Skip to main content
Advanced Search

Filters: Date Range: {"choice":"year"} (X) > Extensions: Citation (X) > partyWithName: Northeast CSC (X)

28 results (56ms)   

View Results as: JSON ATOM CSV
Abstract (from Wiley Online Library): Annual distributions of waterfowl during the nonbreeding period can influence ecological, cultural, and economic relationships. We used previously developed Weather Severity Indices (WSI) that explained migration by dabbling ducks in eastern North America and weather data from the North American Regional Reanalysis to develop an open-access internet-based tool (i.e., WSI web app) to visualize and query WSI data. We used data generated by the WSI web app to determine whether the weather known to elicit southerly migration by dabbling ducks had changed, from October to April 1979 to 2013. We detected that the amount of area in the Mississippi and Atlantic Flyways with weather...
Floodplains pose challenges to managers of conservation lands because of constantly changing interactions with their rivers. Although scientific knowledge and understanding of the dynamics and drivers of river-floodplain systems can provide guidance to floodplain managers, the scientific process often occurs in isolation from management. Further, communication barriers between scientists and managers can be obstacles to appropriate application of scientific knowledge. With the coproduction of science in mind, our objectives were the following: (1) to document management priorities of floodplain conservation lands, and (2) identify science needs required to better manage the identified management priorities under...
We developed high-resolution climate projections for the mid- and late 21st century across the Great Lakes region, including the Midwest and Northeast United States and southern Canada. We applied a regional climate model that addresses future changes in Great Lakes’ water temperatures, ice cover, and evaporation, which critically impact lake-effect snowfall. This new dataset is highly valuable, given that most global climate models applied in the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and National Climate Assessment either completely lack the Great Lakes or largely under-represent their coverage and impacts. After quantifying projected changes in weather severity based on air temperature and snow...
Abstract (from https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10980-017-0540-9): Context Quantitative models of forest dynamics have followed a progression toward methods with increased detail, complexity, and spatial extent. Objectives We highlight milestones in the development of forest dynamics models and identify future research and application opportunities. Methods We reviewed milestones in the evolution of forest dynamics models from the 1930s to the present with emphasis on forest growth and yield models and forest landscape models We combined past trends with emerging issues to identify future needs. Results Historically, capacity to model forest dynamics at tree, stand, and landscape scales was constrained...
Categories: Publication; Types: Citation; Tags: Forests, Landscapes, Northeast CASC
Abstract (from http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10980-015-0294-1): Context Tree species distribution and abundance are affected by forces operating at multiple scales. Niche and biophysical process models have been commonly used to predict climate change effects at regional scales, however, these models have limited capability to include site-scale population dynamics and landscape-scale disturbance and dispersal. We applied a landscape modeling approach that incorporated three levels of spatial hierarchy (pixel, landtype, and ecological subsection) to model regional-scale shifts in forest composition under climate change. Objective To determine (1) how importance value of individual species will...
The Northeast United States and Atlantic Canada share many of the same types of forests, wetlands, and natural communities, and from a wildlife perspective the region is one contiguous forest. However, resources are classified and mapped differently on the two sides of the border, creating challenges for habitat evaluation, species modeling, and predicting the effects of climate change. To remedy this, ecologists from The Nature Conservancy collaborated with a committee of scientists from various Canadian institutions to produce the first international map of terrestrial habitats for northeast North America. The project used extensive spatial data on geology, soils, landforms, wetlands, elevation and climate. Additionally,...
This study set out to answer the question: “What data and modeling frameworks are needed to provide scientists reliable, climate-informed, water temperature estimates for freshwater ecosystems that can assist watershed management decision making?” To accomplish this, researchers gathered existing stream temperature data, identified data gaps, deployed stream temperature monitoring devices, and developed and tested a stream temperature model that could be regionalized across the Northeast Climate Science Center (NE CSC) domain. Polebitski and colleagues partnered with another NE CSC funded project team, NorEaST-Stream Temperature Web Portal Demonstration and Application, led by Jana Stewart (USGS Wisconsin Water...
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: We used a numerical model to investigate how a barrier island groundwater system responds to increases of up to 60 cm in sea level. We found that a sea-level rise of 20 cm leads to substantial changes in the depth of the water table and the extent and depth of saltwater intrusion, which are key determinants in the establishment, distribution and succession of vegetation assemblages and habitat suitability in barrier islands ecosystems. In our simulations, increases in water-table height in areas with a shallow depth to water (or thin vadose zone) resulted in extensive groundwater inundation of land surface and a thinning of the underlying freshwater lens. We demonstrated the interdependence of the groundwater...
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...
