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Severe droughts cause widespread tree mortality and decreased growth in forests across the globe. Forest managers are seeking strategies to increase forest resistance (minimizing negative impacts during the drought) and resilience (maximizing recovery rates following drought). Limited experimental evidence suggests that forests with particular structural characteristics have greater capacity to resist change and or recover ecosystem function in the face of drought. However, the applicability of these results to practical forest conservation and management remains unclear. This project utilized an existing network of eight long-term, operational-scale, forest management experiments from Arizona to Maine to examine...
America’s remaining grassland in the Prairie Pothole Region (PPR) is at risk of being lost to crop production. When crop prices are high, like the historically high corn prices that the U.S. experienced between 2008 and 2014, the risk of grassland conversion is even higher. Changing climate will add uncertainties to any efforts toward conservation of grassland in the PPR. Grassland conversion to cropland in the region would imperil nesting waterfowl among other species and further impair water quality in the Mississippi watershed. In this project, we sought to contribute to the understanding of land conversion in the PPR with the aim to better target the use of public and private funds allocated toward incentivizing...
The USGS National Climate Adaptation Science Center (NCASC) is currently engaged in an Ecological Drought initiative, focused on understanding the impacts of drought on natural ecosystems across the country. This project supported the Ecological Drought initiative by creating an Intermountain West Drought Social Science Synthesis Working Group. The goal of this working group was to investigate human dimensions of ecological drought across the intermountain west from a comparative, regional perspective. Throughout the Intermountain West, there has been significant investment in understanding how social factors influence manager and citizen experiences of drought in particular locations. Yet there is still a gap in...
The North Central Climate Adaptation Science Center (NC CASC) partnered with the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and Conservation Science Partners, Inc. (CSP) to systematically identify information gaps that, if addressed, would support management decisions for key species, habitats, or other issues within the North Central region (Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas). In particular, we were interested in the intersection between 1) high-priority species or habitats that are 2) the subject of a planned decision, and for which 3) climate information would aid decision-making for state and federal agencies. In Spring of 2018, we interviewed state fish and wildlife managers...
Southwestern Colorado is already experiencing the effects of climate change in the form of larger and more severe wildfires, prolonged severe droughts, tree mortality from insect outbreaks, and earlier snowmelt. Climate scientists expect the region to experience more frequent summer heat waves, longer-lasting and more frequent droughts, and decreased river flow in the future (Lukas et al. 2014). These changes will ultimately impact local communities and challenge natural resource managers in allocating water and range for livestock grazing under unpredictable drought conditions, managing forests in the face of changing fire regimes, and managing threatened species under shifting ecological conditions. Considering...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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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...