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We mosaicked twelve LandSat-8 OLI satellite images taken during the summer of 2014, which were used in an object based image analysis (OBIA) to classify the landscape. We mapped seventeen of the most dominant geomorphic land cover classes on the Alaskan Coastal Plain (ACP): **value** | **class name** 1 | Coastal saline waters 2 | Large lakes 3 | Medium lakes 4 | Small lakes 5 | Ponds 6 | Rivers 7 | Nonpatterned Drained Thaw Lake Basins 8 | Coalescent low-center polygons 9 | Low-center polygons 10 | Flat-center polygons 11 | High-center polygons 12 | Drained slope 13 | Sandy barrens 14 | Sand dunes 15 | Riparian corridors 16 | Ice 17 | Urban (i.e. towns and roads)
The aim of this project is to facilitate expansion of current data management protocols to accommodate social science data for the USGS National Climate Change and Wildlife Science Center (NCCWSC) and its regional Climate Science Centers (CSCs). To address this expansion, we (1) identified the best practices and approaches from practitioners/experts through interviews with current curators of social science data, (2) explored the approaches of existing tools and services to determine if they are capable of meeting the needs of the NCCWSC, and (3) conducted a survey of the specific user community, with a focus on social science researchers funded by the NCCWSC and managers of the data within the program. The dataset...
NOTE: A newer version of this database is available at https://doi.org/10.5066/P9973SMC. Inland fishes provide important ecosystem services to communities worldwide and are especially vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Fish respond to climate change in diverse and nuanced ways, which creates challenges for practitioners of fish conservation, climate change adaptation, and management. Although climate change is known to affect fish globally, a comprehensive online, public database of how climate change has impacted inland fishes worldwide and adaptation or management practices that may address these impacts does not exist. We conducted an extensive, systematic primary literature review to identify peer-reviewed...
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The South Central U.S. is one of the main agricultural regions in North America: annual agricultural production is valued at more than $44 billion dollars. However, as climate conditions change, the region is experiencing more frequent and severe droughts, with significant impacts on agriculture and broader consequences for land management. For example, in 2011 drought caused an estimated $7.6 billion in agricultural losses in Texas and an additional $1.6 billion in Oklahoma. Although there are many drought monitoring tools available, most of these tools were developed without input from the stakeholders, such as farmers and ranchers, who are intended to use them. The goal of this project is to assess the information...
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This layer depicts projected abundance of native and non-native plant species in the main Hawaiian Islands with high levels of uncertainty removed in post-processing. To estimate native and invasive species abundance in baseline climate conditions, a map was generated that considered abundance as percent cover and used high coefficient of variation values as a mask. The primary sources for post-processing the uncertainty masks are the Hawaiian Islands plant species abundance modeled means and standard deviation values (Wong et al., in preparation). These maps cover the entire landscape (including urban and agricultural areas), and therefore they can be applied in a variety of ways. Maps can be utilized to evaluate...
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The northern Gulf of Mexico coast spans two major climate gradients and represents an excellent natural laboratory for developing climate-influenced ecological models. In this project, we used these zones of remarkable transition to develop macroclimate-based models for quantifying the regional responses of coastal wetland ecosystems to climate variation. In addition to providing important fish and wildlife habitat and supporting coastal food webs, these coastal wetlands provide many ecosystem goods and services including clean water, stable coastlines, food, recreational opportunities, and stored carbon. Our objective was to examine and forecast the effects of macroclimatic drivers on wetland ecosystem structure...
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The northern Gulf of Mexico coast spans two major climate gradients and represents an excellent natural laboratory for developing climate-influenced ecological models. In this project, we used these zones of remarkable transition to develop macroclimate-based models for quantifying the regional responses of coastal wetland ecosystems to climate variation. In addition to providing important fish and wildlife habitat and supporting coastal food webs, these coastal wetlands provide many ecosystem goods and services including clean water, stable coastlines, food, recreational opportunities, and stored carbon. Our objective was to examine and forecast the effects of macroclimatic drivers on wetland ecosystem structure...
Normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) trend map was computed for the Alaskan Arctic Coastal Plain between 1999 and 2014. The decadal trend of each pixel was computed using 40-110 individual Landsat (TM, ETM+, OLI) satellite images acquired during July or August.
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The California Coast has hundreds of tree groves where dual management practices aim to reduce the risk of fire and to conserve habitat for overwintering monarch butterflies. As the climate changes, longer high-intensity droughts can increase mortality and/or limb loss in grove trees which causes an accumulation of fire-prone fuels. Moreover, these trees provide the critical habitat for overwintering monarch butterflies. Every year only certain trees in certain groves accumulate clusters of thousands of monarch butterflies. Should trees die or important roosting branches collapse, monarchs may not return in the future. The overall goal of this project is to understand how the dual management goals of fire management...
