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Rain-on-snow events occur when warm rain falls on an existing snowpack, causing rapid snowmelt that can lead to damaging floods, reduced spring and summer streamflow, and altered stream temperatures, with ecological, social, and economic consequences. Rain-on-snow events can result in a loss of riverine biodiversity, decreases in fisheries production, and degradation of stream habitat; water shortages for communities and reduced water quality; .and have repercussions for navigation and commercial transportation, hydroelectric power generation, recreation, invasive species control, and harbors and marinas. Considering the diverse impacts of rain-on-snow events, it is important to understand how rain-on-snow events...
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Project Overview The Rusty Patched Bumble Bee, and other native bees and pollinators, are declining due to climate change, habitat loss, and other stressors like pathogens and pesticide-use. Researchers supported by this Midwest CASC project will study how certain stressors interact to affect the geographic distribution of Rusty Patched Bumble Bees, using mapping techniques and future climate data to identify vulnerable populations and future strongholds. A resulting model and web application will enable resource managers and conservation practitioners to improve pollinator recovery efforts by identifying and prioritizing future locations for conservation action, including potential species reintroductions. Project...
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Climate change presents new and compounding challenges to natural resource management. With shifting climate patterns, managers are confronted with difficult decisions on how to minimize climate impacts to habitats, infrastructure, and wildlife populations. Further, managers lack the information needed to make proactive management decisions. To address this problem, this project will develop a decision and adaptation framework to support site‐level decision‐making that facilitates thoughtful integration of climate change information into formal management and planning processes. In collaboration with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) National Wildlife Refuge System (NWRS), the proposed framework will integrate...
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Inland fisheries have tremendous cultural, economic, and subsistence value. However, climate change brings new stresses to land-locked fisheries that raise novel challenges for resource managers. One fundamental challenge in inland fisheries is how to best assess and manage data-limited fisheries when resources are finite and uncertainty is pervasive. To address this challenge, we will use quantitative models to examine whether indicators of fish population status commonly-measured by managers can serve as a “short-cut” to more data- and capacity-intensive approaches. Further, we will work and communicate directly with state and Tribal fisheries managers to better understand the challenges they face when making...
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Stream fish are in peril from a changing climate, particularly for species with restricted distributions or populations on the southern edge of their range. For these fish, the opportunity to escape warming temperatures is limited by the network of stream channels accessible to them. To deal with temperatures beyond their physical capacity, fishes must move, adapt, or die. However, little is known for many of these species about their preferred temperatures, critical temperature limits, or capacity to adapt to or tolerate increasing temperatures. Researchers will measure the preferred temperatures and tolerance of two stream fish that are vulnerable to climate change: the Ozark Shiner and the Blacknose Shiner. The...
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Yellow perch and alewife are ecologically, economically, and culturally important fish species in Lake Michigan whose populations support recreational and commercial fisheries. However, both of these species’ populations have been in decline for over 20 years. This project seeks to understand the factors affecting variability in offspring survival of yellow perch and alewife in Lake Michigan in order to project survival under scenarios of future climate change. Like other fish species, yellow perch and alewives produce huge numbers of small offspring, but most die early in life. Small changes in survival at this early stage can have a strong impact on the number of fish that ultimately contribute to fisheries....
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The Prairie Pothole Region is recognized as one of the most productive areas for waterfowl in North America and supports an estimated 50–80 % of the continent’s duck population. This important habitat is threatened by climate change and continued land-use change. The goal of this research is to establish a framework for assessing future impacts of climate and land-use change on Prairie Pothole wetland ecosystems in Minnesota and Iowa to better assist wetland managers in planning conservation actions. Historically, the southeast portion of the US Prairie Pothole Region in Minnesota and Iowa has faced some of the greatest challenges in wetland conservation. While advances have been made to restore these habitats,...
