Skip to main content
Advanced Search

Filters: Types: Report (X)

51 results (15ms)   

Filters
Date Range
Extensions (Less)
Types (Less)
Contacts (Less)
Categories (Less)
Tag Types
Tag Schemes
View Results as: JSON ATOM CSV
thumbnail
This report provides an assessment of climate change-related challenges, needs, and opportunities to advance landscape-scale conservation, climate change adaptation, and sustainable resource management in the North Pacific Landscape Conservation Cooperative (NPLCC) region. The NPLCC funded this report to inform NPLCC members, specifically the Science and Traditional Ecological Knowledge (S-TEK) Subcommittee, as they assess priorities and develop their 2013-2016 Strategy for Science and Traditional Ecological Knowledge. The report identifies conservation delivery, applied science, and science and data provision opportunities the NPLCC could consider to support resource managers, conservation practitioners, and researchers...
thumbnail
The Colorado River is a crucial water source for millions of people in the Southwest. Warming temperatures, clearly documented in climate records for the Colorado River basin, are having an impact on the amount of annual streamflow yielded from rain and snow. Recent work has revealed that warming temperatures have played an increasingly important role over the past decades, both exacerbating droughts and dampening the effects of wet winters on high stream flows. Understanding and anticipating how warming temperatures will influence future water supply in the Colorado River basin is increasingly important for resource management, particularly in light of recent drought conditions. The overarching goals of this...
Ungulate populations across the West have adapted to specific patterns in forage quantity, quality, and timing that ultimately influence the number of animals. We assessed potential for climate change to affect forage quality and availability for ungulates in the West. First, we evaluated multiple satellite remote sensing datasets and found that in some parts of the western U.S., growing season dates have shifted by over 30 days. We found agreement in the direction of recent trends in growing season dates across ~60% of the West. Substantial shifts in vegetation timing can have outsized effects on the wildlife that depend on matching migration timing to spring green up. For example, migrating mule deer follow the...
Categories: Publication; Types: Citation, Report
The “Reconnecting Floodplains and Restoring Green Space as a Management Strategy to Minimize Risk and Increase Resilience in the Context of Climate and Landscape Change” project explores green infrastructure opportunities to manage flows, connections, and watersheds in order to improve both flood protection and ecosystem services. This project’s research specifically investigates how restoring floodplains would impact human welfare and environmental conservation. Its research objectives are addressed in two parts: 1) developing a hydraulic model to illustrate how changes in floodplain management may impact flooding along the Connecticut River, and 2) developing a geo-spatial model that demonstrates the distribution...
Understanding of the influence of global warming has been limited by a paucity of experiments. Taking advantage of the largest, longest-running experimental warming of a forest, we convened dozens of scientists from across the world to collect data to study and understand how bacteria, fungi, herbivores, plant pathogens, insects and a diversity of other groups respond to warming. We found that warming had a significant impact on ecosystems at both a site in North Carolina, as well as a more northern site in Massachusetts. The types of effects, however, differed between the north and south; they also differed as a function of the organisms considered. While warming affected all levels of organization, it had the...
The responses of individual species to environmental changes can be manifested at multiple levels that range from individual-level (i.e., behavioral responses) to population-level (i.e., demographic) impacts. Major environmental changes that ultimately result in population level impacts are often first detected as individual-level responses. For example, herbivores respond to limited forage availability during drought periods by increasing the duration of foraging periods and expanding home range areas to compensate for the reduction in forage. However, if the individual-level responses are not sufficient to compensate for reduced forage availability, reduced survival and reproductive rates may result. We studied...
thumbnail
The overarching goal of the project was to develop overlapping conceptual models of environmental and community health indicators in reference to climate forecasts. The sensitivity of species and habitats to climate were cross-walked with recently developed Coast Salish community health indicators (e.g. ceremonial use, knowledge exchange, and physiological well-being) in order to demonstrate how Indigenous Knowledge can be used in conjunction with established landscape-level conservation indicators (e.g. shellfish and water-quality) and employed to identify resource management priorities. While results are unique to study participants, no Indigenous community in the coastal Pacific Northwest is immune to the impending...
