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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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Many tribes are leaders in climate adaptation efforts, using intricate knowledge of their lands to develop and implement sophisticated adaptation strategies combatting a wide variety of climate impacts. In this tradition, Columbia Basin tribes, in partnership with three intertribal consortia, have created an internal database listing tribal resources and strategies to address different climate risks, from wildfire risk to decreasing snowpack. Yet there is currently no easy way for these tribes to share this continuously expanding body of knowledge with other groups. In this project, researchers will expand this existing resource to create the Tribal Resilience Action Database, an easily accessible web portal that...
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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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Historical and projected climate data point toward significant changes in the future for the Northeastern and Midwestern U.S. These changes will include impacts to many species (like birds, fish, and mammals), ecosystems (like forests), and natural resources (like water) that humans appreciate and rely on. In order to prepare for these changes, land and resource managers need to be able to predict how species will respond, what specific mechanisms are driving these changes, and what thresholds wildlife species may soon be pushed across. Crossing these thresholds could lead to rapid change or decline in the health of a wildlife population. In response to this need, a team of researchers is working to identify the...
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The Northeast U.S. coast is experiencing some of the fastest rates of sea level rise in the world. The Boston Harbor Islands National Recreation Area is particularly at risk from sea level rise and coastal storm impacts. Erosion and storm impacts have already led to the degradation of shoreline habitats and protective structures (e.g., sea walls), as well as direct impacts to historic landmarks on some islands. The need to establish reliable methods for inventory and monitoring of marine nearshore habitats has emerged out of an effort to use the Boston Harbor Islands as study sites to understand how experimental manipulation of the coastline (e.g., the installation of in-water reefs) might reduce wave energy and...
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Climate change and the extreme weather associated with it can be a major challenge to landowners and land managers interested in the protection, restoration, recovery, and management of wetlands and wildlife habitats. The Midwest is not only experiencing an increase in average temperatures and precipitation, but also an increase in the frequency of extreme events, such as heat waves and floods. Forecasting the potential impacts of the changes over the next 25 to 50 years will be important for decision makers and landowners seeking to minimize the impacts to infrastructure and to the habitats themselves and prepare for the future. Changes in flood frequency threaten habitat management infrastructure and actions,...
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Wetland plants are important to Wabanaki people in Maine and are central to Houlton Band of Maliseet Indian (HBMI) identity. HBMI peoples have harvested culturally important plants within the Meduxnekeag watershed for generations. Basket making and medicinal plant harvesting are forms of cultural preservation that are also important to Tribal economies. Projections for climate change in the northeastern U.S. include warmer temperatures and changes in the timing, amount, and intensity of precipitation. The hydrological consequences of projected changes will likely include increased temperatures,reduced winter ice cover on lakes and streams, earlier spring streamflow peaks, reduced summer streamflow, and increased...
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Hundreds of millions of dollars of public funding are invested annually in projects that aim to deliver research that can improve people’s lives and safeguard the environment. To invest that money wisely, we need to know how to design projects so that they will successfully address the information needs of natural resource managers. By using a process of systematic evaluation to assess the effectiveness of past projects, we can start to identify shared characteristics that make funded research more likely to provide accessible and usable information to resource managers both within and beyond the Department of the Interior. Applied science projects pose a particular evaluation challenge. These projects have two...
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The Southeastern United States spans a broad range of physiographic settings and maintains exceptionally high levels of faunal diversity. Unfortunately, many of these ecosystems are increasingly under threat due to rapid human development, and management agencies are increasingly aware of the potential effects that climate change will have on these ecosystems. Natural resource managers and conservation planners can be effective at preserving ecosystems in the face of these stressors only if they can adapt current conservation efforts to increase the overall resilience of the system. Climate change, in particular, challenges many of the basic assumptions used by conservation planners and managers. Previous conservation...
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Assessing the vulnerability of wildlife species to a changing climate is critical for understanding what adaptation actions need to be taken to minimize negative impacts. The ability of species to adapt to the impacts of climate change (i.e., their adaptive capacity) is an important factor to consider when assessing vulnerability. For example, organisms can possess traits that allow them to move to areas of favorable habitat or change their phenotypes (observable characteristics) in response to changing environmental conditions. Additionally, an organism’s traits can adapt to a changing external environment over multiple generations through evolutionary processes. Recent scientific evidence suggests that “evolutionary...
