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Millions of acres of California’s forest cover have been lost due to severe wildfire and drought mediatedinsect outbreaks. These acres may not grow back as forests without management action, which could negatively impact carbon sequestration, access to clean drinking water, wildlife habitat and recreation opportunities. Various factors, including limited regeneration potential, hotter and more extreme climatic conditions, and the threat of reburning hinder forest recovery. In recent year researchers have developed numerous tools and resources to help forest managers prioritize where to reforest, and how to implement climate-adaptive strategies. However, forest managers lack the time and resources to review each...
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Plants and animals undergo certain recurring life-cycle events, such as springtime flowering or migrations between summer and winter habitats, that are often strongly controlled by changes in environmental conditions, including climate. Because species interact, shifts in one species’ phenology can have cascading effects throughout entire food webs and ecosystems. Recent advances have helped grow the body of literature surrounding phenology. We now know, for example, that invasive species often show greater flexibility in the timing of their phenological events, enabling them to outcompete native species as climate and environmental conditions change. Natural resource managers recognize that changes in phenology...
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The Colorado River and its major tributaries provide a crucial water supply for more than 40 million people in the American Southwest and in California. This water supply is primarily used in irrigated agriculture but also provides essential drinking water to many large metropolitan areas. Hydropower is also produced at many of the large dams on the river. River flows have declined during the past 15 years due to decreasing watershed runoff associated with a warming climate and ongoing drought. Climate projections indicate a continued decrease in future water availability as runoff continues to decline and temperatures warm. Water-users in the Colorado River basin are concerned about this declining water availability...
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The complex mountain and valley chains of the Southwest exert a strong influence on precipitation and wind patterns. Atmospheric rivers deliver some of the most extreme precipitation events to west-southwest-facing slopes of the mountains where strong gusty downslope winds can also spread wildfires. Climate change is making the southwest warmer and dryer resulting in more fire-prone vegetation and more frequent and extreme atmospheric rivers. Understanding this changing system is critical for managing water resources and wildfire in the region. This project will study how climate change is impacting precipitation and winds to create fire weather and drive fire spread on heavily vegetated slopes of coastal mountains....
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Natural resource managers often use weather and climate information to make land management decisions. While technological advancements in data acquisition and processing have led to more online, climate-based tools and databases, these tools often require resource managers to invest a substantial amount of time to use. To address these data access challenges, the project team was previously funded to collaborate with resource managers to design highly specialized, customizable climate reports that can be used to improve land management and decision making. A key finding of this previous research was that the data and time requirements of report generation were unique to each partner. Because of that, a codebase...
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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...
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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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The quantity and availability of weather- and climate-related data has grown dramatically over the past decade due in part to improvements in computing speed, internet bandwidth and data visualization tools. Ideally, these improvements should help information reach experts in the relevant domain and inform decision making, leading to better weather- and climate-related decision-making and risk management. Decision support tools (DSTs) often serve as the intermediary between raw data and actionable information and decision making. The design of these DSTs is critical to ensure they present actionable information for a wide variety of potential users. This can lead to mis-specified tools with a ‘one size-fits no one’...
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The complex challenge of adapting to climate changerequires collaborative solutions that can be enhanced by connecting individuals to each other and to essential information. This project will evaluate the effectiveness of online decision information tools designed to aid adaptation, that are supported by the development of a network of practice. Networks can aid adaptation by improving the quantity and quality of professional relationships, mobilizing leadership, enhancing the flow of information and generating more actions that lead to adaptation breakthroughs. Many new networks in the Southwest have developed online tools to inform adaptation planning and natural resource management. In this project, we will...
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In recent years, a number of catastrophic wildfires have fundamentally changed species composition and structure across a large area of the Sierra Nevada of California. These fires leave behind many large, severely burned patches of land where the majority of trees have died. To make informed management decisions, forest managers need to understand the long-term effects of these fires on vegetation recovery and fuel loading. Large patches without trees might not reforest on their own which can cause forest loss; and, high-severity fires may lead to other high-severity fires by increasing the amount of fuel available to burn. Such repeat fires could lower the odds of any postfire forest recovery. By including...
