Ecosystems in the Northern Great Plains Strategies for Reducing the Vulnerability of Grassland Birds to Climate Change within the Central Flyway Incorporating USGS Web Cameras into the Phenocam Network to Enhance Scientific Understanding of Phenological Trends and Variability Crafting Ecological Scenarios to Implement the Resist-Accept-Direct (RAD) Framework Co-Creating an Integrated Climate Impact Assessment of First Foods and Medicine in the Little Rocky Mountains for the Aaniiihnen Nakoda Nations Development of a Surface Water Index of Permanence (SWIPe) Database to Assess Surface Water Availability for Ecohydrological Refugia Partnerships to Inform Climate Adaptation and Natural Resource Management in the Northwest and North Central U.S. Developing High-Resolution Soil Moisture Projections for the Contiguous U.S. Refining Guidance for Incorporating Climate Science and Scenario Planning into National Park Service Resource Stewardship Strategies Co-Creating an Integrated Climate Impact Assessment of First Foods and Medicine in the Little Rocky Mountains for the Aaniiihnen Nakoda Nations Development of a Surface Water Index of Permanence (SWIPe) Database to Assess Surface Water Availability for Ecohydrological Refugia Enabling Climate-Informed Planning and Decisions about Species of Conservation Concern in the North Central Region: Phase 2 Synthesis of Climate Impacts and Adaptation on Grassland Ecosystems in the Northern Great Plains Crafting Ecological Scenarios to Implement the Resist-Accept-Direct (RAD) Framework Partnerships to Inform Climate Adaptation and Natural Resource Management in the Northwest and North Central U.S. Understanding Local Resistance and Resilience to Future Habitat Change in the Sagebrush Ecosystem Strategies for Reducing the Vulnerability of Grassland Birds to Climate Change within the Central Flyway Approaches to Evaluate Actionable Science for Climate Adaptation Eco-drought Actionable Science Working Group Developing High-Resolution Soil Moisture Projections for the Contiguous U.S. Incorporating USGS Web Cameras into the Phenocam Network to Enhance Scientific Understanding of Phenological Trends and Variability