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Forests across the U.S. are experiencing unprecedented tree mortality caused by a variety of stressors, including invasive insects, disease, extreme weather, wildfires, and droughts. For example, the emerald ash borer, a nonnative insect, has killed tens of millions of trees in the Lake States region of Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan alone in the past decade. Tree die offs alter the structure of forests, making them less-suitable habitat for many species, and decrease their ability to perform important ecosystem functions, such as carbon sequestration. Climate change further threatens already damaged forests, as shifting temperature and precipitation conditions alter species’ range limits. To prevent additional...
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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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The prairie grasslands of the Midwest and Great Plains provide important habitat for a wide variety of plants and animals, clean drinking water, and space for outdoor recreation and have experienced an over 99% loss of prairie grasslands due to a variety of factors including climate change. Land managers that are working to restore prairie grasslands would like to make them resilient to a shifting climate. However, they have limited information about how to plan these restorations with climate adaptation in mind In the Midwest and throughout much of North America, the effects of climate change are more pronounced and rapid in winter than in other seasons. Winters generally have less snow leaving plants more exposed...
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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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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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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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Climate change has the potential to change the kinds and numbers of fish and wildlife that are available for recreationists such as hunters, anglers, and birdwatchers. While we have some knowledge about what changes might look like concerning different fish and wildlife species, very little information is known about how anglers, hunters, and wildlife watchers might view such changes in the areas where they recreate. We also know very little about such users’ attitudes toward potential management actions and strategies for adapting to potential climate change that affects fish and wildlife. Using web-based social surveys, the research team will gauge public values, attitudes, preferences as it relates to risk perception...
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Habitat loss is splitting the world’s plant and animal populations into smaller, more isolated fragments. At the same time, many organisms must also withstand rapid and stressful changes to their environment. Combined, these factors can increase extinction risk. A possible escape from extinction is through adaptation. Yet, small populations with low genetic diversity may be unable to adapt in time to keep pace with environmental change. One strategy to mitigate these problems is to move individuals from larger, more resilient populations with higher genetic variation into small, declining populations to induce 'genetic rescue'. This project will use cutting-edge genomic tools to evaluate the potential for genetic...
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Habitat loss, pollution, species introductions, and overfishing have been impacting inland fisheries for decades. Climate change threatens to compound the factors that lead to fisheries decline. Walleye, an ecologically, economically and culturally important cool-water sportfish, have been declining in the Upper Great Lakes Region since the early 2000s. Yet while many inland walleye populations have declined, others have thrived, and some even appear to respond positively to warming temperatures in certain contexts (e.g. Honsey et al 2020). Rather than focusing on understanding walleye population declines, this project’s approach is to probe the factors that underlie successful, thriving fisheries. Focusing on ‘bright...
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Aquatic invasive species threaten our lakes, streams, and wetlands. These species not only change the biology within the waterbody, but they can change the way we use those waterbodies and the resources they produce. Those changes may have large economic impacts, such as direct management costs and indirect costs to fisheries, tourism and commerce. These species can be small like zebra mussels or large like Asian carp, but one thing they have in common is being difficult to manage and to prevent further spread. To help inform control measures for aquatic invasive species, local, state, and federal natural resource management agencies have been working to develop risk assessments to understand the potential spread...
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Water levels in the Great Lakes are fluctuating in ways that we have not seen in the past, with both historically low- and high-water levels occurring in the last decade. Expectations are that larger and more frequent water-level fluctuations will occur in response to climate change. The increased variability in lake levels has implications for the management of invasive plants found in the coastal wetlands that surround the Great Lakes, with some species benefiting from periods of low water levels. Phragmites australis, a prominent invasive grass that disrupts fish and wildlife habitats, thrived during the most recent period of low lake levels. However, periods of high lake levels could provide managers with opportunities...
