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Water resources are critical for ecosystems, agriculture, and communities, and potential climate impacts to hydrologic budgets and cycles are arguably the most consequential to society. Apart from precipitation, evapotranspiration makes up the most significant component of the hydrologic budget. Evapotranspiration is a primary metric for identifying Ecological Drought, a deficit in water availability that negatively impacts ecosystems and ecosystem services. Through an agreement between the USGS Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center Land Cover Monitoring, Assessment and Projection (LCMAP) program and the North Central CASC, Dr. Senay works to integrate and apply remotely sensed data for eco- and...
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The antelope-like pronghorn is the fastest land animal in North America and has the longest land migration in the continental U.S—in fact, the species has been dubbed “the true marathoners of the American West”. While pronghorns are numerous in parts of their range, such as Wyoming and northern Colorado, they are endangered in others, such as the Sonoran Desert. In the arid Southwest, pronghorn populations have been declining since the 1980s—and it’s thought that drought is partially to blame. Average temperatures in the Southwest have increased 1.6°C since 1901, and the area affected by drought from 2001-2010 was the second largest observed since 1901. Drought conditions have reduced the availability of vegetation,...
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Plants and animals undergo certain life cycle events every year, such as breeding or flowering. Known as phenology, these events are very sensitive to changes in climate. Changes in plant phenology can have cascading effects that impact the herbivore species that depend on the affected plants for food, such as elk, moose, and deer. Therefore, characterizing long term vegetation cycles can provide critical insight into how the behavior and health of a number of species may be altered due to climate change. This project sought to identify how drought conditions influence vegetation phenology, in order to better understand the potential effects on herbivores. Specifically, researchers examined (1) if drought causes...
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Native to the southwestern U.S. and northwestern Mexico, the desert bighorn sheep is known for its ability to adapt to harsh, arid environments. However, this does not mean the species is immune to the effects of drought. In fact, the fragmented and isolated distribution of the desert mountain ranges that they inhabit means that they can’t follow distant rain storms without traversing broad valleys at significant risk to mortality. This study examined the effects of a 2002 drought on desert bighorn sheep in the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge in southwestern Arizona. Specifically, researchers explored how the drought may have affected habitat selection, behavior, and diet of the sheep. For example, when...
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The threat of droughts and their associated impacts on the landscape and human communities has long been recognized in the United States, especially in high risk areas such as the South Central region. There is ample literature on the effects of long-term climate change and short-term climate variability on the occurrence of droughts. However, it is unclear whether this information meets the needs of relevant stakeholders and actually contributes to reducing the vulnerability or increasing the resilience of communities to droughts. For example, are the methods used to characterize the severity of drought – known as drought indices – effective tools for predicting the actual damage felt by communities? As droughts...
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The Wind River Indian Reservation in west-central Wyoming is home to the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho tribes, who reside near and depend on water from the streams that feed into the Wind River. In recent years, however, the region has experienced frequent severe droughts, which have impacted tribal livelihoods and cultural activities. Scientists with the North Central Climate Science Center at Colorado State University, the National Drought Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and several other university and agency partners are working closely with tribal water managers to assess how drought affects the reservation, integrating social, ecological, and hydro-climatological sciences...
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The Hawai‘i Drought Knowledge Exchange project has been successfully piloting three sets of formal collaborative knowledge exchanges between researchers and managers to co-produce customized, site specific drought data products to meet the needs of their partners. Through these pilots, knowledge co-production has demonstrated how active collaboration between researchers and managers in the design and production of data products can lead to more useful and accessible applications for drought planning and management. Resource managers have strongly embraced the need for better and more timely information on climate change, variability and drought, as these stressors exert a large and costly impact on resources...
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Drought is one of the biggest threats facing our forests today. In the western U.S., severe drought and rising temperatures have caused increased tree mortality and complete forest diebacks. Forests are changing rapidly, and while land managers are working to develop long-term climate change adaptation plans, they require tools that can enhance forest resistance to drought now. To address this immediate need, researchers are examining whether a common forest management tool, prescribed fire, can be implemented to help forests better survive drought. Prescribed fire is commonly used in the western U.S. to remove potential wildfire fuel, such as small trees and shrubs. It is also thought that this act of selectively...