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Ecosystems respond to disturbances (such as wildfire) and changing climate in a variety of ways, including persistence, recovery, and reorganization into new combinations. Some species respond by migrating across the landscape over time, which allows them to keep up with changing climate. Many forests recover after wildfire by regenerating from seeds, and public land managers often assist these processes to help ecosystems recover. However, the success of all of these strategies depends on young plants (seedlings and saplings) surviving, often when exposed to harsh conditions following fires, including prolonged droughts, heat waves, and rising temperatures. In this project, researchers will study how well young...
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The Southwest Climate Adaptation Science Center supports conservation and management of the Southwest’s natural resources and cultural heritage by building partnerships between scientists and decision-makers, fostering development of research products to inform decisions, and assisting American Indian communities in adapting to climate change in the southwestern United States. Our vision it to help to maintain and sustain the Southwest’s unique biodiversity, its ecosystems’ diverse contributions to human welfare, and its diverse cultures, [both indigenous and adventitious,] as the region’s climate undergoes change in the coming years and decades. The SW CASC is hosted by the University of Arizona. Other consortium...
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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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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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Clear Lake, California’s largest freshwater lake, is an important site for seven federally recognized Tribal Nations and numerous related Tribes and Tribal communities, where they hold lakeside cultural ceremonies, fish and recreate, and gather tule reeds. Today, climate change has amplified ecological imbalances within the lake, endangering aquatic wildlife and threatening the health and wellbeing of Tribal citizens. To conserve Clear Lake’s culturally significant sites and species, this project seeks to understand the relationship between wildfires, harmful algal blooms, and aquatic toxins degrading the lake’s ecosystems. The research will particularly examine threats to the endemic, endangered, and culturally...
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Actionable science has evolved rapidly over the last decade, and the Climate Adaptation Science Center (CASC) network has established itself as a leader in the field. The practice of actionable science is generally described as user-focused, action-oriented science that addresses pressing real-world climate adaptation challenges. It is also sometimes referred to as usable science, translational ecology, and coproduction. Successfully carrying out actionable science projects requires a range of skills, mindsets, and techniques in addition to scientific knowledge. Those skills can include mutual learning with stakeholders, attention to social and political context, iterative creative problem-solving, and interdisciplinary...
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The Southwest U.S. is experiencing hotter droughts, which are contributing to more frequent, severe wildfires. These droughts also stress vegetation, which can make it more difficult for forests to recover after fire. Forest regeneration in burned areas may be limited because seeds have to travel long distances to recolonize, and when they do arrive, conditions are often unfavorably hot and dry. Conifer forests in the region have demonstrated particular difficulty in recovering after fires, and in some cases have transformed into other ecosystem types, such as deciduous-dominated forests or grasslands. Such ecological transformations have implications not only for the plants and animals that depend on conifer forests...
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Changing climate conditions could have significant impacts on wildlife health. Shifts in temperature and precipitation may directly affect the occurrence of disease in fish and wildlife by altering their interactions with pathogens (such as the bacterium that causes Lyme disease), helping vectors like mosquitoes and ticks expand their range, or speeding up the time it takes for a parasite to develop from an egg to an adult. Climate change can also indirectly affect the health of fish and wildlife as their habitats change. For example, reduced food availability could lead to overcrowding and increased disease transmission, or warmer temperatures might increase stress levels, weakening immune systems and making animals...
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Fires are becoming more extensive and severe in the West, and post-fire recovery is a challenge for communities as they adapt to a changing climate. Post-fire management can involve watershedrehabilitation, recovering valuable trees, and replanting to prevent forest loss and damage to watersheds. Land management agencies that make decisions may prioritize goals that differ from those of local populations--especially Native American Tribes, who may focus primarily on recovering non-timber values, such wetlands or species that provide food, fiber, or medicine, on their reservations and on their ancestral homelands. The goal of this research is to inform post-fire management and policy, so it is more responsive to...
