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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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...
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In the Pacific Northwest, coastal ecosystems are highly productive areas that support millions of migratory waterbirds, shellfish, salmon and related fish. These species depend on food and habitats provided by estuaries (coastal tidal areas where streams and rivers flow into the ocean) for successful migration and breeding. Climate change effects such as drought, sea-level rise, and changing freshwater flow, precipitation, and temperatures will alter these important habitats. This study examined how changing ocean and freshwater patterns and conditions will influence estuary habitats. The main goal was to provide scientific support for future planning efforts and conservation of natural resources found in coastal...
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Changing climate conditions can make water management planning and drought preparedness decisions more complicated than ever before. Resource managers can no longer rely solely on historical data and trends to base their actions, and are in need of science that is relevant to their specific needs and can directly inform important planning decisions. Questions remain, however, regarding the most effective and efficient methods for extending scientific knowledge and products into management and decision-making. This study analyzed two unique cases of water management to better understand how science can be translated into resource management actions and decision-making. In particular, this project sought to understand...
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The climate in Hawai‘i is changing, and alterations in rainfall amount and distribution have implications for future vegetation cover, non-native species invasions, watershed function, and fire behavior. As novel ecosystems and climates emerge in Hawai‘i, particularly hotter and drier climates, it is critical that scientists produce locally relevant, timely and actionable science products and that managers are able to access the best-available science. Managers and researchers have identified that a knowledge exchange process is needed for drought in Hawai‘i to allow for formal collaboration between the two groups to co-produce drought data and products. To address this need, this project will pilot a focused...
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Soil moisture is a critical variable for understanding the impacts of drought on ecological, hydrological, and agricultural systems. Yet, key research gaps currently prevent existing soil moisture measurements from being used to assess drought conditions and mitigate drought impacts such as wildfire outbreaks, lost agricultural production, and degraded wildlife habitat. In fact, most scales used to characterize the severity of drought, known as “drought indices”, don’t include soil moisture measurements, relying instead on atmospheric data. Current barriers to the incorporation of soil moisture data include a lack of consensus regarding how to best construct soil moisture-based drought indices, the challenges associated...
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. Soil Moisture-Based Drought Monitoring for the South Central Region Fighting Drought with Fire: A Comparison of Burned and Unburned Forests in Drought-Impacted Areas of the Southwest Understanding the Impacts of Ecological Drought on Estuaries in the Pacific Northwest 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 Identifying Characteristics of Actionable Science for Drought Planning and Adaptation Working with Natural Resource Managers to Co-Produce Drought Analyses in Hawai‘i 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 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 Understanding the Impacts of Ecological Drought on Estuaries in the Pacific Northwest 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 Soil Moisture-Based Drought Monitoring for the South Central Region Working with Natural Resource Managers to Co-Produce Drought Analyses in Hawai‘i 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 Identifying Characteristics of Actionable Science for Drought Planning and Adaptation 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 Eco-drought Actionable Science Working Group Ecological Drought Across the Country