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Sport fisheries of lakes are embedded in complex system of ecological and social interactions. The multiple drivers that affect lake sport fisheries, along with the complex interactions within lakes, make it difficult to forecast changes in sport fisheries and plan adaptive responses to build resilience of these important resources. Resilience involves managing with an eye toward critical thresholds for behavior of ecosystems. Project researchers are working to develop quantitative tools for assessment of thresholds in sport fisheries that can be used by management agencies to evaluate potential impacts of climate change mediated through species and habitat interactions. Several outputs of the project will be adaptable...
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There are approximately 2,000 species of migratory birds worldwide, and over 300 of those can be found in North America. Changing climate conditions pose challenges for many migratory birds and their responses to these challenges can depend on their biology. To illustrate these impacts, a board game, called Migration Mismatch, was developed to help elementary school students understand these challenges. Migration Mismatch can help students build their understanding of biological processes and how species, birds in this case, interact with their environment. The game provides an interactive element to learning about adaptations of different bird species to environmental changes and provides a link to birds they may...
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Climate change is already affecting ecosystems, and will likely trigger significant and permanent changes in both ecological and human communities. Such transformations are already occurring in the Arctic region of Alaska, where temperatures are warming at twice the global average and causing some ecosystems to transition to new states. Arctic warming has led to coastal erosion that has forced human communities to relocate and a loss of sea ice that has forced marine mammals, such as polar bears and walrus, to adapt to a more terrestrial mode of living. Meanwhile, in the Great Plains of the U.S., past interactions between land and water use during the Dust Bowl and recent high rates of depletion of the Ogallala...
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Prairies were once widespread across North America, but are now one of the most endangered and least protected ecosystems in the world. Agriculture and residential development have reduced once extensive prairies into a patchwork of remnant prairies and “surrogate” grasslands (e.g., hayfields, planted pastures). Grassland ecosystems and many grassland-dependent birds are also particularly vulnerable to rapid shifts in climate and associated changes in drought and extreme weather. The Central Flyway is a vast bird migration route that comprises more than half of the continental U.S., and extends from Central America to Canada, and harbors the greatest diversity of grassland birds in North America. Throughout this...
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As climate change progresses, profound environmental changes are becoming a widespread concern. A new management paradigm is developing to address this concern with a framework that encourages strategic decisions to resist, accept, or direct ecological trajectories. Effective use of the Resist-Accept-Direct (RAD) framework requires the scientific community to describe the range of plausible ecological conditions managers might face, while recognizing limits to our ability to predict precisely where or how specific climatic changes may unfold or how complex environmental systems will respond - the climatic future does not fully determine the ecological one. Recent advances have improved development and delivery...
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In the North Central U.S., the rate and extent of changing climate conditions has been increasing in recent decades. These changes include shifting precipitation patterns, warming temperatures, and more frequent extreme events, such as droughts and floods. As these changes occur, managers face different challenges and have different needs, depending on the resources they manage. For example, water managers are focused on responding to changes in water availability, while wildlife managers may be more concerned with changing habitat conditions – whether it be for migratory waterfowl, coldwater fish, or large mammals. In the face of these changes, managers are seeking effective strategies for managing resources....
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Natural & cultural resource managers are facing a slew of new challenges for managing public lands stemming from climate change and human-driven stressors like invasive species, fragmentation, and new resource uses. In some cases, the very landscapes and species they are managing are changing in significant ways, transforming from one set of conditions to another. As a result, previously successful management strategies may become less effective, or in some cases ineffective. New and transforming conditions leave managers in a bind on how to respond to transforming public lands and natural resources. On the most basic level managers have three choices of how to respond: resist change, accept change, or direct change...
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Across the western U.S., pinyon and juniper trees are expanding into sagebrush and grassland plant communities. This vegetation change has been perceived to have a significant impact on the economic value of these grasslands, which support activities such as livestock grazing and hunting, but expanding pinyon and juniper forests may also lead to increased risk of fire. Over the past several decades pinyon-juniper forests have been removed across large areas of land to improve wildlife habitat and grazing land productivity while reducing risks of wildland fire. What isn’t known is whether these strategies are effective in reaching this goal, especially given that our future climate will likely be hotter and drier...
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Global climate models are a key source of climate information and produce large amounts of spatially explicit data for various physical parameters. However, these projections have substantial uncertainties associated with them, and the datasets themselves can be difficult to work with. The project team created the first version (cst 0.1.0) of the Climate Futures Toolbox, an open source workflow in R that allows users to access downscaled climate projections data, clip data by spatial boundaries (shapefile), save the output, and generate summary tables and plots. A detailed R vignette guides users to easily generate derived variables in order to answer specific questions about their region of interest (e.g. how will...
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The Prairie Pothole Region is recognized as one of the most critical breeding habitats for waterfowl in North America and is used by an estimated 50–80 % of the continent’s breeding duck population. The ongoing acquisition program of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service National Wildlife Refuge System has conserved approximately 1.3 million hectares of critical breeding-waterfowl habitat. This current conservation approach assumes that past distributions of waterfowl habitat and populations are relatively representative of future distributions, however, due to changes in the area’s hydrology this may not be the case. Understanding how climate change may impact these wetland and grassland ecosystems is key for management...
    map background search result map search result map Climate Change and Resilience of Sport Fisheries in Lakes Foundational Science Area: Maximizing Stakeholder Engagement to Support Climate Adaptation in the North Central U.S. Migration Mismatch: Bird Migration and Phenological Mismatching Open-Source and Open-Workflow Climate Futures Toolbox for Adaptation Planning Adaptation Strategies in the Face of Climate-Driven Ecological Transformation: Case Studies from Arctic Alaska and the U.S. Great Plains Strategies for Reducing the Vulnerability of Grassland Birds to Climate Change within the Central Flyway The Impact of Future Changes in Climate on Breeding Waterfowl Pairs in the US Prairie Pothole Region Crafting Ecological Scenarios to Implement the Resist-Accept-Direct (RAD) Framework Developing a Decision Support Framework for Prioritizing Pinyon Juniper Forest Treatments on the Colorado Plateau Cross-Park RAD Project (CPRP): A Case Study in Four National Parks Investigating How Institutional Context and Emotions Shape Manager Decisions to Resist, Accept, or Direct Change in Transforming Ecosystems Developing a Decision Support Framework for Prioritizing Pinyon Juniper Forest Treatments on the Colorado Plateau Climate Change and Resilience of Sport Fisheries in Lakes Foundational Science Area: Maximizing Stakeholder Engagement to Support Climate Adaptation in the North Central U.S. Crafting Ecological Scenarios to Implement the Resist-Accept-Direct (RAD) Framework Strategies for Reducing the Vulnerability of Grassland Birds to Climate Change within the Central Flyway Cross-Park RAD Project (CPRP): A Case Study in Four National Parks Investigating How Institutional Context and Emotions Shape Manager Decisions to Resist, Accept, or Direct Change in Transforming Ecosystems The Impact of Future Changes in Climate on Breeding Waterfowl Pairs in the US Prairie Pothole Region Migration Mismatch: Bird Migration and Phenological Mismatching Adaptation Strategies in the Face of Climate-Driven Ecological Transformation: Case Studies from Arctic Alaska and the U.S. Great Plains Open-Source and Open-Workflow Climate Futures Toolbox for Adaptation Planning