NC CASC Team Attends CIRES Rendezvous

Members of the NC CASC team attended the annual CIRES Rendezvous yesterday. It was a great chance to meet up in person and showcase some of our work during the afternoon poster session!

Final Webinar Recording - Now Available

Our last webinar of the academic year is now available on our YouTube channel, covering the modeling of invasive species considering climate to inform management activities. Thanks for joining us - we'll see you back in September!

Cross-Park RAD Project

In late April, Heather Yocum (NC CASC) and Julia Goolsby (CIRES) traveled to Montana to hold conversations about the climate-driven loss of whitebark pine with resource managers from Glacier National Park and the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes.

NC CASC team attending CIRES Rendezvous

CIRES Rendezvous is an “institute-wide symposium that aims to bring awareness to the depth, breadth, and quality of the pacesetting science being done at CIRES.” The NC CASC will be displaying three posters at the 2024 event to highlight our work in science and communications.

March/April 2024 Newsletter Now Available!

Our next newsletter (March/April 2024) is now out! Learn more about Traditional Ecological Knowledge; register for our next webinar (this Thursday, May 9, at 11 AM), and learn more about a new toolkit to assist federal resource managers in co-producing actionable science to support public land management.

When

Invasive species are a top concern of resource managers and are already shifting their ranges as they spread after initial introduction and establishment. Species distribution models are a common tool to predict where invasive species may establish under both current and future climate conditions. While these habitat suitability models can be useful, it is also important to understand their limitations. We have developed models identifying areas suitable for invasive plants that are often driven by climate. In some cases, we have developed habitat suitability models for species and applied these models to future climate scenarios to identify areas that may become climatically suitable in the future. Climate change adds another level of uncertainty in predicting invasive species’ potential ranges. Managers are also concerned with assessing invasion risk to identify areas most at risk of invasion, and these areas can also be influenced by changing climate. Additionally, potential management actions for invasive species can also be influenced by climate. Through all these examples, I will show how models of invasive species considering current and future climate can help land managers develop climate-smart management protocols by prioritizing monitoring and early detection rapid response actions to high-risk invasives.

Congratulations to Prasad Thota!

Congratulations to Prasad Thota, recipient of one of the CIRES' 2024 Graduate Student Research Awards! He is a Ph.D. student in Civil Engineering at CU Boulder advised by Prof. Balaji Rajagopalan. Last summer, he worked on an RCAP project alongside NC CASC's climate lead, Dr. Imtiaz Rangwala.

James Rattling Leaf, Sr. selected as author in First National Nature Assessment

James Rattling Leaf, Sr. (NC CASC Tribal Engagement Specialist/ CIRES Tribal Advisor) was recently announced as an author on the “Opportunities for America’s Nature” chapter in the First National Nature Assessment.