The NE CASC boasts an interdisciplinary array of scientists, from ecologists to biologists, hydrologists to climatologists, each contributing new, original academic research to advance our understanding of the impacts of climate change on wildlife and other natural resources in the Northeast. Needed was an outreach specialist who would interface directly with the management agencies who benefited from this research to aid the integration of this research into their management planning as part of adapting to climate change. A climatologist was preferred to address queries about climate modeling, climate change uncertainties, and other areas of climate science outside the expertise of NE CASC ecologists, biologists,...
Natural resource managers face the need to develop strategies to adapt to projected future climates. Few existing climate adaptation frameworks prescribe where to place management actions to be most effective under anticipated future climate conditions. We developed an approach to spatially allocate climate adaptation actions and applied the method to whitebark pine (WBP; Pinus albicaulis) in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE). WBP is expected to be vulnerable to climate-mediated shifts in suitable habitat, pests, pathogens, and fire. We worked with a team of biologists and managers to identify management actions aimed at mitigating climate impacts to WBP. Identified actions were spatially allocated across...
Rates of climate and land use change vary across the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains as do the responses of ecosystems to these changes. Knowledge of locations of rapid land use and climate change and changes in ecosystem services such as water runoff and ecological productivity are important for vulnerability assessment and crafting locally relevant adaptation strategies to cope with these changes. This project assessed the loss of public, private, and tribal lands due to ongoing land use intensifications and fragmentation extents across the NC CSC domain. In addition, the project evaluated how the climate, ecosystem processes, and vegetation have shifted over the past half century and how they are projected to...
As part of a broader effort to increase the ability of federal agencies to understand and adapt to changes in climate variability and hazard profiles, the Colorado Bureau of Land Management has commissioned an on-going research effort to gather and analyze information on the potential climate-related vulnerabilities of the numerous communities and businesses that rely upon the state’s 8.4 million acres of BLM-managed public lands. This report contains the initial findings of this project, and details work conducted between 2015 and 2017 centered around three main questions: 1. What efforts are currently underway within the Colorado BLM to address changes in climate and the climate vulnerabilities of public land...
Tribal nations are at the forefront of adaptation to climate change in the United States, because of their reliance upon the natural environment to sustain traditional ways of life yet the current lack of training and resources to respond to climate change impacts remains a challenge. Working with the South Central Climate Science Center (SC CSC), our team of climate scientists and anthropologists worked with tribal professionals in Louisiana and New Mexico to increase their basic knowledge of climate science, connect them with tools to assess their communities’ vulnerabilities, and helped them build their skills to develop adaptation and mitigation strategies. Our team held biweekly conference calls in consultation...
Trout Unlimited will extend its existing Adopt-a-Trout program to the Henrys Fork River, a tributary to the Green River in the Colorado River basin. The project will include work with the Wyoming Game and Fish Department and local schools to tag and monitor Colorado River Cutthroat trout movements to learn more about fish passage issues, areas of high entrainment, habitat use, and native and wild trout migratory patterns. Colorado River Cutthroat trout are native to the Henrys Fork River and occupy portions of the drainage; however, no data exists for Colorado River Cutthroat trout in the Wyoming portion of the Henrys Fork drainage to understand population dynamics and habitat restraints.
thumbnail
In California, increased wildfire activity has been linked to decreasing snowpack and earlier snowmelt. Not only has this translated into a longer fire season, but reduced snowpack has cascading effects that impact streamflow, water supplies, agricultural productivity, and ecosystems. California receives 80% of its precipitation during the winter, so mountain snowpack plays a critical role in replenishing the state’s water supply. One factor that affects the amount of winter precipitation (and therefore snowpack) in California is the North Pacific Jet (NPJ)—a current of strong, high altitude winds that occur over the northern Pacific Ocean. Winters when the NPJ is located further north than normal are drier than...
