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Over the past century, Hawaiʻi has experienced a pronounced decline in precipitation and stream flow and a 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. Several climate-related factors are influencing Hawaiˈi’s landscapes and contributing to these changes. These include climate change, climate variability, and drought (referred to collectively as CCVD). Climate variability describes how the climate fluctuates on a yearly basis around average values, while climate change describes patterns of long-term continuous change in the average. While it is understood that CCVD...
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Due to the ecological importance of stream temperature for aquatic species, and concern about rising temperatures associated with climate change, natural resource managers throughout the Pacific Northwest increasingly require locally detailed stream temperature information in order to effectively manage aquatic resources. Recent technological advances in stream temperature monitoring (e.g., digital data loggers and remote sensors) and modeling have increased the amount of data that are available (both observed and projected) throughout the region. These newly available data, although exciting, have strengths and limitations depending on the purposes for which they were developed and the scale(s) at which they can...
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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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Drought is a complex environmental hazard that impacts both ecological and social systems. Accounting for the role of human attitudes, institutions, and societal values in drought planning is important to help identify how various drought durations and severity may differentially affect social resilience to adequately respond to and manage drought impacts. While there have been successful past efforts to understand how individuals, communities, institutions, and agencies plan for and respond to drought, these studies have relied on extensive multi-year case studies in specific locations. In contrast, this project seeks to determine how social science insights and methods can best contribute to ecological drought...
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In the North Central U.S., drought is a dominant driver of ecological, economic, and social stress. Drought conditions have occurred in the region due to lower precipitation, extended periods of high temperatures and evaporative demand, or a combination of these factors. This project will continue ongoing efforts to identify and address climate science challenges related to drought, climate extremes, and the water cycle that are important for natural resource managers and scientists in the North Central region, to support adaptation planning. To accomplish this goal, researchers sought to (1) provide data and synthesis on drought processes in the region and on how evaporative stress on ecosystems will change during...
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Preparing for and responding to drought requires integrating scientific information into complex decision making processes. In recognition of this challenge, regional drought early warning systems (DEWS) and related drought-information tools have been developed under the National Integrated Drought Information System (NIDIS). Despite the existence of many tools and information sources, however, the factors that influence if a tool(s) is (are) used, which tools are used, and how much benefit those tools provide remain poorly understood. Using the Upper Colorado River DEWS as a case study, this study investigated how water, land, and fire managers select from among many available tools. The Upper Colorado River Basin...
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Drought and wildfire pose enormous threats to the integrity of natural resources that land managers are charged with protecting. Recent observations and modeling forecasts indicate that these stressors will likely produce catastrophic ecosystem transformations, or abrupt changes in the condition of plants, wildlife, and their habitats, in regions across the country in coming decades. In this project, researchers will bring together land managers who have experienced various degrees of ecosystem transformation (from not yet experiencing any changes to seeing large changes across the lands they manage) to share their perspectives on how to mitigate large-scale changes in land condition. The team will conduct surveys...
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Forests are of tremendous ecological and economic importance. They provide natural places for recreation, clean drinking water, and important habitats for fish and wildlife. However, the warmer temperatures and harsher droughts in the west that are related to climate change are causing die-offs of many trees. Outbreaks of insects, like the mountain pine beetle, that kill trees are also more likely in warmer, drier conditions. To maintain healthy and functioning forest ecosystems, one action forest managers can take is to make management decisions that will help forests adapt to future climate change. However, adaptation is a process based on genetic change and few tools are currently available for managers to use...
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Hydrologic drought and declining water availability are among the foremost stressors of stream ecosystems in the Red River basin. Resource managers face the challenge of apportioning scarce water resources among competing uses, but they lack a systematic framework for comparing the costs and benefits of proposed water management decisions and conservation actions. In 2016, Co-PIs Neeson and Moreno were funded by the Great Plains LCC to develop a decision support model for identifying the most cost-effective water conservation alternatives across the Red River basin. Here, we propose to extend this optimization model in three significant ways to support cost-effective conservation decisions in the face of climate...
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The sky island forests of the southwestern United States are one of the most diverse temperate forest ecosystems in the world, providing key habitat for migrating and residential species alike. Black bear, bighorn sheep, mule deer, and wild turkey are just a few of the species found in these isolated mountain ecosystems that rise out of the desert landscape. However, recent droughts have crippled these ecosystems, causing significant tree death. Climate predictions suggest that this region will only face hotter and drier conditions in the future, potentially stressing these ecosystems even further. Simple models predict that vegetation will move to cooler and wetter locations in response to this warming. However,...