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In Arctic and sub-Arctic regions, snow plays a crucial role in atmospheric and hydrologic systems and has a major influence on the health and function of regional ecosystems. Warming temperatures may have a significant impact on snow and may therefore affect the entire water cycle of the region. A decrease in precipitation in the form of snow, or “snow drought”, can manifest in several ways including changes to total snowfall amounts, snow accumulation, and the timing/length of the snow season. Understanding these changes is then critical for understanding and predicting a variety of climate impacts to wildlife and ecosystems. However, little research has been conducted to date to understand how this change may...
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Drought is a common consequence of climate variability in the south-central U.S., but they are expected to occur more often and become more intense with climate change. Natural resource managers can improve their planning efforts with advance warnings of impending drought. Using input from resource managers in the Chickasaw Nation, this research team previously created models that forecast droughts up to 18 months in advance with information about their expected timing and intensity. Developed for all climate divisions in Louisiana, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas, these drought models rely on input from predictor variables associated with global weather patterns like El Niño and La Niña. However, it is unclear...
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The USGS National Climate Change and Wildlife Science Center (NCCWSC) is currently engaged in an Ecological Drought initiative, focused on understanding the impacts of drought on natural ecosystems across the country. This project was designed to support the Ecological Drought initiative by creating a USGS EcoDrought Actionable Science Working Group. The goal of this working group was to identify science needs for drought-related decisions and to provide natural resource managers with practical strategies for adapting to and planning for drought. The working group engaged social scientists to garner advice on relevant social science research questions and data needs, as well as to identify any regulatory, institutional,...
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Some areas of the U.S. Affiliated Pacific Islands (USAPI) are experiencing a decline in precipitation and streamflow and an increase in the number of severe droughts. These changes can have wide-reaching implications, affecting the water supply, native vegetation and wildlife, wildfire patterns, and the spread of invasive species. As ecosystems become altered by invasive species and as particularly hotter, more variable climates emerge, it is critical that scientists produce locally relevant, timely, and actionable science products for managers to prepare for and cope with the impacts of drought. Simultaneously, it is important that managers are able to both access this information and shape the types of data products...
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The urgency for drought resilience planning has never been greater. With rapid changes in land use and increasing impacts from climate change, communities need to determine ways to meet their drought planning goals. Montana is forging new ground to join agencies, resource managers and communities to plan for drought impacts and build drought resilience. The State of Montana and the National Drought Resilience Partnership (NDRP)–a collaborative of federal and state agencies, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and watershed stakeholders–are working together to leverage and deliver technical, human and financial resources to help address drought in the arid West.The Missouri Headwaters Basin in southwest Montana...
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Species that inhabit the arid Southwest are adapted to living in hot, dry environments. Yet the increasing frequency and severity of drought in the region may create conditions that even these hardy species can’t survive. This project examined the impacts of drought in the southwestern U.S. on four of the region’s iconic species: desert bighorn sheep, American pronghorn, scaled quail, and Rio Grande cutthroat trout. Grasping the impacts of drought on fish and wildlife is critical for management planning in the Southwest, as climate models project warmer, drier conditions for the region in the future. Species are known to respond to environmental changes such as drought in different ways. Often, before changes...
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Droughts in the Hawaiian Islands can enhance wildfire risk, diminish freshwater resources, and devastate threatened and endangered species on land and in nearshore ecosystems. During periods of drought, cloud-water interception, or fog drip (the process by which water droplets accumulate on the leaves and branches of plants and then drip to the ground) in Hawai‘i’s rain forests may play an important role in providing moisture for plants, reducing wildfire risk within the fog zone, and contributing to groundwater recharge (the process by which water moves downward from the surface through the ground to the groundwater table) that sustains water flow in streams during dry periods. Estimates of the changes in water...
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In the western U.S., rising temperatures and pronounced drought conditions pose significant challenges to public land managers. Widespread declines of multiple plant species have already been observed, providing insight into what the future could look like for vegetation in the region as conditions are projected to become warmer and drier. To understand how vulnerable western ecosystems are to drought, managers need to know which climatic and soil conditions cause habitats to change, and at what rate these changes may occur – important topics on which there is little available data. This project seeks to identify the vulnerability of habitats in the western U.S. to drought. Researchers will compare changes in...
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Water is essential to our health, economy and quality of life. A scarcity of water has always characterized life in the West, and with increasing demands and limited supplies, smart and efficient water use is key. One answer is to develop conservation and drought mitigation strategies that start on the ground with full community participation and integrate high level tools available from state and federal partners.The National Drought Resiliency Partnership (NDRP) is a collaborative group of federal agencies working together to implement President Obama’s Climate Action Plan. In partnership with the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation (DNRC) and other state and local collaborators, the Missouri...