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Each year, plants and animals undergo certain life cycle events, such as breeding or flowering. These phenological events are linked to weather and climate, and as temperature and precipitation patterns have changed, some spring events are occurring earlier. These changes in plant phenology can have cascading effects on wildlife such as elk, moose, and mule deer, which depend on plants for food. It’s thought that the quality of forage available in the spring could play a critical role for these big game species, which need to replenish energy depleted during the winter, in order to survive and successfully reproduce. Climate change will alter plant phenology, which in turn is likely to effect when, where, and for...
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Great Lakes fishery managers and stakeholders have little information regarding how climate change could affect the management and conservation of fish populations, including those of high recreational and commercial value. Scientists from the US Geological Survey (USGS) worked closely with state management agencies and the National Wildlife Federation to complete several objectives that provide knowledge to aid their planning and management strategies in anticipation of coming changes. First, researchers updated a regional Great Lakes climate model to predict water level changes, water temperatures, and ice cover data for the entire Great Lakes basin 50-100 years into the future. Second, researchers used satellite...
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To develop effective adaptive management plans, conservation and natural resource managers need to know how climate change will affect the species and ecosystems they manage. This project provides managers with information about potential climate change effects on species and managed areas in the Pacific Northwest. We evaluated projected changes in climate, vegetation, and species distributions through the year 2099 and assessed the potential impacts of these changes on key species and managed lands. We worked with conservation and natural resource managers to incorporate the results of this study into state, federal, and non-governmental organization (NGO) management plans. The projected changes in climate, vegetation,...
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Previous climate change research for the Colorado River Basin has used down-scaled climate models to predict impacts to hydropower and the potential ability to meet mandated water releases. The Lower Colorado River Basin (LCRB) has one of the most imperiled fish faunas in the nation with about half of the native fish species listed as Threatened or Endangered under the Federal Endangered Species Act. Current water demands for agriculture and human consumption are only slightly less than long-term annual flows. Future projections based on climate change alone indicate decreased precipitation, increased temperatures, and lower annual runoff which will further stress this ecosystem that is experiencing among the highest...
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Climate change is likely to have many effects on natural ecosystems in the Southeast U.S. While there is information available to conservation managers and ecologists from the global climate models (GCMs), this information is at too coarse a resolution for use in vulnerability assessments and decision making. To better assess how climate change could affect multiple sectors, including ecosystems, climatologists have created several downscaled climate projections that contain information from GCMs translated to regional or local scales. There are a number of techniques that can be used to create downscaled climate projections, and the number of available downscaled climate projections present challenges to users...
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The loggerhead sea turtle, found in the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans, is divided into nine distinct populations—five of which are federally endangered and four of which are federally threatened. Unfortunately, climate change may be putting the species at further risk. Sea-level rise, increased storm frequency, and changes in temperature and humidity could reduce the suitability of habitat used by loggerheads and other endangered sea turtles for nesting and feeding. This project assessed the vulnerability of key sea turtle nesting beaches to climate change in the Southeast. Researchers examined previous records of sea turtle nesting locations in the Southeast to identify the characteristics of these beaches,...
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Detecting change in ecosystems requires observations of living and non-living components over time. Many different organizations make observations that are relevant to understanding global change processes, but the data are often not easily discoverable by other interested scientists and managers. This project aimed to pull into a centralized location information about many of these observational networks. In this phase of the project, a publicly available web-based portal was developed that provides a means to discover, search, and connect to many types of environmental and biological data collected in the southeastern United States that are relevant to characterizing potential effects of climate and land use change...
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High latitude northern ecosystems are currently warming twice as fast as the global average. Over the last several decades, this has caused dramatic losses of frozen area in the Arctic and sub-Arctic. However, it is unclear how melting coastal mountain glaciers, thawing permafrost, and declines in snowpack will affect the quality of freshwater habitat for culturally and economically important salmon in Alaska. As a collaborative effort with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, the Alaska Department of Natural Resources, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, this project aims to answer three questions: How does melting affect the freshwater habitat of Pacific salmon? How will changes to aquatic flows...
