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Shrub encroachment in arid and semiarid rangelands, a worldwide phenomenon, results in a heterogeneous landscape characterized by a mosaic of nutrient-depleted barren soil bordered by nutrient-enriched shrubby areas known as “fertile islands.� Even though shrub encroachment is considered as a major contributor to rangeland degradation, little is known about mechanisms favoring the reversibility of the early stages of this process. Here we synthesize the interactions between fires and soil erosion processes, and the implications of these interactions for management of rangelands. The burning of shrub vegetation develops relatively high levels of soil hydrophobicity. This fire-induced water repellency was shown...
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Natural landscapes in the Southwestern United States are changing. In recent decades, rising temperatures and drought have led to drier conditions, contributed to large-scale ecological impacts, and affected many plant and animal species across the region. The current and future trajectory of climate change underscores the need for managers and conservation professionals to understand the impacts of these patterns on natural resources. In this regional assessment of the Southwest Climate Change Initiative, we evaluate changes in annual average temperatures from 1951–2006 across major habitats and large watersheds and compare these changes to the number of species of conservation concern that are found within these...
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Final Report - Executive Summary: This final project report is prepared to summarize the research project titled “Assessing evapotranspiration rate changes for proposed restoration of the forested uplands of the Desert Landscape Conservation Cooperatives (LCC)” for the Desert LCC of the Bureau of Reclamation as a requirement for closing out the project. This report includes the scope of work, summary of research project, results, and conclusions.Among all of the components of the terrestrial water cycle, evapotranspiration (ET) consumes the largest amount of water. Accurate estimation of ET is very important to understand the influence of ET to the hydrologic response of recharge and runoff processes in the water...
Categories: Data, Publication; Types: Citation, Map Service, OGC WFS Layer, OGC WMS Layer, OGC WMS Service; Tags: 2012, ATMOSPHERE, ATMOSPHERE, ATMOSPHERIC WATER VAPOR, ATMOSPHERIC WATER VAPOR, All tags...
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...
Reducing coral reef vulnerability to climate change requires that managers understand and support the natural resilience of coral reefs. We define coral reef resilience as: the capacity of a reef to resist and/or recover from disturbance given its probable exposure regime, and maintain provision of ecosystem goods and services. Spatial variation in exposure to disturbance and the resilience of reefs in the face of those disturbances will determine the fate of coral reefs within management jurisdictions. This project sought to: (1) undertake ecological resilience assessments in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI), which is in the west Pacific near Guam, and (2) collaboratively develop a decision-support...
The field of adaptive management has been embraced by researchers and managers in the United States as an approach to improve natural resource stewardship in the face of uncertainty and complex environmental problems. Integrating multiple knowledge sources and feedback mechanisms is an important step in this approach. Our objective is to contribute to the limited literature that describes the benefits of better integrating indigenous knowledge (IK) with other sources of knowledge in making adaptive-management decisions. Specifically, we advocate the integration of traditional phenological knowledge (TPK), a subset of IK, and highlight opportunities for this knowledge to support policy and practice of adaptive management...
State-and-transition models are increasingly being used to guide rangeland management. These models provide a relatively simple, management-oriented way to classify land condition (state) and to describe the factors that might cause a shift to another state (a transition). There are many formulations of state-and-transition models in the literature. The version we endorse does not adhere to any particular generalities about ecosystem dynamics, but it includes consideration of several kinds of dynamics and management response to them. In contrast to previous uses of state-and-transition models, we propose that models can, at present, be most effectively used to specify and qualitatively compare the relative benefits...
Tensions are evident in energy policy objectives between centralised top-down interconnected energy systems and localised distributed approaches. Examination of these tensions indicates that a localised approach can address a systemic problem of interconnected systems; namely vulnerability. The challenge for energy policy is to realise the interrelated goals of energy security, climate and environmental targets and social and economic issues such as fuel poverty, whilst mitigating vulnerability. The effectiveness of conventional approaches is debatable. A transition to a low carbon pathway should focus on resilience, counter to vulnerability. This article draws from on-going work which evaluates the energy aspects...
A method for assessment of watershed health is developed by employing measures of reliability, resilience and vulnerability (R–R–V) using stream water quality data. Observed water quality data are usually sparse, so that a water quality time-series is often reconstructed using surrogate variables (streamflow). A Bayesian algorithm based on relevance vector machine (RVM) was employed to quantify the error in the reconstructed series, and a probabilistic assessment of watershed status was conducted based on established thresholds for various constituents. As an application example, observed water quality data for several constituents at different monitoring points within the Cedar Creek watershed in north-east Indiana...
The intent of long-term ecological monitoring is to document changes in important properties of biological communities. At the least, a long-term monitoring system should be designed to detect long-term trends in three key attributes: soil and site stability, hydrologic function, and the biotic integrity of the system. There are four basic guidelines for developing integrated soil-vegetation monitoring systems for rangelands. These are: (1) identifying a suite of indicators which are consistently correlated with the functional status of one or more critical ecosystem processes and=or properties; (2) selecting base indicators on site specific objectives and resource concerns, and inherent soil and site characteristics;...
Anthropogenic climate change is rapidly altering aquatic ecosystems across the Rocky Mountain West and may detrimentally impact populations of sensitive species that are often the focus of conservation efforts. The objective of this report is to synthesize a growing literature on these topics to address the following questions: (1) What is changing in climate and related physical/hydrological processes that may influence aquatic species and their habitats? (2) What are the implications for fish populations, aquatic communities, and related conservation values? (3) What can we do about it? In many instances, proactive efforts may help populations adapt to climate change; but elsewhere, transitions of aquatic ecosystems...