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As pressures from climate change and other anthropogenic stressors, like invasive species, increase, new challenges arise for natural resource managers who are responsible for the health of public lands. One of the greatest challenges these managers face is that the traditional way of managing resources might not be as effective, or in some cases might be ineffective, in light of transformational ecological impacts that exist at the intersection of society and ecosystems. Thus, managers are struggling to understand how they should be managing shared natural resources and landscapes in this new era. This project studies the decision-making process of federal land managers to illuminate how decisions are being navigated...
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Coral reefs are threatened by climate change because warming ocean temperatures are causing corals to bleach (i.e. lose the algae that provides them with the majority of their energy) which can lead to coral starvation and death. Local environmental conditions can contribute to either the resilience or susceptibility of corals to the global stress of climate change. One such factor is the local nutrient input from terrestrial sources. Corals near remote islands with abundant seabird populations have been found to have increased growth rates and are more resilient to bleaching events than corals near islands without seabirds. Seabirds supply the reef with ample nutrients via their guano (seabird excreted waste) and...
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The northern Gulf of Mexico coast spans two major climate gradients and represents an excellent natural laboratory for developing climate-influenced ecological models. In this project, we used these zones of remarkable transition to develop macroclimate-based models for quantifying the regional responses of coastal wetland ecosystems to climate variation. In addition to providing important fish and wildlife habitat and supporting coastal food webs, these coastal wetlands provide many ecosystem goods and services including clean water, stable coastlines, food, recreational opportunities, and stored carbon. Our objective was to examine and forecast the effects of macroclimatic drivers on wetland ecosystem structure...
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Fire is a natural and necessary component of the South Central Plains ecosystem. However, fire suppression and more frequent droughts in the region have resulted in a build-up of dry fuels loads such as dead wood, resulting in fires that burn hotter and impact the landscape more severely. Uncontrolled wildfires have cost the region several billion dollars in the past five years. Further, fire suppression has resulted in substantial losses in native plant biodiversity and wildlife habitat, which also has costly implications. In Oklahoma alone, it’s estimated that $157 million will be required to restore rangelands to their native conditions. Of further concern is the fact that projected changes in climate indicate...
From Public Summary: (One of the greatest challenges facing resource managers today is not knowing exactly when, where, and how climate change effects will unfold. In order to plan for this uncertain future, managers have begun to use a tool known as climate change scenario planning, in which data from climate models are used to identify different plausible future climate conditions and their impacts, known as “scenarios,” for a specific area. In a previous project, we (scientists with the North Central Climate Adaptation Science Center, U.S. Geological Survey, and National Park Service) worked with natural resource managers at Badlands National Park and on surrounding federal and tribal lands to assess how different...
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Vegetation transformations after wildfires are a growing issue for forest and shrubland managers in the Inland Pacific Northwest. Severe fires combined with persistent drought and invasive species can slow or prevent the recovery of burned forests and shrublands to their pre-fire states, resulting in ecological, economic, and cultural losses. Forests may be converted to shrub fields or grasslands, and shrublands may be replaced by invasive grasses. While shrublands and grasslands can be important components of these ecosystems, there is growing concern about the increased extent of these vegetation types on the landscape. Despite the severe post-fire vegetation transformations, little is known about where, when,...
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Coastal wetland ecosystems are expected to migrate landward in response to accelerated sea-level rise. However, due to differences in topography and coastal urbanization extent, estuaries vary in their ability to accommodate wetland migration. The landward movement of wetlands requires suitable conditions, such as a gradual slope and land free of urban development. Urban barriers can constrain migration and result in wetland loss (coastal squeeze). For future-focused conservation planning purposes, there is a pressing need to quantify and compare the potential for wetland landward movement and coastal squeeze. For 41 estuaries in the northern Gulf of Mexico (i.e., the USA gulf coast), we quantified and compared...
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This project addressed regional climate change effects on aquatic food webs in the Great Lakes. We sought insights by examining Lake Erie as a representative system with a high level of anthropogenic impacts, strong nutrient gradients, seasonal hypoxia, and spatial overlap of cold- and cool-water fish guilds. In Lake Erie and in large embayments throughout the Great Lakes basin, this situation is a concern for fishery managers, as climate change may exacerbate hypoxia and reduce habitat volume for some species. We examined fish community composition, fine-scale distribution, prey availability, diets, and biochemical tracers for dominant fishes from study areas with medium-high nutrient levels (mesotrophic, Fairport...
