Skip to main content
Advanced Search

Filters: Date Range: {"choice":"year"} (X) > Tags: {"type":"Landscapes"} (X) > Categories: Publication (X)

70 results (16ms)   

View Results as: JSON ATOM CSV
America’s remaining grassland in the Prairie Pothole Region (PPR) is at risk of being lost to crop production. When crop prices are high, like the historically high corn prices that the U.S. experienced between 2008 and 2014, the risk of grassland conversion is even higher. Changing climate will add uncertainties to any efforts toward conservation of grassland in the PPR. Grassland conversion to cropland in the region would imperil nesting waterfowl among other species and further impair water quality in the Mississippi watershed. In this project, we sought to contribute to the understanding of land conversion in the PPR with the aim to better target the use of public and private funds allocated toward incentivizing...
A warming climate, fire exclusion, and land cover changes are altering the conditions that produced historical fire regimes and facilitating increased recent wildfire activity in the northwestern United States. Understanding the impacts of changing fire regimes on forest recruitment and succession, species distributions, carbon cycling, and ecosystem services is critical, but challenging across broad spatial scales. One important and understudied aspect of fire regimes is the unburned area within fire perimeters; these areas can function as fire refugia across the landscape during and after wildfire by providing habitat and seed sources. With increasing fire activity, there is speculation that fire intensity and...
Wildfire refugia are forest patches that are minimally-impacted by fire and provide critical habitats for fire-sensitive species and seed sources for post-fire forest regeneration. Wildfire refugia are relatively understudied, particularly concerning the impacts of subsequent fires on existing refugia. We opportunistically re-visited 122 sites classified in 1994 for a prior fire refugia study, which were burned by two wildfires in 2012 in the Cascade mountains of central Washington, USA. We evaluated the fire effects for historically persistent fire refugia and compared them to the surrounding non-refugial forest matrix. Of 122 total refugial (43 plots) and non-refugial (79 plots) sites sampled following the 2012...
Abstract (from http://www.hydrol-earth-syst-sci.net/21/1/2017/): The phase of precipitation when it reaches the ground is a first-order driver of hydrologic processes in a watershed. The presence of snow, rain, or mixed-phase precipitation affects the initial and boundary conditions that drive hydrological models. Despite their foundational importance to terrestrial hydrology, typical phase partitioning methods (PPMs) specify the phase based on near-surface air temperature only. Our review conveys the diversity of tools available for PPMs in hydrological modeling and the advancements needed to improve predictions in complex terrain with large spatiotemporal variations in precipitation phase. Initially, we review...
Abstract (from http://jcom.sissa.it/archive/15/01/JCOM_1501_2016_A01): Whereas the evolution of snow cover across forested mountain watersheds is difficult to predict or model accurately, the presence or absence of snow cover is easily observable and these observations contribute to improved snow models. We engaged citizen scientists to collect observations of the timing of distributed snow disappearance over three snow seasons across the Pacific Northwest, U.S.A. . The primary goal of the project was to build a more spatially robust dataset documenting the influence of forest cover on the timing of snow disappearance, and public outreach was a secondary goal. Each year's effort utilized a different strategy, building...
Public land managers face the daunting task of incorporating climate change vulnerability assessments into their land use planning. This NW CSC project developed decision support tools to guide resource managers through the process of including future climate projections, climate change vulnerability assessments, and adaptation response strategies and tactics into ongoing and existing planning efforts such as FS forest plan revisions and individual project plans. The tools were developed and tested through direct engagement with resource managers. The tools guide participants through a step-wise process that provides a structured framework to help managers (1) integrate climate projections with other local information...
Abstract (from http://www.bioone.org/doi/abs/10.3955/046.089.0305): It is hypothesized that climate impacts forest mosaics through dynamic ecological processes such as wildfires. However, climate-fire research has primarily focused on understanding drivers of fire frequency and area burned, largely due to scale mismatches and limited data availability. Recent datasets, however, allow for the investigation of climate influences on ecological patch metrics across broad regions independent of area burned and at finer scale. One area of particular interest is the distribution of fire refugia within wildfire perimeters. Although much recent research emphasis has been placed on high-severity patches within wildfires,...
Abstract (from http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378112716308532): Across the western United States, the three primary drivers of tree mortality and carbon balance are bark beetles, timber harvest, and wildfire. While these agents of forest change frequently overlap, uncertainty remains regarding their interactions and influence on specific subsequent fire effects such as change in canopy cover. Acquisition of pre- and post-fire Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) data on the 2012 Pole Creek Fire in central Oregon provided an opportunity to isolate and quantify fire effects coincident with specific agents of change. This study characterizes the influence of pre-fire mountain pine beetle (MPB; Dendroctonus...
Abstract (from http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aa6f94/meta): High temperatures and severe drought contributed to extensive tree mortality from fires and bark beetles during the 2000s in parts of the western continental United States. Several states in this region have greenhouse gas (GHG) emission targets and would benefit from information on the amount of carbon stored in tree biomass killed by disturbance. We quantified mean annual tree mortality from fires, bark beetles, and timber harvest from 2003–2012 for each state in this region. We estimated tree mortality from fires and beetles using tree aboveground carbon (AGC) stock and disturbance data sets derived largely from remote sensing. We...