Categories: Project; Types: Map Service, OGC WFS Layer, OGC WMS Layer, OGC WMS Service, Report; Tags: 2013, CA, CA-wide, CASC, Completed, All tags...
thumbnail
Native Americans throughout the Southwest are vulnerable to climate change due to intimate relationships with the environments and landscapes upon which their cultures, traditions, and livelihoods depend. The Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe (PLPT) in Nevada is profoundly connected physically, culturally, and spiritually to Pyramid Lake, the endangered cui-­ui fish, and the threatened Lahontan cutthroat trout. While the tribe has adapted to non-­climatic stressors over the past century, climate change impacts to water resources pose a threat to the ecosystems and species of fish so deeply important to the PLPT. Our previous research indicates that PLPT is an exemplary leader in adaptive planning, given that tribal members...
thumbnail
In the southwestern United States, droughts of 10 or more years are projected to become more frequent by 2100. It also is projected that there will be fewer wet days per year, with more precipitation falling on those wet days. Such climatic extremes can strongly affect wild animals and plants, ecosystems, and humans. In the Southwest, more frequent and intense storms may negatively affect protected species in coastal salt marshes; changes in the timing and amount of precipitation could lead to increases in fuel loads; and increasingly humid heat waves could lead to higher incidence of heat-related illness among visitors to national parks. This project will improve understanding of climate extremes and their potential...
Lands managed by the National Park Service (NPS) provide a wide range of beneficial services to the American public. This study quantifies the ecosystem service value of carbon sequestration in terrestrial ecosystems within NPS units in the conterminous United States for which data were available. Combining annual net carbon balance data with spatially explicit NPS land unit boundaries and social cost of carbon estimates, this study calculates the net metric tons of carbon dioxide sequestered annually by park unit under baseline conditions, as well as the associated economic value to society. Results show that, in aggregate, NPS lands in the conterminous United States are a net carbon sink, sequestering more than...
The Colorado office of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), which administers 8.4 million acres of Colorado’s surface acres, and more than 29 million acres of sub‐surface mineral estate, has been charged with developing a climate adaptation strategy for BLM lands within the state. The assessments presented herein present a statewide perspective on the potential future influences of a changing climate on species and ecosystems of particular importance to the BLM, with the goal of facilitating development of the best possible climate adaptation strategies to meet future conditions. The Colorado Natural Heritage Program conducted climate change vulnerability assessments of plant and animal species, and terrestrial...
thumbnail
Strong indicators of species’ sensitivity, adaptive capacity, and overall vulnerability to climate change are provided by changes in phenology, the timing of recurring life events (Parmesan and Yohe, 2003). We possess poor information on climate induced shifts in phenology of marine organisms, especially top predators. The Gulf of Maine (GOM) Seasonal Migrants Project is an ongoing effort to determine the phenological changes occurring in the GOM across marine mammals, sea turtles, and other marine species of conservation concern. As part of that study, stranding data of injured or dead animals was explored for its utility to serve as supplemental data to amend more traditional survey data where observations are...
map background search result map search result map The Influence of the North Pacific Jet Stream on Future Fire in California Improving Understanding of Climate Extremes in the Southwestern United States Correlation and climate sensitivity of human health and environmental indicators in the Salish Sea - Swinomish Indian Tribal Community - Final Report Advancing Landscape-Scale Conservation in the NPLCC Synthesis Report Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe Traditional Knowledge and Climate Change Adaptation Anticipating Future Impacts of Temperature on Streamflow in the Colorado River Basin Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe Traditional Knowledge and Climate Change Adaptation Advancing Landscape-Scale Conservation in the NPLCC Synthesis Report Correlation and climate sensitivity of human health and environmental indicators in the Salish Sea - Swinomish Indian Tribal Community - Final Report Anticipating Future Impacts of Temperature on Streamflow in the Colorado River Basin The Influence of the North Pacific Jet Stream on Future Fire in California Improving Understanding of Climate Extremes in the Southwestern United States