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Increasing wildfire activity in the western US poses profound risks for human communities and ecological systems. Recent fire years are characterized not only by expanding area burned but also explosive fire growth. In 2020, several fires grew by >100,000 acres within a 24-hour period. Extreme single-day fire spread events such as these are poorly understood but disproportionately responsible for wildfire impacts: just the top 1% of fire spread events account for 20% of annual area burned. Extreme events are linked to warmer and drier conditions, and we project that their frequency could double under future climate. Extreme fire spread events defy suppression and overcome traditional fuels reductions treatments,...
map background search result map search result map Synthesizing Climate Change Impacts on Wildlife Health and Identifying Adaptation Strategies Post-Fire Conifer Regeneration Under a Warming Climate: Will Severe Fire Be a Catalyst for Forest Loss? Collaborating with Resource Managers to Identify and Address Phenological Information Needs State of the Science Synthesis on Transformational Drought: Understanding Drought’s Potential to Transform Ecosystems Across the Country The Impacts of Climate Change and Water Supply Management on Fish in the Colorado River A Synthesis of Climate Change Refugia Science and Management Actions to Inform Climate Adaptation in the Southwest Southwest Climate Adaptation Science Center Consortium- Hosted by University of Arizona (2018-2023) Building Capacity for Actionable and Interdisciplinary Science Across the Climate Adaptation Science Center Network Monitoring and Adaptation to Conserve Clear Lake Cultural Keystone Species Future of Fire in the Southwest: Towards a National Synthesis of Wildland Fire Under a Changing Climate Climate MicroApps: Assessment and Innovation in Climate Decision Support Tools for Land Managers The Importance of Forests for All People: Understanding Forest Recovery Priorities, Management Options, and Policy Needs for Tribes in Post-Fire Landscapes Evaluation of Network Tools to Advance Climate Adaptation in the Southwest Improving Water Resilience and Availability Through Culturally Prescribed Fires as a Management Tool on Yurok Tribal Lands California Reforestation Management Toolshed: A Web-Based Dashboard of Integrating Existing Resources Understanding Extreme Wildfire Events to Manage for Fire-Resistant and Resilient Landscapes Automating Custom Climate Reports to Support Natural Resource Management in the Southwest How Do Critical Life History Stages Limit Plant Adaptation to Changing Climate? The Role of Seedling and Sapling Survivorship in Ecosystem Resilience The Effects of Catastrophic Wildfires on Vegetation and Fuel Loads in the Sierra Nevada of California How do Atmospheric Rivers and Downslope Winds Affect Wildfire Risk and Water Resources in the Arid Southwest? Monitoring and Adaptation to Conserve Clear Lake Cultural Keystone Species The Effects of Catastrophic Wildfires on Vegetation and Fuel Loads in the Sierra Nevada of California Post-Fire Conifer Regeneration Under a Warming Climate: Will Severe Fire Be a Catalyst for Forest Loss? Climate MicroApps: Assessment and Innovation in Climate Decision Support Tools for Land Managers Automating Custom Climate Reports to Support Natural Resource Management in the Southwest How Do Critical Life History Stages Limit Plant Adaptation to Changing Climate? The Role of Seedling and Sapling Survivorship in Ecosystem Resilience California Reforestation Management Toolshed: A Web-Based Dashboard of Integrating Existing Resources The Impacts of Climate Change and Water Supply Management on Fish in the Colorado River Understanding Extreme Wildfire Events to Manage for Fire-Resistant and Resilient Landscapes Southwest Climate Adaptation Science Center Consortium- Hosted by University of Arizona (2018-2023) Future of Fire in the Southwest: Towards a National Synthesis of Wildland Fire Under a Changing Climate How do Atmospheric Rivers and Downslope Winds Affect Wildfire Risk and Water Resources in the Arid Southwest? A Synthesis of Climate Change Refugia Science and Management Actions to Inform Climate Adaptation in the Southwest Collaborating with Resource Managers to Identify and Address Phenological Information Needs The Importance of Forests for All People: Understanding Forest Recovery Priorities, Management Options, and Policy Needs for Tribes in Post-Fire Landscapes Evaluation of Network Tools to Advance Climate Adaptation in the Southwest State of the Science Synthesis on Transformational Drought: Understanding Drought’s Potential to Transform Ecosystems Across the Country Synthesizing Climate Change Impacts on Wildlife Health and Identifying Adaptation Strategies Building Capacity for Actionable and Interdisciplinary Science Across the Climate Adaptation Science Center Network