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The goals of this project were to: (1) produce a state-of-the-art assessment and synthesis of climate change projections, impacts, vulnerabilities, adaptive capacity, and prospects for mitigation and adaptation actions in the Southwest in support of the regional contribution to the National Climate Assessment; (2) develop an inventory of federal partners and stakeholders involved with climate adaptation programs, and (3) forge stronger bonds between the DOI-SW CSC, the three NOAA-RISAs in the Southwest, and the Landscape Conservation Cooperatives.
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In many places around the world, spring events, like warming temperatures, are coming earlier and fall events are coming later than they have in the past. These changes have implications for the phenology, or the timing of natural life events (e.g. the timing of plant flowering in Spring or leaves falling in Autumn), of many plant species. However, not all species and regions are changing at the same rate, which can lead to mismatches (e.g. between the emergence of plants and pollinators in early spring). Many interactions in nature depend on timing and, as such, phenology affects nearly all aspects of the environment, including the abundance, distribution, and diversity of organisms, ecosystem services, food webs,...
University of Arizona (HOST) The University of Arizona (UArizona) is the SW CASC host institution, and the state’s land grant institution. UArizona is a national leader in climate and environmental science, co-production of science and policy research, engagement, and outreach and climate adaptation science, planning and implementation. The SW CASC is housed within the Arizona Institute for Resilient Environments and Societies (AIRES) at UArizona, which has over 300 affiliated faculty and houses many long-term initiatives with experience in co-production of actionable science. UArizona SW CASC co-PI Alison Meadow and DRI co-PI Tamara Wall are evaluating SW CASC projects using a framework they developed for...
Atmospheric rivers (ARs), narrow atmospheric water vapor corridors, can contribute substantially to winter precipitation in the semiarid Southwest U.S., where natural ecosystems and humans compete for over-allocated water resources. We investigate the hydrologic impacts of 122 ARs that occurred in the Salt and Verde river basins in northeastern Arizona during the cold seasons from 1979 to 2009. We focus on the relationship between precipitation, snow water equivalent (SWE), soil moisture, and extreme flooding. During the cold season (October through March) ARs contribute an average of 25%/29% of total seasonal precipitation for the Salt/Verde river basins, respectively. However, they contribute disproportionately...
Abstract (from http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/eco.1723/full): Quantifying the regulation of precipitation-associated vegetation dynamics on land surface water balance poses a particular challenge in current eco-hydrological studies because terrestrial ecological processes interact with hydrological processes, and both are subject to precipitation change. The objective of this study is to examine how precipitation change-associated vegetation dynamics may regulate catchment water balance in a semiarid to arid mountain ecosystem. To achieve this objective, R-RHESSys, which is short for rasterised regional hydro-ecological simulation system, a distributed hydro-ecological model, was applied to the Cleve...
Abstract (from http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/conl.12322/full): Under rapid landscape change, there is a significant need to expand and connect protected areas (PAs) to prevent further loss of biodiversity and preserve ecological functions across broad geographies. We used a model of landscape resistance and electronic circuit theory to estimate patterns of ecological flow among existing PAs in the western United States. We applied these results to areas previously identified as having high conservation value to distinguish those best positioned to maintain and enhance ecological connectivity and integrity. We found that current flow centrality was highest and effective resistance lowest in areas that...
Abstract (from http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/BAMS-D-14-00289.1): There is an increasing demand for climate science that decision-makers can readily use to address issues created by climate variability and climate change. To be usable, the science must be relevant to their context and the complex management challenges they face and credible and legitimate in their eyes. The literature on usable science provides guiding principles for its development, which indicate that climate scientists who want to participate in the process need skills in addition to their traditional disciplinary training to facilitate communicating, interacting, and developing and sustaining relationships with stakeholders outside...
