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Tribal nations are priority science partners of the North Central Climate Adaptation Science Center (NC CASC) and the center is committed to working with Tribal partners to create usable, and relevant science to build resilience to anthropogenic climate change. The NC CASC recognizes the importance and value of Indigenous Knowledges in addressing environmental challenges and any tribal projects funded through NC CASC follow the Guidelines for Considering Indigenous Knowledges in Climate Change Initiatives to ensure data sovereignty and best practices for working with sovereign Tribal Nations. To better understand, support, and facilitate climate resilience in Tribal communities, the NC CASC co-hosts a regional...
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In ecosystems characterized by flowing water, such as rivers and streams, the dynamics of how the water moves - how deep it is, how fast it flows, how often it floods - have direct effects on the health, diversity, and sustainability of underlying communities. Yet increasingly, climate extremes like droughts and floods are disrupting fragile stream ecosystems by specifically changing their internal aquatic flows. Human infrastructure, such as irrigation and dams, further disrupt these dynamics. These changes in climate and land use are leading to teh fragmentation of aquatic habtiat, degraded water quality, altered sediment transport processes, variation in the timing and duration of floodplain inundation, shifts...
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Nearshore marine ecosystems in Alaska and Hawai‘i rely heavily on organic materials and nutrients delivered by rivers and streams. It is hypothesized that the magnitude and timing of stream flows influences this delivery of materials to coastal ecosystems. However, despite previous research on the topic, there is still considerable uncertainty about how stream flow may influence these land-to-water (“ridge-to-reef") linkages, and how climate change induced shifts in runoff may ripple across ecosystem boundaries to influence estuary and nearshore marine ecosystems and species of cultural and commercial importance (e.g., Pacific salmon, gobies, and coral reefs). This project is a collaborative study to examine...
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Since time immemorial, the nearshore habitats of the Salish Sea, the shared estuarine waters between coastal British Columbia and Washington State, have provided crucial habitats for many culturally important species: nursery areas for Dungeness crab, critical juvenile rearing areas for migrating Pacific salmon, and sedimentary deltas laden with clams and oysters. Together these animals form the basis of indigenous Salish People’s food sovereignty and help define their way of life. Yet today, these resources are at risk from the invasive European green crab (EGC), which was brought to the area under oceanic conditions exacerbated by climate change and is thriving due to the crabs’ ability to quickly adapt. The EGC...
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Surrounded by saltwater, human and natural communities on the Hawaiian Islands depend upon the freshwater supplied by rainfall for survival. Climate change will likely alter rainfall timing and intensity, but global climate models cannot capture the fine-scale dynamics of local rainfall, making future rainfall predictions for the islands uncertain. For this project, scientists used a technique called statistical downscaling (combining coarse-scale climate models with local historical data) to generate high-resolution maps showing seasonal rainfall change projections for Hawaiʻi over the course of this century. Results suggest that Hawaiʻi’s climate will become drier overall in the second half of the century, but...
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Floodplain forests along the Upper Mississippi River are heavily managed but understudied systems that provide critical ecosystem services, including habitat for endangered species. Impacts of a changing climate, such as warmer winters and wetter summers with extreme precipitation events, are already influencing hydrologic patterns in these ecosystems, including altering the duration, frequency, and timing of floods. These changes bring numerous challenges to floodplain forest managers. This project will leverage an already established research-management partnership to develop knowledge and tools to inform sustainable decision making. In this project, researchers will utilize multiple sources of “big data” to...
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In 2020, in partnership with the Northeast Climate Adaptation Science Center (NE CASC), the Midwest Climate Adaptation Science Center (MW CASC) completed a four-part process to identify climate science priorities for both the Northeast and Midwest regions. The process included: structured feedback from an advisory committee, the completion of six listening sessions, feedback from project partners, and a review of regional climate initiatives. These efforts identified five management challenges for the MW CASC: 1) heavy precipitation events and drought, 2) loss of winter, 3) altered water levels, flows and temperatures, 4) new terrestrial landscapes resulting from climate change, and 5) barriers and opportunities...
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Cyanobacteria blooms are one of the most significant management challenges in the Great Lakes today. Recurring blooms of varying toxicity are commonly observed in four of the Great Lakes, and the fifth, Lake Superior, has experienced intermittent nearshore blooms since 2012. The recent advent of cyanobacterial blooms in Lake Superior is disconcerting, given the highly valued, pristine water quality of the large lake. It is possible that the ecological state of Lake Superior is shifting and that we are witnessing the beginnings of larger and longer lasting bloom events. As a public resource, the coastal water quality of Lake Superior has tremendous economic, public health, and environmental value, and therefore,...
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The Wind River Indian Reservation in west-central Wyoming is home to the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho tribes, who reside near and depend on water from the streams that feed into the Wind River. In recent years, however, the region has experienced frequent severe droughts, which have impacted tribal livelihoods and cultural activities. Scientists with the North Central Climate Science Center at Colorado State University, the National Drought Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and several other university and agency partners are working closely with tribal water managers to assess how drought affects the reservation, integrating social, ecological, and hydro-climatological sciences...