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The project aims to understand the state of climate adaptation practice in sectors related to natural and cultural resource management and conservation in the Midwest region. An example of these efforts is developing plans that include natural resource management and conservation actions as part of a response to the impacts of climate change on nature and people. By learning from these plans, we aim to gain a comprehensive understanding of past and current adaptation efforts in the Midwest, as well as of the on-the-ground barriers and opportunities resource managers face in planning for climate adaptation in this region. Additionally, we seek to identify best practices in adaptation planning that can help resource...
map background search result map search result map Understanding and Forecasting Potential Recruitment of Lake Michigan Fishes Exploring the Potential for Adaptive Tree Plantings to Restore and Sustain Forest Habitats Across the Upper Lake States 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 The Impact of Future Climate on Wetland Habitat in a Critical Migratory Waterfowl Corridor of the Prairie Pothole Region Linking Stream Fish Thermal Ecology and Adaptive Capacity to Inform Watershed-Based Management and Species Status Assessments Scoping the Feasibility of Incorporating Climate Change into Risk Assessments of Aquatic Invasive Species in the Upper Midwest Public Acceptance and Preferences for Climate Change Adaptation in the Midwest Leveraging Genomic Data to Increase Adaptive Potential and Inform Management Action for the Endangered Mitchell's Satyr Butterfly Under Climate Change Developing a Decision Making and Climate Adaptation Framework for National Wildlife Refuge System Managers in the Midwest Characterizing Climate-Driven Changes to Flood Events and Floodplain Forests in the Upper Mississippi River to Inform Management Walleye Fisheries: Bright Spots in a Changing Climate Technical Assessment of Climate Science Needs in the Midwest Future of Aquatic Flows: Towards a National Synthesis of Streamflow Regimes Under a Changing Climate Future of Aquatic Flows: Exploring Changes in Rain-On-Snow Events and Their Influence on Future Streamflows, Stream Temperatures, and Management Priorities in the Great Lakes Basin Climate Adaptation for Data-Limited Inland Fisheries How Management Decisions Might Improve the Resilience of Prairies Under Winter Climate Change A Decision-Support Tool for Invasive Plant Management Under Fluctuating Great Lakes Water Levels Assessment of Adaptation Plans and Practices for Natural and Cultural Resources Relieving the Sting: Spatial Prioritization for Pollinator Conservation Under a Changing Climate How Management Decisions Might Improve the Resilience of Prairies Under Winter Climate Change Climate, Storms, and the Drivers of Cyanobacteria Blooms in Lake Superior Linking Stream Fish Thermal Ecology and Adaptive Capacity to Inform Watershed-Based Management and Species Status Assessments Climate Adaptation for Data-Limited Inland Fisheries Exploring the Potential for Adaptive Tree Plantings to Restore and Sustain Forest Habitats Across the Upper Lake States Scoping the Feasibility of Incorporating Climate Change into Risk Assessments of Aquatic Invasive Species in the Upper Midwest Walleye Fisheries: Bright Spots in a Changing Climate Understanding and Forecasting Potential Recruitment of Lake Michigan Fishes Relieving the Sting: Spatial Prioritization for Pollinator Conservation Under a Changing Climate Characterizing Climate-Driven Changes to Flood Events and Floodplain Forests in the Upper Mississippi River to Inform Management Leveraging Genomic Data to Increase Adaptive Potential and Inform Management Action for the Endangered Mitchell's Satyr Butterfly Under Climate Change A Decision-Support Tool for Invasive Plant Management Under Fluctuating Great Lakes Water Levels Future of Aquatic Flows: Exploring Changes in Rain-On-Snow Events and Their Influence on Future Streamflows, Stream Temperatures, and Management Priorities in the Great Lakes Basin Public Acceptance and Preferences for Climate Change Adaptation in the Midwest Assessment of Adaptation Plans and Practices for Natural and Cultural Resources Quantifying the Impacts of Climate Change on Fish Growth and Production to Enable Sustainable Management of Diverse Inland Fisheries Developing a Decision Making and Climate Adaptation Framework for National Wildlife Refuge System Managers in the Midwest Technical Assessment of Climate Science Needs in the Midwest The Impact of Future Climate on Wetland Habitat in a Critical Migratory Waterfowl Corridor of the Prairie Pothole Region Future of Aquatic Flows: Towards a National Synthesis of Streamflow Regimes Under a Changing Climate