Abstract (from http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v5/n9/full/nclimate2699.html): Contemporary climate change is causing large shifts in biotic distributions1, which has the potential to bring previously isolated, closely related species into contact2. This has led to concern that hybridization and competition could threaten species persistence3. Here, we use bioclimatic models to show that future range overlap by the end of the century is predicted for only 6.4% of isolated, congeneric species pairs of New World birds, mammals and amphibians. Projected rates of climate-induced overlap are higher for birds (11.6%) than for mammals (4.4%) or amphibians (3.6%). As many species will have difficulty tracking shifting...
As the Earth’s climate changed in the ancient past, many species moved across the landscape to track adequate environmental conditions. Some species took shelter in remaining pockets of suitable climates, referred to as refugia. For example, refugia harbored species when vast glaciers covered much of the land, allowing them to survive and migrate again across the landscape as temperatures warmed and ice melted. Modern changes in climate are similarly compelling species to move, and some of those species may seek shelter from increasingly hostile conditions in refugia. Modern climate refugia will likely take many different forms. For example, larger-scale macrorefugia may be areas of relative climate stability that...
This fact sheet was prepared by Jessica Halofsky, David Peterson and Brian Harvey, University of Washington, School of Environmental and Forest Sciences. Editorial assistance from Patti Loesche and Darcy Widmayer. Funding for this work provided by the U.S. Department of the Interior, Northwest Climate Adaptation Science Center. This fact sheets goes with the following synthesis paper: https://doi.org/10.1186/s42408-019-0062-8.
Headwater stream ecosystems are vulnerable to numerous threats associated with climate and land use change. In the northeastern US, many headwater stream species (e.g., brook trout and stream salamanders) are of special conservation concern and may be vulnerable to climate change influences, such as changes in stream temperature and streamflow. Federal land management agencies (e.g., US Fish and Wildlife Service, National Park Service, USDA Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management and Department of Defense) are required to adopt policies that respond to climate change and may have longer-term institutional support to enforce such policies compared to state, local, non-governmental, or private land managers. However,...
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...
Abstract (from http://econpapers.repec.org/paper/agsaaea16/235895.htm): We evaluate the regional-level agricultural impacts of climate change in the Northern Great Plains. We first estimate a non-linear yield-weather relationship for all major commodities in the area: corn, soybeans, spring wheat and alfalfa. We separately identify benevolent and harmful temperature thresholds for each commodity, and control for severe-to-extreme dry/wet conditions in our yield models. Analyzing all major commodities in a region extends the existing literature beyond just one crop, most typically corn yields. Alfalfa is particularly interesting since it is a legume-crop that is substitutable with grasses as animal feed and rotated...
Abstract (from http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/eap.1396/full): Extensive mortality of whitebark pine, beginning in the early to mid-2000s, occurred in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE) of the western US, primarily from mountain pine beetle but also from other threats such as white pine blister rust. The climatic drivers of this recent mortality and the potential for future whitebark pine mortality from mountain pine beetle are not well understood, yet are important considerations in whether to list whitebark pine as a threatened or endangered species. We sought to increase the understanding of climate influences on mountain pine beetle outbreaks in whitebark pine forests, which are less well understood...
Eastern spruce-fir forest ecosystems are among the most vulnerable to climate change within the conterminous US. The goal of this project was to develop tools to identify refugia sites most likely to support spruce-fir forest and its associated high-priority obligate spruce-fir bird species over the long-term under projected climate change scenarios. Specific research objectives included: (1) producing high-resolution (temporal and spatial) projections of spruce-fir forests, including stand characteristics like structure and composition; (2) estimating future changes in the distribution, productivity, and stand characteristics of the spruce-fir forest type due to potential changes in climate; (3) comparing the distribution...
Abstract (from http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10980-015-0217-1): Context Tree species distribution and abundance are affected by forces operating across a hierarchy of ecological scales. Process and species distribution models have been developed emphasizing forces at different scales. Understanding model agreement across hierarchical scales provides perspective on prediction uncertainty and ultimately enables policy makers and managers to make better decisions. Objective Our objective was to test the hypothesis that agreement between process and species distribution models varies by hierarchical level. Due to the top-down approach of species distribution models and the bottom-up approach of process...
The 37 islands of the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI) are low-lying atolls and islands, making the country extremely vulnerable to climate change impacts. The goal of this research was to provide easilyaccessible decision-making tools for managers, decision-makers and the public to assist in planning for agroforestry in the face of increasing drought and sea level rise (SLR). A team of researchers and climate change adaptation specialists from the RMI and the U.S. was responsible for the effort. Although the RMI is heavily reliant on imported food, local foods are still important in providing nutrients lacking in imported foods and has cultural importance. The role of plants in stabilizing shorelines is increasingly...