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Hydrologic models are used throughout the world to forecast and simulate streamflow, inform water management, municipal planning, and ecosystem conservation, and investigate potential effects of climate and land-use change on hydrology. The USGS Modeling of Watershed Systems (MoWS) group is currently developing the infrastructure for a National Hydrologic Model (NHM) to support coordinated, comprehensive, and consistent hydrologic model development and application. The NHM is expected to provide internally consistent estimates of total water availability, water sources, and streamflow timing, and measures of uncertainty around these estimates, for the entire United States. VisTrails, a scientific workflow and provenance...
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Colorado State University organized and hosted a workshop aimed at developing an information technology framework for data integration related to climate change impacts on ecosystems and landscape conservation. The workshop included key federal and state agency partners, tribal governments, and universities. The objective of the workshop was to develop an information technology strategy to handle the various data, information, and computational services which the eight regional DOI Climate Science Centers will be responsible for delivering to stakeholders. Issues covered during the workshop included distributed computing and data storage; information security issues across federal, state, university, and public...
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Land and water managers often rely on hydrological models to make informed management decisions. Understanding water availability in streams, rivers, and reservoirs during high demand periods that coincide with seasonal low flows can affect how water managers plan for its distribution for human consumption while sustaining aquatic ecosystems. Substantial advancement in hydrological modeling has occurred in the last several decades resulting in models that range widely in complexity and outputs. However, managers can still struggle to make informed decisions with these models for a variety of reasons, including misalignments between model outputs and the specific decision they are intended to inform, limitations...
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The long-term success of management efforts in sagebrush habitats are increasingly complicated by the impacts of a changing climate throughout the western United States. These complications are most evident in the ongoing challenges of drought and altered rangeland fire regimes resulting from the establishment of nonnative annual grasses. The Integrated Rangeland Fire Management Strategy recognized these growing threats to sagebrush habitat and initiated the development of an Actionable Science Plan to help the scientific and management communities address the highest priority science needs to help improve rangeland management efficacy in the West. Since the establishment of the original Integrated Rangeland Fire...
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The NC CASC supports co-produced actionable science, data-intensive discovery, and open science to support tribal, federal, state, and local natural resource managers and decision-makers in the North Central region, which serves Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Kansas and Nebraska. NC CASC is hosted by the University of Colorado Boulder (CU Boulder) within the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences , and is a partnership between CU Boulder, the U.S. Geological Survey, and five consortium partners: University of Montana; South Dakota State University; Conservation Science Partners; Wildlife Conservation Society; and Great Plains Tribal Water Alliance. During the period...
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Even when faced with uncertainty about future climate conditions, resource managers are tasked with making planning and adaptation decisions that impact important natural and cultural resources. Species distribution models are widely used by both researchers and managers to estimate species responses to climate change. These models combine data on environmental variables (e.g., temperature, precipitation) with field samples of a species’ presence, absence, and/or abundance to project and visualize potential habitat of the species across space and time. However, species distribution modeling software previously developed and supported by USGS (the Software for Assisted Habitat Modeling [SAHM] package for VisTrails)...
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Fisheries managers in Midwestern lakes and reservoirs are tasked with balancing multiple management objectives to help maintain healthy fish populations across a landscape of diverse lakes. As part of this, managers monitor fish growth and survival. Growth rates in particular are indicators of population health, and directly influence the effectiveness of regulations designed to protect spawning fish or to promote trophy fishing opportunities. Growth, combined with reproduction and survival, also determines the amount of fish biomass available for harvest, known as population production. Changing water temperatures can influence growth and production of managed fish species in multiple complex ways, increasing the...
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Climate Change is making our environment unpredictable. Increased persistence of drought is causing deaths of plants and animals across our landscapes. However, drought amongst the western United States is not a new thing. Native American populations have been living with drought since time immemorial and practiced culturally prescribed fire practices to foster the landscape for an environment that provides resources for tribal livelihoods and traditional practices (Marks-Block et al. 2019). The United States Geologic Survey and the Yurok Tribe are partnering to study the effects of prescribed burns actively occurring in Yurok Ancestral Territory. Prescribed burns promote a healthy ecosystem through positively...
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Natural climate variability can obscure or enhance long-term trends in experienced weather due to climate change. This can happen temporarily on timescales of a season to several years to a decade or two. Natural variability is poorly described and attributed to specific causes, contributing to uncertainty and misunderstandings about the nature of climate change that stakeholders and resource managers attempt to anticipate. There exists, therefore, a need to clarify the magnitude and causality of natural climate variability. This connection needs to be explained for locally-experienced weather and particularly for daily extreme events, whose seasonal behavior impacts both resources and imagination. Conversely, it...