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The White House Council for Environmental Quality has identified two national watersheds to pilot large-scale drought resiliency implementation. The Missouri Headwaters Basin within the GNLCC region and High Divide landscape is one of these national demonstration areas, and the GNLCC can advance its collective mission with this opportunity. By delivering science to management and building a learning network among watershed groups, this project will align the large-scale watershed management efforts of the GNLCC with the National Drought Resiliency Program (NDRP) and the Montana Department of Natural Resources (DNRC) to build drought resilience into this important northern Rocky Mountain landscape.
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Climate change impacts on water resources in the Pacific Northwest are predicted to have transformational effects on agriculture. Loss of winter snow pack, reduced summer stream flows, and increased summer temperatures are all phenomena that have already been observed, and are expected to worsen over this century. Research is ongoing in the Northwest to understand agriculture practices that might allow farmers to prepare for these climate change impacts. One potential technique is the use of biochars (charcoal made from decomposition of organic matter at high temperatures in the absence of oxygen), which can be used as a soil amendment that can increase soil moisture retention, improve agricultural yields, and hold...
map background search result map search result map The Impacts of Drought on Fish and Wildlife in the Southwestern U.S. The Effects of Drought on Desert Bighorn Sheep The Effects of Drought on Southwestern Pronghorns Community Resilience to Drought Hazard: An Analysis of Drought Exposure, Impacts, and Adaptation in the South Central U.S. The Effects of Drought on Vegetation Phenology and Wildlife The Wind River Indian Reservation’s Vulnerability to the Impacts of Drought and the Development of Decision Tools to Support Drought Preparedness Assessing the Vulnerability of Dryland Ecosystems to Drought in the Western U.S. Fighting Drought with Fire: A Comparison of Burned and Unburned Forests in Drought-Impacted Areas of the Southwest Assessing the Use of Biochar for Drought Resilience and Crop Productivity Eco-drought Actionable Science Working Group Effects of Drought on Soil Moisture and Water Resources in Hawai‘i Snow Drought: Recognizing and Understanding its Impacts in Alaska Missouri Headwaters Drought Resilience Demonstration Project Summary A Workplan for Drought Resilience in the Missouri Headwaters Basin Drought Resilience Demonstration Project in the Missouri Headwaters Basin Climate Change, Variability, and Drought in the U.S.-Affiliated Pacific Islands – Working with Managers to Mitigate the Impacts of Drought and Wildfire Scaling up the Hawai‘i Drought Knowledge Exchange: Expanding Stakeholder Reach and Capacity to Address Climate Change, Variability, and Drought Ecological Drought Across the Country Alaska Divisional Drought Indices Improving Predictive Drought Models with Sensitivity Analysis The Wind River Indian Reservation’s Vulnerability to the Impacts of Drought and the Development of Decision Tools to Support Drought Preparedness Missouri Headwaters Drought Resilience Demonstration Project Summary Drought Resilience Demonstration Project in the Missouri Headwaters Basin A Workplan for Drought Resilience in the Missouri Headwaters Basin Effects of Drought on Soil Moisture and Water Resources in Hawai‘i The Effects of Drought on Vegetation Phenology and Wildlife Improving Predictive Drought Models with Sensitivity Analysis Assessing the Use of Biochar for Drought Resilience and Crop Productivity Scaling up the Hawai‘i Drought Knowledge Exchange: Expanding Stakeholder Reach and Capacity to Address Climate Change, Variability, and Drought Community Resilience to Drought Hazard: An Analysis of Drought Exposure, Impacts, and Adaptation in the South Central U.S. Fighting Drought with Fire: A Comparison of Burned and Unburned Forests in Drought-Impacted Areas of the Southwest Climate Change, Variability, and Drought in the U.S.-Affiliated Pacific Islands – Working with Managers to Mitigate the Impacts of Drought and Wildfire Assessing the Vulnerability of Dryland Ecosystems to Drought in the Western U.S. The Impacts of Drought on Fish and Wildlife in the Southwestern U.S. The Effects of Drought on Southwestern Pronghorns Snow Drought: Recognizing and Understanding its Impacts in Alaska Alaska Divisional Drought Indices Eco-drought Actionable Science Working Group Ecological Drought Across the Country