Abstract: This review paper addresses the challenging question of “how to” design and implement co-production of knowledge in climate science and other environmental and agricultural sciences. Based on a grounded theory review of nine (9) published case studies of transdisciplinary and collaborative research projects, the paper offers a set of common themes regarding specific components and processes for the design, implementation, and achievement of co-production of knowledge work, which represent the “Modus Operandi” of knowledge co-production. The analysis focuses on practical methodological guidance based on lessons from how different research teams have approached the challenges of complex collaborative research....
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Resource managers must balance the impacts of competing management decisions on multiple, interacting natural systems. Hydrologic and ecological processes, such as groundwater fluctuations and riparian evapotranspiration, can be tightly coupled. Ideally, managers would have tools and models that include all processes to better understand how each management action would propagate through the environment. Because resources are limited, management tools that include only the most important processes may be more realistic. However, in some cases, omitting some interactions can lead to significant errors in predictions of hydrologic outcomes and ecological function, severely limiting a manager’s ability to identify...
A new satellite-derived low cloud retrieval reveals rich spatial texture and coherent space-time propagation in summertime California coastal low cloudiness (CLC). Throughout the region, CLC is greatest during May–September but has considerable monthly variability within this summer season. On average, June is cloudiest along the coast of southern California and northern Baja, Mexico, while July is cloudiest along northern California's coast. Over the course of the summer, the core of peak CLC migrates northward along coastal California, reaching its northernmost extent in late July/early August, then recedes while weakening. The timing and movement of the CLC climatological structure is related to the summer evolution...
Assessment of Climate Change in the Southwest United States - a contribution to the 2013 National Climate Assessment - is a summary and synthesis of the past, present, and projected future of the region’s climate, emphasizing new information and understandings since publication of the previous national assessment in 2009.
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All of these files are Access Databases that contain RTK elevation survey data and the corresponding vegetation surveys that were conducted concurrently. Over 2,000 intertidal plots were sampled for plant cover, frequency of occurrence, and species richness across the six study sites. Approximately 57 vascular plant species were found in the study, including grasses, rushes, forbs and sedges. Vegetated marsh ranged in elevation from approximately local mean tide level (MTL) to the marsh-upland transition zone (upland plots, defined as areas estimated to flood 1 time per year on average, were not considered for further analysis). We assessed vegetation cover and species richness concurrently with elevation surveys...
Abstract (from http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/JCLI-D-15-0199.1): Future snowfall and snowpack changes over the mountains of Southern California are projected using a new hybrid dynamical–statistical framework. Output from all general circulation models (GCMs) in phase 5 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project archive is downscaled to 2-km resolution over the region. Variables pertaining to snow are analyzed for the middle (2041–60) and end (2081–2100) of the twenty-first century under two representative concentration pathway (RCP) scenarios: RCP8.5 (business as usual) and RCP2.6 (mitigation). These four sets of projections are compared with a baseline reconstruction of climate from 1981 to 2000....
Exposure (vulnerability) index for the future time period (2041-2060) representing projected climate conditions from the Meterological Research Institute's Coupled Atmosphere-Ocean General Circulation Model (MRI-CGCM3) and the rcp45 emissions scenario. The exposure model uses LANDFIRE vegetation data and Worldclim climate data .The raster values represent exposure scores for the corresponding vegetation type. The modeled vegetation types can be spatially associated with the exposure values by overlaying them with the "landfire_veg_sw_300m.tif" raster.Exposure values represent where the location falls in climate space relative to its recent historical distribution:5 (core 5% of historical climate space); 10 (5 -...
Abstract (from http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ddi.12257/abstract): Aim Ecological niche modelling is one of the main tools that allows for the incorporation of climate change effects into conservation planning. For example, ecological niche model predictions can be used to rank species by degree of predicted future habitat loss. While many studies have considered how different modelling decisions contribute to uncertainty in niche model outputs, here we evaluate how metrics used to rank species by conservation risk respond to the choice of global climate models, greenhouse gas emission scenarios, suitable versus unsuitable threshold values, and the degree of model complexity. Location California,...