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The impacts of climate change are widespread and accelerating. It is daunting for resource managers to determine how to use increasingly limited staff time and funding to conserve species and ecosystems. The Refugia Research Coalition is a national framework that brings together researchers and managers to identify and develop conservation strategies for “climate change refugia”, areas that remain relatively buffered from contemporary climate change over time and enable persistence of valued physical, ecological, and socio-cultural resources. Expanding on previous work carried out in the Northwest and Northeast regions, this project will produce a list of priority species and habitats, generated by local and regional...
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Salmonids, a group of coldwater adapted fishes of enormous ecological and socio-economic value, historically inhabited a variety of freshwater habitats throughout the Pacific Northwest (PNW). Over the past century, however, populations have dramatically declined due to habitat loss, overharvest, and invasive species. Consequently, many populations are listed as threatened or endangered under the U.S. Endangered Species Act. Complicating these stressors is global warming and associated climate change. Overall, aquatic ecosystems across the PNW are predicted to experience increasingly earlier snowmelt in the spring, reduced late spring and summer flows, increased winter flooding, warmer and drier summers, increased...
map background search result map search result map Predicting Climate Change Impacts on River Ecosystems and Salmonids across the Pacific Northwest Data Integration for Landscape Conservation Workshop Developing High-Resolution Rainfall Change Scenarios for the Hawaiian Islands Understanding and Communicating the Role of Natural Climate Variability in a Changing World Developing a VisTrails Platform for Modeling Streamflow Hydrology and Projecting Climate Change Effects on Streamflow The Wind River Indian Reservation’s Vulnerability to the Impacts of Drought and the Development of Decision Tools to Support Drought Preparedness A Synthesis of Climate Change Refugia Science and Management Actions to Inform Climate Adaptation in the Southwest North Central Climate Adaptation Science Center Consortium - Hosted by The University of Colorado Boulder (2018-2023) Climate, Storms, and the Drivers of Cyanobacteria Blooms in Lake Superior Quantifying the Impacts of Climate Change on Fish Growth and Production to Enable Sustainable Management of Diverse Inland Fisheries Support for Tribal Partners Maximizing Trap Efficiency on Lummi Nation Estuarine Habitats to Reduce Ecosystem Impacts from Invasive European Green Crab Developing A New Software Package to Enhance Species Distribution Model Functionality From Land to Sea: How Will Shifts in Stream Flow Influence Delivery of Nutrients, Organic Matter, and Organisms to Alaska and Hawai‘i Nearshore Marine Ecosystems? State of the Science in Streamflow Modeling in the North Central Region to Address Partner Needs for Water Availability Under Drought Conditions Providing a Climate Science Foundation for Updating the Integrated Rangeland Fire Management Strategy Actionable Science Plan Improving Water Resilience and Availability Through Culturally Prescribed Fires as a Management Tool on Yurok Tribal Lands Characterizing Climate-Driven Changes to Flood Events and Floodplain Forests in the Upper Mississippi River to Inform Management Technical Assessment of Climate Science Needs in the Midwest Future of Aquatic Flows: Towards a National Synthesis of Streamflow Regimes Under a Changing Climate Maximizing Trap Efficiency on Lummi Nation Estuarine Habitats to Reduce Ecosystem Impacts from Invasive European Green Crab The Wind River Indian Reservation’s Vulnerability to the Impacts of Drought and the Development of Decision Tools to Support Drought Preparedness Climate, Storms, and the Drivers of Cyanobacteria Blooms in Lake Superior Developing High-Resolution Rainfall Change Scenarios for the Hawaiian Islands State of the Science in Streamflow Modeling in the North Central Region to Address Partner Needs for Water Availability Under Drought Conditions Characterizing Climate-Driven Changes to Flood Events and Floodplain Forests in the Upper Mississippi River to Inform Management A Synthesis of Climate Change Refugia Science and Management Actions to Inform Climate Adaptation in the Southwest Understanding and Communicating the Role of Natural Climate Variability in a Changing World Predicting Climate Change Impacts on River Ecosystems and Salmonids across the Pacific Northwest Quantifying the Impacts of Climate Change on Fish Growth and Production to Enable Sustainable Management of Diverse Inland Fisheries Technical Assessment of Climate Science Needs in the Midwest Data Integration for Landscape Conservation Workshop North Central Climate Adaptation Science Center Consortium - Hosted by The University of Colorado Boulder (2018-2023) Support for Tribal Partners Developing A New Software Package to Enhance Species Distribution Model Functionality Providing a Climate Science Foundation for Updating the Integrated Rangeland Fire Management Strategy Actionable Science Plan From Land to Sea: How Will Shifts in Stream Flow Influence Delivery of Nutrients, Organic Matter, and Organisms to Alaska and Hawai‘i Nearshore Marine Ecosystems? Developing a VisTrails Platform for Modeling Streamflow Hydrology and Projecting Climate Change Effects on Streamflow Future of Aquatic Flows: Towards a National Synthesis of Streamflow Regimes Under a Changing Climate