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Climate change is altering the patterns and characteristics of fire across natural systems in the United States. Resource managers in the Southwest are faced with making natural resource and fire management decisions now, despite a lack of accessible information about how those decisions will play out as fire regimes, and their associated disturbances, will change across the landscape. Decision makers in natural-resource management increasingly require information about projected future changes in fire regimes to effectively prepare for and adapt to climate change impacts. An accessible and forward-looking summary of what we know about the “future of fire” is urgently required in the Southwest and across the country...
map background search result map search result map Forecasting Climate Change Induced Effects on Recreational and Commercial Fish Populations in the Great Lakes Assessing the Vulnerability of Species and Ecosystems to Projected Future Climate Change in the Pacific Northwest The Vulnerability of Sea Turtle Nesting Beaches to Climate Change in the Southeast Evaluating Downscaled Climate Models for Projecting Future Changes in the Southeast Development of the Global Change Monitoring Portal: A Tool for Providing Resource Managers with Global Change Monitoring Data Across the Southeast Projected Climate and Land Use Change Impacts on Aquatic Habitats of the Lower Colorado River Basin (Regional Assessment) Linking Mule Deer Migration to Spring Green-Up in Wyoming SERAP: Modeling of Global and Land Use Change Impacts Can Evolution Help Wildlife Adapt to Climate Change? Exploring Evolutionary Adaptive Capacity (EVAC) and Bridging the Gap between Science and Management Examining the Responses of Species to Climate Change: Will Wildlife Face Biological Thresholds? Vulnerability Assessment and Adaptation Planning for Projected Changes in Water Quality and Quantity for Protected Areas in the Upper Mississippi Watershed Best Practices for Project Design: Effectively Addressing Natural Resource Management Needs Exploring the Potential for Adaptive Tree Plantings to Restore and Sustain Forest Habitats Across the Upper Lake States The Impact of Future Climate on Wetland Habitat in a Critical Migratory Waterfowl Corridor of the Prairie Pothole Region A Novel Monitoring Framework to Assess Intertidal Biodiversity in Mixed Coarse Substrate Habitats Across the Boston Harbor Islands Future of Fire in the Southwest: Towards a National Synthesis of Wildland Fire Under a Changing Climate Developing a Tribal Resilience Action Database for the Columbia River Basin Tribes The Impact of Climate Change on Culturally Significant Wetland Plants and Their Habitat in the Meduxnekeag River Watershed in Maine Future of Aquatic Flows: Impacts of Cryospheric Change on Aquatic Flows and Freshwater Habitat Quality for Fish and Communities Understanding Post-fire Transformations in Inland Northwest Forests and Shrublands The Vulnerability of Sea Turtle Nesting Beaches to Climate Change in the Southeast A Novel Monitoring Framework to Assess Intertidal Biodiversity in Mixed Coarse Substrate Habitats Across the Boston Harbor Islands Linking Mule Deer Migration to Spring Green-Up in Wyoming Projected Climate and Land Use Change Impacts on Aquatic Habitats of the Lower Colorado River Basin (Regional Assessment) Understanding Post-fire Transformations in Inland Northwest Forests and Shrublands Developing a Tribal Resilience Action Database for the Columbia River Basin Tribes Exploring the Potential for Adaptive Tree Plantings to Restore and Sustain Forest Habitats Across the Upper Lake States Future of Fire in the Southwest: Towards a National Synthesis of Wildland Fire Under a Changing Climate Forecasting Climate Change Induced Effects on Recreational and Commercial Fish Populations in the Great Lakes Vulnerability Assessment and Adaptation Planning for Projected Changes in Water Quality and Quantity for Protected Areas in the Upper Mississippi Watershed Evaluating Downscaled Climate Models for Projecting Future Changes in the Southeast SERAP: Modeling of Global and Land Use Change Impacts Examining the Responses of Species to Climate Change: Will Wildlife Face Biological Thresholds? Best Practices for Project Design: Effectively Addressing Natural Resource Management Needs The Impact of Future Climate on Wetland Habitat in a Critical Migratory Waterfowl Corridor of the Prairie Pothole Region Assessing the Vulnerability of Species and Ecosystems to Projected Future Climate Change in the Pacific Northwest Development of the Global Change Monitoring Portal: A Tool for Providing Resource Managers with Global Change Monitoring Data Across the Southeast Future of Aquatic Flows: Impacts of Cryospheric Change on Aquatic Flows and Freshwater Habitat Quality for Fish and Communities Can Evolution Help Wildlife Adapt to Climate Change? Exploring Evolutionary Adaptive Capacity (EVAC) and Bridging the Gap between Science and Management