Toward a shared vision for climate-informed resource stewardship

By articulating how existing tools complement rather than compete with one another, this new paper offers a shared vision for more coordinated, cross-jurisdictional adaptation planning in an era of ecological transformation.

Recording Available: Integrating Seasonal Dynamics into Risk-Informed Wildfire Planning

Did you miss the webinar on Thursday, December 11, 2025, given by Jamie Peeler? Watch the recording to learn more about risk-informed wildfire planning through updated fire behavior models.

The Sagebrush Climate Adaptation Menu: A Co-Produced Framework for Actionable Science

Across the American West, sagebrush ecosystems are confronting accelerating climate pressures, including hotter temperatures, altered fire regimes, invasive annual grasses, and shifting moisture patterns that reshape plant communities and wildlife habitat.

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Risk-informed wildfire planning tools such as Potential Operational Delineations (PODs) and Quantitative Wildfire Risk Assessments (QWRAs) have grown in popularity and are now used locally, nationally, and internationally. Forest and fire managers use these tools to plan where to coordinate during a wildfire incident and support decisions that protect people and ecosystems during a time of increasing wildfire activity. However, because the tools were originally developed for wildfire incidents, the fire behavior modeling and functions that guide them are based on summer conditions when unintentional ignitions are most common. This focus limits their ability to represent spring and fall conditions when managers apply prescribed fire and excludes seasonal patterns that influence resources that people value across the landscape. To address these limitations in the Colorado Front Range, our team has updated the fire behavior modeling to include a broader range of seasonal conditions and is developing a recreation archetype that captures how people use the landscape throughout the year. Together, these updates demonstrate the value of expanding risk-informed wildfire planning to include a wider set of fire scenarios and account for seasonal dynamics.

Great Plains Tribal Water Alliance 2025 Conference Highlights

Earlier this month, Tribal Climate Resilience Liaisons Janna Black and Kynser Bell helped host the Great Plains Tribal Water Alliance Annual 2025 Conference in Deadwood, South Dakota, on the sacred lands of the Black Hills.

Developing an Adaptation Menu for the Sagebrush Biome

Imagine you could be handed a printed menu, but instead of viewing what food or drinks are available, you could read about the various ways to save an ecosystem. Or, imagine that ecosystem “doctors” could have a guide available to them that helps determine what course of action to take; what “treatments” are available for the land.

Decoding the drivers of snow across the Rockies

Gillian Gallagher is a PhD student in the Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering (CEAE) department at the University of Colorado Boulder, whose summer research focused on how climate conditions and terrain features shape mountain snowpack.

Decoding the drivers of snow across the Rockies

The first time I encountered Western snowpack was on a hot day in late June. I was hiking up Revolution Peak along a rugged trail hidden in Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest, Washington. As I neared the top, I was astonished to find deep snow despite the 90°F heat.

New Student Blog - Ryan Erickson

In “A Geographer’s Perspective on the Existence of a Topographic Signature of Life,” CAST student, Ryan Erickson, examines how living systems might leave measurable imprints on Earth’s terrain.
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