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The connectivity result files from Circuitscape represent the "adjusted cumulative current density" flowing across the landscape for each of several species, at a 90-meter resolution across the South Atlantic Landscape Conservation Cooperative region. Rasters are classified using quantiles with 20 categories (each 5% of region) to integer scores from 1-20. 1 = lowest 5% of the landscape, 20= top 5% of landscape Expert opinion was used to define a resistance surface for each of the target animals, with higher resistance representing map units expected to be more difficult and dangerous for species to move through. A set of nodes for each species, with node points indicating center locations for potential source populations,...
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This dataset contains the 2012 version of the anadromous fish streams (polylines) for Southeast Alaska and is pull from the Anadromous Waters Catalog. The Alaska Department of Fish and Game's (ADF&G) Anadromous water bodies data is derived from the ADF&G's GIS shape files for the "Catalog of Waters Important for Spawning, Rearing or Migration of Anadromous Fishes" (referred to as the "Catalog") and the "Atlas to the Catalog of Waters Important for Spawning, Rearing or Migration of Anadromous Fishes" (referred to as the "Atlas"). It is produced for general visual reference and to aid users in generating various natural resource analyses and products. The shape files depict the known anadromous fish bearing lakes...
Mapping the South’s Forests of the Future project leveraged existing regional and partnership-driven conservation planning efforts collectively defining the Southeast Conservation Adaptation Strategy, which had compiled several geospatial priorities, and expanded that work to other forest and conservation entities to produce a comprehensive geospatial inventory of planned and prioritized areas of forest protection/retention and restoration. This project integrates and incorporates priorities into a single map to visualize multiple potential futures of Southern forests while considering the gradient of uncertainty surrounding successful implementation of conservation plans, urbanization and other development pressures,...
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For State agencies and other water-resources managers, determining which waterbodies to allocate limited funds for protection and restoration while also maximizing cost benefit is challenging. This data release contains trophic state designations determined from secchi depth, and concentrations of chlorophyll a and microcystin at 232 lakes and reservoirs having a surface area of greater than 0.1 square kilometer in watersheds that drain to the Atlantic and eastern Gulf of Mexico coasts of the United States and in watersheds within the Tennessee River Basin. Estimates of nutrient loading (nitrogen and phosphorus, Hoos and others, 2013; Moorman and others, 2014) and flushing rates were combined with waterbody morphometry...
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Abundant scientific research has characterized the relationships between climate and fire in ecosystems of the United States, and there is substantial evidence that the role of fire in ecosystems is likely to change with a changing climate. Changing fire patterns pose numerous natural resource management challenges and decision makers in natural-resource management increasingly require information about potential future changes in fire regimes to effectively prepare for and adapt to climate change impacts. An effective forward-looking fire science synthesis is urgently required to reflect the changing dimensions of human fire management, recognizing that fire causes, effects, impacts, and management are all interrelated...
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The climate of the Southeast is changing rapidly. As streams warm and streamflow dynamics change due to climate and land-cover changes, previously unsuitable habitats may become hospitable for invasive species. Warmwater and large-river adapted invasive species such as Asian carps may move upstream as habitats that were previously too cold or had too little flow become welcoming environments for them as climate changes. The spread of invasive species will likely impact native fishes and dependent local economies like fishing and tourism. Within the Southeast, the Tennessee and Cumberland River Basins, located across 7 different US states, are among the most important in terms of total, narrow-ranged, and at-risk...
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Drought events have cost the U.S. nearly $245 billion since 1980, with costs ranging from $2 to $44 billion in any given year. However, these socio-economic losses are not the only impacts of drought. Ecosystems, fish, wildlife, and plants also suffer, and these types of drought impacts are becoming more commonplace. Further, ecosystems that recover from drought are now doing so under different climate conditions than they have experienced in the past few centuries. As temperature and precipitation patterns change, “transformational drought”, or drought events that can permanently and irreversibly alter ecosystems – such as forests converting to grasslands – are a growing threat. This type of drought has cascading...
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Aquatic ecological surveys are valuable to understanding the interaction between the biotic and abiotic components in rivers and streams. However, large-scale assessments of the water chemistry, geomorphology, and ecological community are usually not feasible due to limited resources. Beginning in 2013, the Regional Stream Quality Assessment Project of the US Geological Survey’s National Water Quality Program, began sampling 89-120 streams in each of 5 regions across the conterminous United States—the Midwest (2013), Southeast (2014), Pacific Northwest (2015), Northeast (2016), and California (2017). Sampling included water and streambed sediment chemistry, stage and temperature (Journey and others, 2015). The abiotic...
