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Abstract (from ScienceDirect ) Ecosystem accounts, as formalized by the System of Environmental-Economic Accounting Experimental Ecosystem Accounts (SEEA EEA), have been compiled in a number of countries, yet there have been few attempts to develop them for the U.S. We explore the potential for U.S. ecosystem accounting by compiling ecosystem extent, condition, and ecosystem services supply and use accounts for a 10-state region in the Southeast. The pilot accounts address air quality, water quality, biodiversity, carbon storage, recreation, and pollination for selected years from 2001 to 2015. Results illustrate how information from ecosystem accounts can contribute to policy and decision making. Using an example...
Streams are classified as perennial (flowing uninterrupted, year-round) or intermittent (flowing part of the year) or ephemeral (flowing only during rainfall events). The classifications of “streamflow permanence” were primarily established in the middle 20th century and are often outdated and inaccurate today if they were not adjusted for changes in land use, wildfires, or climate. Understanding where streams are perennial is important for a variety of reasons. For example, perennial streams receive special regulatory protections under a variety of statutes, and provide important habitat for fish, wildlife, and other species. To predict the likelihood that streams are perennial, we compiled nearly 25,000 observations...
Climate change is expected to have different effects in different parts of the world. For this reason, regionally-specific projections of climate and environmental change are important to help those who need to plan how best to adapt. The goal of this project was to use the latest global climate models and state of the science models of vegetation and hydrology, to describe what the latest science says about the Northwest’s future climate, vegetation, and hydrology. Researchers in the project began by evaluating the ability of climate models to simulate observed climate patterns in the Northwest region. The best performing models were ‘downscaled’, that is, remapped onto the finer grids used in models of hydrology...
Abstract (from PLoS ONE): To develop effective long-term strategies, natural resource managers need to account for the projected effects of climate change as well as the uncertainty inherent in those projections. Vegetation models are one important source of projected climate effects. We explore results and associated uncertainties from the MC2 Dynamic Global Vegetation Model for the Pacific Northwest west of the Cascade crest. We compare model results for vegetation cover and carbon dynamics over the period 1895–2100 assuming: 1) unlimited wildfire ignitions versus stochastic ignitions, 2) no fire, and 3) a moderate CO2 fertilization effect versus no CO2fertilization effect. Carbon stocks decline in all scenarios,...
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.
Abstract (from http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/JHM-D-13-0167.1): Drought indices are often used for monitoring interannual variability in macroscale hydrology. However, the diversity of drought indices raises several issues: 1) which indices perform best and where; 2) does the incorporation of potential evapotranspiration (PET) in indices strengthen relationships, and how sensitive is the choice of PET methods to such results; 3) what additional value is added by using higher-spatial-resolution gridded climate layers; and 4) how have observed relationships changed through time. Standardized precipitation index, standardized precipitation evapotranspiration index (SPEI), Palmer drought severity index,...
Abstract (from http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2015GL063208/abstract): Climate impact studies often require the selection of a small number of climate scenarios. Ideally, a subset would have simulations that both (1) appropriately represent the range of possible futures for the variable/s most important to the impact under investigation and (2) come from global climate models (GCMs) that provide plausible results for future climate in the region of interest. We demonstrate an approach to select a subset of GCMs that incorporates both concepts and provides insights into the range of climate impacts. To represent how an ecosystem process responds to projected future changes, we methodically sample, using...
Abstract: Observed changes in climate of the U.S. Pacific Northwest since the early twentieth century were examined using four different datasets. Annual mean temperature increased by approximately 0.6°–0.8°C from 1901 to 2012, with corroborating indicators including a lengthened freeze-free season, increased temperature of the coldest night of the year, and increased growing-season potential evapotranspiration. Seasonal temperature trends over shorter time scales (<50 yr) were variable. Despite increased warming rates in most seasons over the last half century, nonsignificant cooling was observed during spring from 1980 to 2012. Observations show a long-term increase in spring precipitation; however, decreased...