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We used WARMER, a 1-D cohort model of wetland accretion (Swanson et al., 2014), which is based on Callaway et al. (1996), to examine the effects of three SLR projections on future habitat composition at each study site. Each cohort in the model represents the total organic and inorganic matter added to the soil column each year. WARMER calculates annual elevation changes relative to MSL based on projected changes in relative sea level, subsidence, inorganic sediment accumulation, aboveground and belowground organic matter inputs, soil compaction, and organic matter decomposition for a representative marsh area. Cohort density, a function of soil mineral, organic, and water content, is calculated at each time step...
Abstract (from http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10584-013-0852-y): This paper provides an overview of climate change impacts on tribal water resources and the subsequent cascading effects on the livelihoods and cultures of American Indians and Alaska Natives living on tribal lands in the U.S. A hazards and vulnerability framework for understanding these impacts is first presented followed by context on the framework components, including climate, hydrologic, and ecosystem changes (i.e. hazards) and tribe-specific vulnerability factors (socioeconomic, political, infrastructural, environmental, spiritual and cultural), which when combined with hazards lead to impacts. Next regional summaries of impacts...
Abstract (from Dendrochronologia): In the United States’ (US) Northern Rockies, synoptic pressure systems and atmospheric circulation drive interannual variation in seasonal temperature and precipitation. The radial growth of high-elevation trees in this semi-arid region captures this temperature and precipitation variability and provides long time series to contextualize instrumental-era variability in synoptic-scale climate patterns. Such variability in climate patterns can trigger extreme climate events, such as droughts, floods, and forest fires, which have a damaging impact on human and natural systems. We developed 11 tree-ring width (TRW) chronologies from multiple species and sites to investigate the seasonal...
From http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate2809.html, the Correspondence begins: California is currently experiencing a record-setting drought that started in 2012 and recently culminated in the first ever mandatory state-wide water restriction 1. The snowpack conditions in the Sierra Nevada mountains present an ominous sign of the severity of this drought: the 1 April 2015 snow water equivalent (SWE) was at only 5% of its historical average 2. In the Mediterranean climate of California, with 80% of the precipitation occurring during winter months, Sierra Nevada snowpack plays a critical role in replenishing the state's water reservoirs and provides 30% of its water supply 3. As a result,...
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In the southwestern US, the meteorological phenomenon known as atmospheric rivers (ARs) has gained increasing attention due to its strong connections to floods, snowpacks and water supplies in the West Coast states. Relatively less is known about the ecological implications of ARs, particularly in the interior Southwest, where AR storms are less common. To address this gap, we compared a chronology of AR landfalls on the west coast between 1989-2011 and between 25-42.5ºN, to annual metrics of the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI; an indicator of vegetation productivity) and daily-resolution precipitation data to assess influences of AR-fed winter precipitation on vegetation productivity across the southwestern...
map background search result map search result map Synthesis of Current Science and Assessment of Science Needs for Adaptation in the Southwest Assessing the Impacts of Restoration Efforts on Water and Natural Systems in a Changing World Tidal Marsh Vegetation and Elevation Data SLR Projections, Tijuana, Calif., 2010-2060 Data on influence of atmospheric rivers on vegetation productivity and fire patterns in the southwestern US Understanding Changes to the Timing of Natural Events (Phenology) for Plants in the Water-Limited Southwest SLR Projections, Tijuana, Calif., 2010-2060 Assessing the Impacts of Restoration Efforts on Water and Natural Systems in a Changing World Tidal Marsh Vegetation and Elevation Data Understanding Changes to the Timing of Natural Events (Phenology) for Plants in the Water-Limited Southwest Synthesis of Current Science and Assessment of Science Needs for Adaptation in the Southwest Data on influence of atmospheric rivers on vegetation productivity and fire patterns in the southwestern US