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Forest Retention Index classes for the southeastern United States at 2040 were processed using the Forest Retention Decision Tree and rendered on a 30-meter by 30-meter grid. The Forest Retention Index is used only for current forestland, identified using National Land Cover Database 2011. Many datasets were used as inputs for the Forest Retention Decision Tree, and they can be grouped into five broad categories: Protected, Tier 1 Priority, Tier 2 Priority, Threats to Forest Retention, and Socio-Economic Value of Forests. Protected datasets include Protected Areas Database-United States, National Conservation Easement Database, state-maintained databases, and private datasets volunteered by conservation partners....
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Recent estimates of the magnitude of species’ range shifts, extinctions, and changes in ecosystem processes resulting from climatic change are alarming. Estimates of extinction rates and population losses attributable to climatic change are often based on studies of modeled biogeographic distributions, which rely on simple relationships between present-day distributions of species and climate variables to estimate distributions of species under future climate. Hundreds of papers using distribution models - based almost exclusively on relationships between plants and climate - have been published. The predictions of these models undergird conservation plans, are used to forecast the magnitude of future extinctions,...
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The southeastern U.S. is home to many rare plant species, some at risk of extinction. A new national list has identified the top plant “Species of Greatest Conservation Need” (SGCN) across the region which can help southeastern states update their State Wildlife Action Plans (SWAPs) to include plants for the first time. In partnership with the Southeast Plant Conservation Alliance, NatureServe, and the SE Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies, this project will build on the SGCN list by adding information for each species compiled from any previously conducted climate-vulnerability assessments. It will also identify the ecosystems that host the greatest numbers of rare plant species on the list (biodiversity...
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The Potential Reforestation Index geospatial data product is a companion to the Forest Retention Index product from the Mapping the South’s Forests of the Future project. The Retention Index describes the likelihood that existing forests will remain in a forested condition at decadal time steps through 2060. The Potential Reforestation Index describes the likelihood that a non-forested land unit will be converted to forest cover at those same time steps. We used two datasets to determine areas currently occupied by agriculture that may be most conducive to reforestation efforts: National Commodity Crop Productivity Index (NCCPI) and Potentially Restorable Wetlands on Agriculture Land (PRWAg). The NCCPI is available...
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Climate in the southeastern U.S. is predicted to be changing at a slower rate than other parts of North America. However, land use change associated with urbanization is having a significant effect on wildlife populations and habitat availability. We sought to understand the effect of global warming on both beneficial and pest insects of trees. We used urban warming as a proxy for global warming as many cities have already warmed as much, due to heat island effects, as they are expected to warm due to climate change by 2050 or even 2100. We were able to develop good predictive models of how warming influences beneficial and pest insects for cities in the Southeast and across the east coast more generally. We were...
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Urbanization in the Southeast U.S. is among the fastest in the nation, and represents a primary threat to threatened and endangered species. As urbanized areas expand, they are encroaching on preserved areas, like national wildlife refuges, and are dividing forests into smaller fragments. Forests that are located next to cities and suburbs are exposed to high temperatures, pollution, insect pests, invasive plants, and other factors that threaten forest health. However, forests located within urban and suburban areas – “urban forests” are capable of supporting diverse plant and animal life, and could play an increasingly important role in conservation as urbanization continues. Little is currently known about how...
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Anthropogenic hydrologic alteration threatens the health of riverine ecosystems. This study assesses hydrologic alteration in the Pearl and Pascagoula river basins using modeled daily streamflow. Machine learning was used to identify locations that have undergone statistically significant streamflow alteration, quantify the volume of the alteration, and predict alteration using cubist models. Statistically significant alteration was determined by hypothesis testing. The pre- and post-alteration flow duration curves were used to calculate the net change across 60 years. Cubist models were developed for both basins to predict hydrologic alteration and to identify important basin characteristics. This data release...
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One of the largest and most expensive restoration efforts in the world is the restoration of the Everglades, a sub-tropical freshwater wetland system located in southern Florida. This unique ecosystem supports several endemic and endangered species, provides flood control for Florida’s large urban population, and provides water for both the agricultural and drinking supply within the state. The Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP), authorized by Congress in 2000, guides federal, state, and local efforts to build the infrastructure necessary to bring more water into the Everglades and restore its ecological integrity. The Everglades flows into the southern coast of Florida and restoration efforts are...
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Thousands of plant and animal species are culturally important to the Indigenous peoples of North America. Global change is leading to major shifts in the abundance, distribution, and life history of these species, with concomitant effects on their value to the peoples for whom they are most culturally important. While a number of studies have begun to explore the futures of culturally significant species, these studies typically do so in isolation, focusing on individual plant species and single future scenarios, and involve little engagement with the people for whom such species are most important. This project seeks to fill this gap by examining the future of culturally important species as climate conditions...