This report describes the progress made by the Integrated Ecosystem Model (IEM) for Alaska and Northwest Canada Project for the full duration of the project (September 1, 2011 through August 31, 2016).This primary goal in this project was to develop the IEM modeling framework to integrate the driving components for and the interactions among disturbance regimes, permafrost dynamics, hydrology, and vegetation succession/migration for Alaska and Northwest Canada. The major activities of the project include (1) development and delivery of input data sets, (2) model coupling, (3) evaluation and applications of fire and vegetation dynamics, (4) evaluation and application of ecosystem carbon and energy balance, (5) evaluation...
Abstract (from http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304380015003865): Climate change adaptation and mitigation require understanding of vegetation response to climate change. Using the MC2 dynamic global vegetation model (DGVM) we simulate vegetation for the Northwest United States using results from 20 different Climate Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) models downscaled using the MACA algorithm. Results were generated for representative concentration pathways (RCPs) 4.5 and 8.5 under vegetation modeling scenarios with and without fire suppression for a total of 80 model runs for future projections. For analysis, results were aggregated by three subregions: the Western Northwest (WNW),...
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,...
This repository contains a package in Program R which allows for snow depth measurements using a "virtual" snow stake. The package detected the edges of a snow stake in a reference image and superimposes the edges of the snow stake onto other images. The R package is also available on GitHub at https://github.com/kaitlynstrickfaden/edger.
Climate change is a global problem whose impacts are experienced at the local to regional scale. For this reason, the first step in assessing the impacts of climate change—on a species or an ecosystem, on water resources, or on an aspect of human society such as energy demand or agriculture—is often to develop projections of how temperature, precipitation, and other important aspects of climate might be expected to change in the future at the location of interest. Global climate models produce future climate projections that are usually too coarse to capture the local characteristics that determine climate at any given location: the proximity of that location to a large body of water, for example, which would moderate...
Abstract (from Wiley Online Library): As evidenced by past climatic refugia, locations projected to harbor remnants of present‐day climates may serve as critical refugia for current biodiversity in the face of modern climate change. We mapped potential climatic refugia in the future across North America, defined as locations with increasingly rare climatic conditions. We identified these locations by tracking projected changes in the size and distribution of climate analogs over time. We used biologically derived thresholds to define analogs and tested the impacts of dispersal limitation with 4 distances to limit analog searches. We identified at most 12% of North America as potential climatic refugia. Refugia extent...
Changing climate conditions can make water management planning and drought preparedness decisions more complicated than ever before. Federal and State natural resource managers can no longer rely solely on historical trends as a baseline and thus are in need of science that is relevant to their specific needs to inform important planning decisions. Questions remain, however, regarding the most effective and efficient methods for extending scientific knowledge and products into management and decision-making. This project analyzed two unique cases of water management to better understand how science can be translated into resource management actions and decision-making, focusing particularly on how the context of...
This study examines the relative roles of climatic variables in altering annual runoff in the conterminous United States (CONUS) in the 21st century, using a monthly ecohydrological model (the Water Supply Stress Index model, WaSSI) driven with historical records and future scenarios constructed from 20 Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) climate models. The results suggest that precipitation has been the primary control of runoff variation during the latest decades, but the role of temperature will outweigh that of precipitation in most regions if future climate change follows the projections of climate models instead of the historical tendencies. Besides these two key factors, increasing air...
Abstract (from http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140196315300677): Climate change has already affected southern California where regional increases in temperature and vegetation shifts have been observed. While all the CMIP5 temperature projections agree on a substantial level of warming throughout the year, there is fair bit of divergence in the magnitude and seasonality of projected changes in rainfall. While desert plants and animals are generally adapted to extreme conditions, some species may be approaching their physiological threshold. We calculated the climate velocity of both temperature and aridity (PPT/PET) in SE California to illustrate the spatial variability of climate projections...