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Land and water managers often rely on hydrological models to make informed management decisions. Understanding water availability in streams, rivers, and reservoirs during high demand periods that coincide with seasonal low flows can affect how water managers plan for its distribution for human consumption while sustaining aquatic ecosystems. Substantial advancement in hydrological modeling has occurred in the last several decades resulting in models that range widely in complexity and outputs. However, managers can still struggle to make informed decisions with these models for a variety of reasons, including misalignments between model outputs and the specific decision they are intended to inform, limitations...
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The 2017 fire season in California was highly unusual with its late seasonal timing, the areal extent it burned, and its devastation to communities. These fires were associated with extreme winds and were potentially also influenced by unusually dry conditions during several years leading up to the 2017 events. This fire season brought additional attention and emphasized the vital need for managers in the western U.S. to have access to scientific information on when and where to expect dangerous fire events. Understanding the multiple factors that cause extreme wildfire events is critical to short and long-term forecasting and planning. Seasonal climate measures such as temperature and precipitation are commonly...
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Invasions of exotic annual grasses (EAGs like cheatgrass have caused major losses of native shrubs and grasses in western U.S. rangelands. They also decrease the productivity and carbon storage in these ecosystems, which is expected to create dryer soils that may cause further losses in plant productivity. This cycle is the hallmark of desertification – or, fertile lands turning into deserts. Management actions that target EAGs are one of the most widespread land management actions taken in Western U.S. rangelands, but it is unclear which specific actions can simultaneously enhance drought resilience of native plant communities and increase carbon sequestration and storage. This project aims to identify the restoration...
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Many coastal areas are experiencing departures from normal conditions due to changing land use and climate patterns, including increased frequency, severity, or duration of floods and droughts, in some cases combinations of the two. To address these issues, the U.S. Geological Survey developed the Coastal Salinity Index (CSI) to identify and communicate fluctuating salinity conditions due to such disturbance events through quantitative analyses of long-term salinity records. This project aims to make the CSI broadly useful as a monitoring, forecasting, and decision-making tool, extending the platform to enable real-time reporting of disturbance events as they unfold and covering a larger user base than what existing...
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Ecological drought impacts ecosystems across the U.S. that support a wide array of economic activity and ecosystem services. Managing drought-vulnerable natural resources is a growing challenge for federal, state and Tribal land managers. Plant communities and animal populations are strongly linked to patterns of drought and soil moisture availability. As a result, ecosystems may be heavily altered by future changes in precipitation and soil moisture that are driven by climate change. Although this vulnerability is well recognized, developing accurate information about the potential consequences of climate change for ecological drought is difficult because the soil moisture conditions that plants experience are...
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Hawai‘i’s isolation, paired with limited water resources, make the archipelago sensitive to reductions in water availability. Drought can take different forms, varying across Island geographies with respect to frequency, intensity, duration, and extent. A drought event can exert hydrological, agricultural, ecological, and socio-economic impacts – and these impacts have been growing over the past century as droughts have become more frequent and severe. While the impacts of drought in Hawai‘i have been recently documented, important gaps remain in understanding these dynamics when engaging with multiple other stressors such as invasive species, shifting fire and climate patterns, pests, and pathogens. In particular,...
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In the dry southwestern United States, snowmelt plays a crucial role as a water source for people, vegetation, and wildlife. However, snow droughts significantly lower snow accumulations, disrupting these critical water supplies for local communities and ecosystems. Despite its large influence on land- and water-resource management, snow drought has only recently been properly defined and its historical distribution and effects on key natural resources are essentially unknown. To remedy this serious knowledge gap, project researchers are examining the causes, effects, and forecastability of snow drought to provide needed scientific information and guidance to planners and decision makers. The central goals of...
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The north-central region of the U.S. has experienced a series of extreme droughts in recent years, with impacts felt across a range of sectors. For example, the impacts of a 2002 drought are estimated to have resulted in a $3 billion loss to the agricultural sector in Nebraska and South Dakota. Meanwhile, the ecological impacts of drought in the region have included increased tree mortality, surges in the outbreak of pests, and intensifying forest fires. Located within this region is the Missouri River Basin, an important agricultural production area home to approximately 12 million people, including 28 Native American tribes. Tribal governments and multiple federal agencies manage land and natural resources in...
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In the North Central U.S., drought is a dominant driver of ecological, economic, and social stress. Drought conditions have occurred in the region due to lower precipitation, extended periods of high temperatures and evaporative demand, or a combination of these factors. This project aimed to improve our understanding of drought in the North Central region and determine what future droughts might look like over the 21st century, as climate conditions change. Researchers evaluated, with the intent to improve, available and emerging data on climate conditions that influence drought (such as changes in temperature, precipitation, evaporative demand, snow and soil moisture), as well as datasets related to the surface...