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A team of USGS and academic researchers developed a comprehensive web-based dataset of high-resolution (or ‘downscaled’) climate change projections, enabling scientists and decision-makers to better assess climate related ecosystem impacts. The research team implemented a three-part plan to provide high resolution climate data for the impact modeling community. First, a database was developed of up-to-date and state-of-the-art downscaled climate projections for the U.S., using a range of plausible future greenhouse gas emission scenarios. Second, a series of workshops were held to solicit input about climate-related data needs and to discuss best practices for accessing and using downscaled climate projections....
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The broad range of complex factors influencing coastal systems contribute to large uncertainties in predicting long-term sea level rise impacts. Researchers demonstrated the capabilities of a Bayesian network (BN) to predict long-term shoreline change associated with sea level rise and make quantitative assessments for predicting uncertainty. A BN was used to define relationships between driving forces, geologic constraints, and coastal response for the U.S. Atlantic coast that include observations of local rates of relative sea level rise, wave height, tide range, geomorphic classification, coastal slope, and shoreline change rate. The BN was used to make probabilistic predictions of shoreline retreat in response...
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This project seeks to enhance the stewardship of historic buildings vulnerable to climate change impacts. As sea level rise and storm-related flooding and erosion threaten our nation’s cultural heritage, there is a critical need to ensure that climate change adaptation decisions, including what cultural resources will be “let go”, are transparent and informed by the opinion of people whose heritage is tied to those resources. This project aims to enhance an existing decision support framework that supports adaptation planning by the National Park Service at coastal parks. The researchers of this project will focus particularly on Cape Lookout National Seashore. The current decision support framework, called the...
map background search result map search result map Anadromous Fish Streams Tree Eaters: Predicting the Response of Herbivores to the Integrated Effects of Urban and Global Change Red Wolf Connectivity SERAP: Comprehensive Web-based Climate Change Projections: Downscaled Maps and Data SERAP: Assessment of Shoreline Retreat in Response to Sea Level Rise Forests of the Future: Integrated Assessment of Climate Change and Ecosystem Diversity Southeast Regional Stream Quality Assessment Ecological Data Potential Reforestation Index for the South at 2030 Forest Retention Index for the South at year 2030 The Future of Culturally Important Species in North America Effects of Urbanization on the Conservation Value of Forests Nutrient loading, flushing rate, and lake morphometry data used to identify trophic states in selected watersheds of the eastern and southeastern United States State of the Science Synthesis on Transformational Drought: Understanding Drought’s Potential to Transform Ecosystems Across the Country Climate- and Land-Cover-Induced Shifts in the Distribution and Abundance of Invasive Fish and Their Impacts on Native Fish Communities in the Tennessee and Cumberland River Basins Future of Fire: Towards a National Synthesis of Wildland Fire Under a Changing Climate Supporting data and model outputs for hydrologic alteration modeling in the Pearl and Pascagoula river basins Examining Diverse Management Objectives and Broadening Stakeholder Engagement for Climate Adaptation Planning of Historic Structures within the National Park System Integrating Sea Level Rise Scenarios into Everglades Restoration Planning Climate Impact Summaries for Rare-Plant Biodiversity in the Southeastern U.S. Forests of the Future: Integrated Assessment of Climate Change and Ecosystem Diversity Integrating Sea Level Rise Scenarios into Everglades Restoration Planning Examining Diverse Management Objectives and Broadening Stakeholder Engagement for Climate Adaptation Planning of Historic Structures within the National Park System SERAP: Assessment of Shoreline Retreat in Response to Sea Level Rise Supporting data and model outputs for hydrologic alteration modeling in the Pearl and Pascagoula river basins Southeast Regional Stream Quality Assessment Ecological Data Climate- and Land-Cover-Induced Shifts in the Distribution and Abundance of Invasive Fish and Their Impacts on Native Fish Communities in the Tennessee and Cumberland River Basins Anadromous Fish Streams Red Wolf Connectivity Effects of Urbanization on the Conservation Value of Forests Nutrient loading, flushing rate, and lake morphometry data used to identify trophic states in selected watersheds of the eastern and southeastern United States Forest Retention Index for the South at year 2030 Potential Reforestation Index for the South at 2030 Climate Impact Summaries for Rare-Plant Biodiversity in the Southeastern U.S. Tree Eaters: Predicting the Response of Herbivores to the Integrated Effects of Urban and Global Change The Future of Culturally Important Species in North America SERAP: Comprehensive Web-based Climate Change Projections: Downscaled Maps and Data State of the Science Synthesis on Transformational Drought: Understanding Drought’s Potential to Transform Ecosystems Across the Country Future of Fire: Towards a National Synthesis of Wildland Fire Under a Changing Climate