Categories: Data, Project; Types: Map Service, OGC WFS Layer, OGC WMS Layer, OGC WMS Service; Tags: 2012, Academics & scientific researchers, CSC, Climate Change, Conservation NGOs, All tags...
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To advance understanding of mangrove range dynamics in eastern North America, there is a need to refine temperature thresholds for mangrove freeze damage, mortality, and recovery. Here, We integrated data from 38 sites spread across the mangrove range edge in the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic coasts of the southeastern United States, including data from a regional collaborative network called the Mangrove Migration Network (https://www.usgs.gov/centers/wetland-and-aquatic-research-center-warc/science/mangrove-migration-network). In 2018, an extreme freeze event affected 60 percent of these sites, with minimum temperatures ranging from 0 to -7 degrees Celsius. We used temperature data and vegetation measurements from...
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The UAV imagery was collected by the Hawaii Coastal Geology Group of the University of Hawai'i, Manoa in August of 2017 for USGS. The UAV model is Phantom 4 with the camera model FC6310. The UAV was flown 90 meters above sea level at site Rita and 100 meters above sea level at site AIPA.
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Coastal wetlands purify water, protect coastal communities from storms, sequester (store) carbon, and provide habitat for fish and wildlife. They are also vulnerable to climate change. In particular, changes in winter climate (warmer temperatures and fewer freeze events) may transform coastal wetlands in the northern Gulf of Mexico, as mangrove forests are expected to expand their range and replace salt marshes. The objective of this research was to evaluate the ecological implications of mangrove forest migration and salt marsh displacement. As part of this project, researchers identified important thresholds for ecosystem changes and highlighted coastal areas in the southeastern U.S. (e.g., Texas, Louisiana,...
    map background search result map search result map Ecological Implications of Mangrove Forest Migration in the Southeastern U.S. 2015 Hawaiian Islands Plant Species Abundance Models U.S. Gulf of Mexico coast (TX, MS, AL, and FL) Macroclimate Vegetation Data Section 1 (2013-2014) U.S. Gulf of Mexico coast (TX, MS, AL, and FL) Macroclimate Landscape and Climate Data (2013-2014) U.S. Gulf of Mexico coast (TX, MS, AL, and FL) Macroclimate Soil Data (2013-2014) Landward migration of tidal saline wetlands with sea-level rise and urbanization: a comparison of northern Gulf of Mexico estuaries Drought Indicators of the South Central Plains (1981-2014) Fire Risk Frequency Analysis of the South Central Plains (1996-2015) Understanding How Climate Change will Impact Aquatic Food Webs in the Great Lakes Majuro UAV data Temperature thresholds for black mangrove (Avicennia germinans) freeze damage, mortality, and recovery in North America: refining tipping points for range expansion in a warming climate Public Land Manager Decision-Making Under Ecological Transformation Unlocking Resilience Drivers to Inform Pacific Coral Reef Management Reducing Wildfire Risk While Maintaining Critical Monarch Habitat Along the California Coast Understanding Post-fire Transformations in Inland Northwest Forests and Shrublands Majuro UAV data Understanding How Climate Change will Impact Aquatic Food Webs in the Great Lakes 2015 Hawaiian Islands Plant Species Abundance Models Reducing Wildfire Risk While Maintaining Critical Monarch Habitat Along the California Coast U.S. Gulf of Mexico coast (TX, MS, AL, and FL) Macroclimate Vegetation Data Section 1 (2013-2014) U.S. Gulf of Mexico coast (TX, MS, AL, and FL) Macroclimate Soil Data (2013-2014) U.S. Gulf of Mexico coast (TX, MS, AL, and FL) Macroclimate Landscape and Climate Data (2013-2014) Understanding Post-fire Transformations in Inland Northwest Forests and Shrublands Temperature thresholds for black mangrove (Avicennia germinans) freeze damage, mortality, and recovery in North America: refining tipping points for range expansion in a warming climate Ecological Implications of Mangrove Forest Migration in the Southeastern U.S. Landward migration of tidal saline wetlands with sea-level rise and urbanization: a comparison of northern Gulf of Mexico estuaries Fire Risk Frequency Analysis of the South Central Plains (1996-2015) Drought Indicators of the South Central Plains (1981-2014) Unlocking Resilience Drivers to Inform Pacific Coral Reef Management Public Land Manager Decision-Making Under Ecological Transformation