Forests in the Eastern United States are changing in response to ecological succession, tree harvest and other disturbances and climate change has the potential to further change these forests. We predicted the distribution and abundance of common tree species across portions of the Eastern U.S. under alternative climate scenarios that varied in the amount of warming by the end of the century from 1.1 to 4.2 degrees C. We used a forest landscape change model to forecast changes in tree abundances and distribution in the North Atlantic region of the U.S. while accounting for climate change, succession, and harvest. We then considered a broader region of the U.S. and combined our results with results from previous...
Abstract (from http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/lno.10557/abstract): Responses in lake temperatures to climate warming have primarily been characterized using seasonal metrics of surface-water temperatures such as summertime or stratified period average temperatures. However, climate warming may not affect water temperatures equally across seasons or depths. We analyzed a long-term dataset (1981–2015) of biweekly water temperature data in six temperate lakes in Wisconsin, U.S.A. to understand (1) variability in monthly rates of surface- and deep-water warming, (2) how those rates compared to summertime average trends, and (3) if monthly heterogeneity in water temperature trends can be predicted by heterogeneity...
Abstract (from http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364815215300621): Process-based forest ecosystem models vary from simple physiological, complex physiological, to hybrid empirical-physiological models. Previous studies indicate that complex models provide the best prediction at plot scale with a temporal extent of less than 10 years, however, it is largely untested as to whether complex models outperform the other two types of models at plot and regional scale in longer timeframe (i.e. decades). We compared model predictions of aboveground carbon by one representative model of each model type (PnET-II, ED2 and LINKAGES v2.2, respectively) with field data (19–77 years) at both scales in the Central...
Abstract (from http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0167506): Projected changes in the relative abundance and timing of autumn-winter migration are assessed for seven dabbling duck species across the Mississippi and Atlantic Flyways for the mid- and late 21st century. Species-specific observed relationships are established between cumulative weather severity in autumn-winter and duck population rate of change. Dynamically downscaled projections of weather severity are developed using a high-resolution regional climate model, interactively coupled to a one-dimensional lake model to represent the Great Lakes and associated lake-effect snowfall. Based on the observed relationships and downscaled...
Abstract (from American Meteorological Society): Projected changes in lake-effect snowfall by the mid- and late twenty-first century are explored for the Laurentian Great Lakes basin. Simulations from two state-of-the-art global climate models within phase 5 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5) are dynamically downscaled according to the representative concentration pathway 8.5 (RCP8.5). The downscaling is performed using the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) Regional Climate Model version 4 (RegCM4) with 25-km grid spacing, interactively coupled to a one-dimensional lake model. Both downscaled models produce atmospheric warming and increased cold-season precipitation....
Abstract (from http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03632415.2016.1210517): Improving quality and better availability of continuous stream temperature data allow natural resource managers, particularly in fisheries, to understand associations between different characteristics of stream thermal regimes and stream fishes. However, there is no convenient tool to efficiently characterize multiple metrics reflecting stream thermal regimes with the increasing amount of data from continuously recording data loggers. This article describes a software program packaged as a library in R to facilitate this process. With this freely available package, users will be able to quickly summarize metrics that describe five...
Abstract: Grassland birds are declining faster than any other bird guild across North America. Shrinking ranges and population declines are attributed to widespread habitat loss and increasingly fragmented landscapes of agriculture and other land uses that are misaligned with grassland bird conservation. Concurrent with habitat loss and degradation, temperate grasslands have been disproportionally affected by climate change relative to most other terrestrial biomes. Distributions of grassland birds often correlate with gradients in climate, but few researchers have explored the consequences of weather on the demography of grassland birds inhabiting a range of grassland fragments. To do so, we modeled the effects...
Abstract (from https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10980-016-0429-z): Context Forests in the northeastern United States are currently in early- and mid-successional stages recovering from historical land use. Climate change will affect forest distribution and structure and have important implications for biodiversity, carbon dynamics, and human well-being. Objective We addressed how aboveground biomass (AGB) and tree species distribution changed under multiple climate change scenarios (PCM B1, CGCM A2, and GFDL A1FI) in northeastern forests. Methods We used the LANDIS PRO forest landscape model to simulate forest succession and tree harvest under current climate and three climate change scenarios from...
Categories: Publication; Types: Citation; Tags: Forests, Landscapes, Northeast CASC
Abstract (from https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10980-016-0473-8): Context Global climate change impacts forest growth and methods of modeling those impacts at the landscape scale are needed to forecast future forest species composition change and abundance. Changes in forest landscapes will affect ecosystem processes and services such as succession and disturbance, wildlife habitat, and production of forest products at regional, landscape and global scales. Objectives LINKAGES 2.2 was revised to create LINKAGES 3.0 and used it to evaluate tree species growth potential and total biomass production under alternative climate scenarios. This information is needed to understand species potential under...
Categories: Publication; Types: Citation; Tags: Forests, Landscapes, Northeast CASC