Land managers are responsible for developing effective strategies for conserving and restoring Great Basin ecosystems in the face of invasive species, conifer expansion, and altered fire regimes. A warming climate is magnifying the effects of these threats and adding urgency to implementation of management practices that will maintain or improve ecosystem functioning. This Factsheet Series was developed to provide land managers with brief summaries of the best available information on contemporary management issues to facilitate science delivery and foster effective management. Each peer-reviewed factsheet was developed as a collaborative effort among knowledgeable scientists and managers. The series begins with...
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Riparian grasslands dominated by big sacaton (Sporobolus wrightii) once covered floodplains across the southwest, but have been reduced to some 5% of their historical extent. Sacaton stands that remain provide key resources for watershed function, wildlife, and livestock—yet may need special management to sustain these benefits. This report describes mapping methods and management recommendations that can be applied to riparian grasslands throughout the region. By examining sacaton grasslands in the Las Cienegas National Conservation Area, this project also refines methods for evaluating ecological condition, and provides managers at this site with detailed maps of both high-quality habitat and restoration needs.
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The areas depicted in this shapefile were derived for an analysis of potential conservation priority areas on Bureau of Land Management (BLM) lands across 11 western states: Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming.
Abstract (from http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959378014000065): Climate change impacts threaten existing development efforts and achieving future sustainability goals. To build resilience and societal preparedness towards climate change, integration of adaptation into development is being increasingly emphasized. To date, much of the adaptation literature has been theoretical, reflecting the absence of empirical data from activities on the ground. However, the Funds established under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and managed by the Global Environment Facility, the Least Developed Countries Fund, the Special Climate Change Fund and the Strategic Priority for Adaptation,...
Natural-resource managers and other conservation practitioners are under unprecedented pressure to categorize and quantify the vulnerability of natural systems based on assessment of the exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity of species to climate change. Despite the urgent need for these assessments, neither the theoretical basis of adaptive capacity nor the practical issues underlying its quantification has been articulated in a manner that is directly applicable to natural-resource management. Both are critical for researchers, managers, and other conservation practitioners to develop reliable strategies for assessing adaptive capacity. Drawing from principles of classical and contemporary research and...
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NatureServe worked with several federal, state, and NGO partners in the United States and Mexico to conduct a climate change vulnerability assessment of major natural community types found within the Mojave and Sonoran Deserts. The project focused on ten major upland, riparian, and aquatic community types, including pinyon-juniper woodlands, Joshua tree-blackbrush scrub, creosote-bursage scrub, salt desert scrub, Paloverde-mixed cacti scrub, semi-desert grassland, desert riparian and stream, riparian mesquite bosque, and desert springs. This effort piloted a new Habitat Climate Change Vulnerability Index (HCCVI) approach being developed by NatureServe, as a companion to an existing index for species. The project...
Alaska's communities are experiencing impacts from unprecedented climate-related changes in the harvests of natural resources. Residents of rural Alaska are reporting heretofore unseen changes in the geographic distribution and abundance of marine resources, increases in the frequency and ferocity of storm surges in the Bering Sea, changes in the distribution and thickness of sea ice, and increases in river and coastal erosion. When combined with ongoing socio-economic change, climate, weather, and changes in the biophysical system interact in a complex web of feedbacks and interactions that make life in rural Alaska challenging. We present a framework of indicators to assess three basic constituents of community...
In the context of impact assessment (IA), ‘enhancement’ refers to deliberate attempts taken in the design and subsequent phases of projects, programmes, plans and policies to ensure the success of a wider range of direct and indirect positive outcomes to communities and/or the biophysical environment. This can be in the form of opportunities for social and community development, improved health and wellbeing, improved biodiversity, restored ecosystems and landscape character, and protected and respected cultural heritage. This first ever special issue on enhancement advocates that all forms of IA should consider opportunities for enhancement. Specific reference is made to strategic environmental assessment (SEA),...
Abstract (from http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0006320714002882): With ongoing global change, there is an urgent need to expand existing networks of important conservation areas around the world. In the western United States, vast areas of public land, including those administered by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), present substantial conservation opportunities. For 11 contiguous western states, we used a novel multiple-criteria analysis to model and map contiguous areas of roadless BLM land that possessed important ecological indicators of high biodiversity, resilience to climate change, and landscape connectivity. Specifically, we leveraged available spatial datasets to implement a systematic...
map background search result map search result map Shapefile depicting conservation priority areas on Bureau of Land Management lands in the 11 western states Climate Change Vulnerability and Adaptation Strategies for Natural Communities Managing Changing Landscapes in the Southwestern United States Sacaton Riparian Grasslands Report and Publications: Assessing Evapotranspiration Rate Changes for Proposed Restoration of the Forested Uplands of the DLCC Sacaton Riparian Grasslands Report and Publications: Assessing Evapotranspiration Rate Changes for Proposed Restoration of the Forested Uplands of the DLCC Climate Change Vulnerability and Adaptation Strategies for Natural Communities Managing Changing Landscapes in the Southwestern United States Shapefile depicting conservation priority areas on Bureau of Land Management lands in the 11 western states