NC CASC attends Annual CASC Consortium Meeting

Earlier this month, three NC CASC team members traveled to Juneau, Alaska for the annual CASC Consortium Meeting. Members of nine regional CASCs and the National CASC convened to discuss topics including short- and long-term challenges to the CASC network as well as strategies to mitigate them.

When

This presentation will outline the development of the Fort Belknap Indian Community Climate Change Adaptation Plan, highlighting key challenges, lessons learned, and ongoing efforts to strengthen community and natural resource resilience in the face of increasing climate-driven extreme weather events.

Webinar Recording Now Available

The recording of the NC CASC webinar, held on October 9, 2025, is now available online on our YouTube Channel.

Great Plains Tribal Water Alliance (GPTWA) Registration Open!

The Great Plains Tribal Water Alliance is hosting their 2025 Annual Conference at The Lodge at Deadwood, South Dakota, from November 5-6, 2025. Registration is now open!

Save the Date!

The Great Plains Tribal Water Alliance will be having their annual conference from November 5 - 6, 2025 at the Lodge at Deadwood, South Dakota. Registration and agenda will follow soon.

Building Knowledge and Capacity Together

The North Central Climate Adaptation Science Center (NC CASC) Consortium met in Boulder, Colorado, August 13-15, 2025, for a three-day workshop that blended reflection, capacity-building, and future planning.

Webinar CANCELLED: Thursday, September 11, 2025

This webinar will be rescheduled for a future time.

When

Webinar CANCELLED- will update with reschedule information as soon as possible. The US Arctic Observing Network (US AON) was created to support coordinated multi-agency improvements to Arctic data collection (observing, monitoring) and sharing systems to better support societal benefit. It developed its BENEFIT methods and tool in alignment with agency (e.g. NOAA) and interagency (US Group on Earth Observations) efforts, but adapted to encompass Arctic-specific considerations like subsistence-based food security and escalating environmental threats in rural communities. This talk will describe US AON’s approach to societal benefit assessment and present the results of its application toward gaps assessment in the areas of risk management and hazard mitigation in the Alaskan Arctic. Focal areas in this work include wildland fires, coastal flooding, landslides, and aviation weather.

NC CASC 2025 Consortium Meeting

The NC CASC team and partners recently gathered in Boulder, CO for a three-day meeting to reflect on the first year of our renewed Cooperative Agreement with USGS and strategically plan our activities in Year 2. 

The Prairie Potholes Region of the northern Great Plains is under threat from the combined effects of introduced perennial grasses and climate change, which are driving plant community shifts and biodiversity loss. We synthesized current knowledge on how climate change drivers (i.e., precipitation variability, elevated atmospheric CO2, and warming) and other local and regional biotic and abiotic factors, like soil nutrients and community diversity, impact grassland vegetation through their effects on Smooth Brome and Kentucky Bluegrass. Based on this synthesis, we provide a qualitative assessment of potential responses of Smooth Brome and Kentucky Bluegrass to different scenarios of seasonal water availability, warming climate, and elevated atmospheric CO2 to inform future grassland management.