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Forests across the southwestern U.S. are crucial components of recreation and play an important role in state and local economies. Healthy forests also provide needed habitat for many wildlife species and contribute many other important services to our planet. “Hotter droughts” (otherwise normal droughts whose effects on ecosystems are exacerbated by higher temperatures) are an emerging climate change threat to forests with some of their earliest and strongest appearances happening in the Southwest. The Leaf to Landscape project uses California’s unusually hot drought as a potential preview of the future, allowing us to collect information that will help guide forest management in the face of a warming climate....
map background search result map search result map Predicting Sky Island Forest Vulnerability to Climate Change: Fine Scale Climate Variability, Drought Tolerance, and Fire Response Foundational Science Area: Developing Climate Change Understanding and Resources for Adaptation in the North Central U.S. Foundational Science Area: Helping People and Nature Adapt to Climate Change in the North Central U.S. Influences of Climate Change, Climate Variability, and Drought on Human Communities and Ecosystems in Hawaiʻi Leaf to Landscape: Understanding and Mapping the Vulnerability of Forests to Hotter Droughts Using Genetic Information to Understand Drought Tolerance and Bark Beetle Resistance in Whitebark Pine Forests Innovative Approaches to Ecological Drought: Developing a Stream Temperature Handbook Learning From Recent Snow Droughts to Improve Forecasting of Water Availability for People and Forests Balancing Water Usage and Ecosystem Outcomes Under Drought and Climate Change: Enhancing an Optimization Model for the Red River Foundational Science Area: Ecological Drought, Climate Extremes, and the Water Cycle in the North Central U.S. Preventing Extreme Fire Events by Learning from History: The Effects of Wind, Temperature, and Drought Extremes on Fire Activity How and Why Upper Colorado River Basin Land, Water, and Fire Managers Choose to Use Drought Tools Developing and Testing a Rapid Assessment Method for Understanding Key Social Factors of Ecological Drought Preparedness State of the Science Synthesis on Transformational Drought: Understanding Drought’s Potential to Transform Ecosystems Across the Country Learning From the Past and Planning for the Future: Experience-Driven Insight Into Managing for Ecosystem Transformations Induced by Drought and Wildfire Malo‘o ka lani, wela ka honua (When the sky is dry, the earth is parched): Investigating the Cultural Dimensions of Indigenous Local Knowledge Responses to Changing Climate Conditions State of the Science in Streamflow Modeling in the North Central Region to Address Partner Needs for Water Availability Under Drought Conditions Assessing the Impacts of Rangeland Restoration on Carbon Sequestration and Co-Benefits for Drought Resilience in the Sagebrush Steppe and Mixed Grass Prairie Developing High-Resolution Soil Moisture Projections for the Contiguous U.S. Using Genetic Information to Understand Drought Tolerance and Bark Beetle Resistance in Whitebark Pine Forests Leaf to Landscape: Understanding and Mapping the Vulnerability of Forests to Hotter Droughts Predicting Sky Island Forest Vulnerability to Climate Change: Fine Scale Climate Variability, Drought Tolerance, and Fire Response How and Why Upper Colorado River Basin Land, Water, and Fire Managers Choose to Use Drought Tools Influences of Climate Change, Climate Variability, and Drought on Human Communities and Ecosystems in Hawaiʻi Foundational Science Area: Helping People and Nature Adapt to Climate Change in the North Central U.S. State of the Science in Streamflow Modeling in the North Central Region to Address Partner Needs for Water Availability Under Drought Conditions Balancing Water Usage and Ecosystem Outcomes Under Drought and Climate Change: Enhancing an Optimization Model for the Red River Innovative Approaches to Ecological Drought: Developing a Stream Temperature Handbook Preventing Extreme Fire Events by Learning from History: The Effects of Wind, Temperature, and Drought Extremes on Fire Activity Learning From the Past and Planning for the Future: Experience-Driven Insight Into Managing for Ecosystem Transformations Induced by Drought and Wildfire Assessing the Impacts of Rangeland Restoration on Carbon Sequestration and Co-Benefits for Drought Resilience in the Sagebrush Steppe and Mixed Grass Prairie Malo‘o ka lani, wela ka honua (When the sky is dry, the earth is parched): Investigating the Cultural Dimensions of Indigenous Local Knowledge Responses to Changing Climate Conditions Learning From Recent Snow Droughts to Improve Forecasting of Water Availability for People and Forests Foundational Science Area: Developing Climate Change Understanding and Resources for Adaptation in the North Central U.S. Foundational Science Area: Ecological Drought, Climate Extremes, and the Water Cycle in the North Central U.S. Developing and Testing a Rapid Assessment Method for Understanding Key Social Factors of Ecological Drought Preparedness State of the Science Synthesis on Transformational Drought: Understanding Drought’s Potential to Transform Ecosystems Across the Country Developing High-Resolution Soil Moisture Projections for the Contiguous U.S.