Establishing connections among natural landscapes is the most frequently recommended strategy for adapting management of natural resources in response to climate change. The U.S. Northern Rockies still support a full suite of native wildlife, and survival of these populations depends on connected landscapes. Connected landscapes support current migration and dispersal as well as future shifts in species ranges that will be necessary for species to adapt to our changing climate. Working in partnership with state and federal resource managers and private land trusts, we sought to: 1) understand how future climate change may alter habitat composition of landscapes expected to serve as important connections for wildlife, 2) estimate how wildlife species of concern are expected to respond to these changes, 3) develop climate-smart strategies to help stakeholders manage public and private lands in ways that allow wildlife to continue to move in response to changing conditions, and 4) explore how well existing management plans and conservation efforts are expected to support crucial connections for wildlife under climate change. We assessed vulnerability of eight wildlife species and four biomes to climate change, with a focus on potential impacts to connectivity. Our assessment provides some insights about where these species and biomes may be most vulnerable or most resilient to loss of connectivity and how this information could support climate-smart management action. We also encountered high levels of uncertainty in how climate change is expected to alter vegetation and how wildlife are expected to respond to these changes. This uncertainty limits the value of our assessment for informing proactive management of climate change impacts on both species-specific and biome-level connectivity (although biome-level assessments were subject to fewer sources of uncertainty). We offer suggestions for improving the management relevance of future studies based on our own insights and those of managers and biologists who participated in this assessment and provided critical review of this report.

Establishing connections among natural landscapes is the most frequently recommended strategy for adapting management of natural resources in response to climate change. The U.S. Northern Rockies still support a full suite of native wildlife, and survival of these populations depends on connected landscapes. Connected landscapes support current migration and dispersal as well as future shifts in species ranges that will be necessary for species to adapt to our changing climate. Working in partnership with state and federal resource managers and private land trusts, we sought to: 1) understand how future climate change may alter habitat composition of landscapes expected to serve as important connections for wildlife, 2) estimate how wildlife species of concern are expected to respond to these changes, 3) develop climate-smart strategies to help stakeholders manage public and private lands in ways that allow wildlife to continue to move in response to changing conditions, and 4) explore how well existing management plans and conservation efforts are expected to support crucial connections for wildlife under climate change. We assessed vulnerability of eight wildlife species and four biomes to climate change, with a focus on potential impacts to connectivity. Our assessment provides some insights about where these species and biomes may be most vulnerable or most resilient to loss of connectivity and how this information could support climate-smart management action. We also encountered high levels of uncertainty in how climate change is expected to alter vegetation and how wildlife are expected to respond to these changes. This uncertainty limits the value of our assessment for informing proactive management of climate change impacts on both species-specific and biome-level connectivity (although biome-level assessments were subject to fewer sources of uncertainty). We offer suggestions for improving the management relevance of future studies based on our own insights and those of managers and biologists who participated in this assessment and provided critical review of this report.

The North Central Climate Science Center funded research activities in order to provide pertinent climate information to natural resource managers in our region to evaluate impacts of climatic changes and to develop strategies to respond to changes affecting their natural and cultural resources.  These funded activities provided improved past and current climate data sets, such as the high resolution temperature data, regional reconstruction. In addition, we have developed climate information from the latest international climate projections. We used this information and additional climate information to evaluate and assess impacts on ecosystem and natural resources. Ecosystem responses were studied across the region and included examples from controls on sagebrush establishment, whitebark pine vulnerability to climate change, grassland dynamics in mountain and prairie areas, and changes in water dynamics affecting water fowl in the prairie pothole area.  Adaptation research efforts and development of strategies with various natural resource managers from federal, state, and Native American communities were carried out. A major focus on drought was defined and the Drought Risk and Adaptation in the Interior (DRAI) research efforts was developed under this funding. We used survey and interviews to gain insights in how various climate changes, especially those related to drought conditions, have been affecting their management practices. This information was important in guiding further research with our management communities related to what climate information would be useful, what impacts are being observed or of concern to these management entities, and what pathways are open to meet changes. Our research and engagement activities were generated in partnership with National Park Service managers, Native American leaders, and groups working with various non-governmental organizations, such as The Nature Conservancy. In addition, information on climate changes and impacts were incorporated in regional assessment efforts for the Colorado Vulnerability Study.

The United States Northern Great Plains (NGP) has a high potential for landscape-scale conservation, but this grassland landscape is threatened by encroachment of woody species. We surveyed NGP land managers to identify patterns in, and illustrate a broad range of, individual managers' perceptions on (1) the threat of woody encroachment to grasslands they manage, and (2) what management practices they use that may influence woody encroachment in this region. In the 34 surveys returned, which came from predominantly public lands in the study area, 79% of responses reported moderate or substantial woody encroachment. Eastern redcedar (Juniperus virginiana) and Rocky Mountain juniper (Juniperus scopulorum) were the most problematic encroachers. Thirty-one survey respondents said that prescribed fire was used on the lands they manage, and 64% of these responses reported that controlling woody encroachment was a fire management objective. However, only 18% of survey respondents using prescribed fire were achieving their desired fire return interval. Most respondents reported using mechanical and/or chemical methods to control woody species. In contrast to evidence from the central and southern Great Plains, few survey respondents viewed grazing as affecting encroachment. Although the NGP public land managers we surveyed clearly recognize woody encroachment as a problem and are taking steps to address it, many feel that the rate of their management is not keeping pace with the rate of encroachment. Developing strategies for effective woody plant control in a variety of NGP management contexts requires filling ecological science gaps and overcoming societal barriers to using prescribed fire.

Climate policy developers and natural resource managers frequently desire high-resolution climate data to prepare for future effects of climate change. But they face a long-standing problem: the vast majority of climate models have been run at coarse resolutions—from hundreds of kilometers in global climate models (GCMs) down to 25–50 kilometers in regional climate models (RCMs).

Abstract (from http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/WCAS-D-15-0042.1): Drought is a natural part of the historical climate variability in the northern Rocky Mountains and high plains region of the United States. However, recent drought impacts and climate change projections have increased the need for a systematized way to document and understand drought in a manner that is meaningful to public land and resource managers. The purpose of this exploratory study was to characterize the ways in which some federal and tribal natural resource managers experienced and dealt with drought on lands managed by the U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) and tribes in two case site examples (northwest Colorado and southwest South Dakota) that have experienced high drought exposure in the last two decades. The authors employed a social–ecological system framework, whereby key informant interviews and local and regional drought indicator data were used characterize the social and ecological factors that contribute to drought vulnerability and the ways in which drought onset, persistence, severity, and recovery impact management. Results indicated that local differences in the timing, decisions, and specific management targets defined within the local social–ecological natural resource contexts are critical to understanding drought impacts, vulnerabilities, and responses. These findings suggest that manager-defined social–ecological contexts are critically important to understand how drought is experienced across the landscape and the indices that are needed to inform adaptation and response strategies.

Abstract (from http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959378014000065): Climate change impacts threaten existing development efforts and achieving future sustainability goals. To build resilience and societal preparedness towards climate change, integration of adaptation into development is being increasingly emphasized. To date, much of the adaptation literature has been theoretical, reflecting the absence of empirical data from activities on the ground. However, the Funds established under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and managed by the Global Environment Facility, the Least Developed Countries Fund, the Special Climate Change Fund and the Strategic Priority for Adaptation, have approved financing for 133 adaptation projects in 70 countries with sufficient documented experience to allow for initial categorization and evaluation. This article provides the first substantial compendium of adaptation actions identified through the allocation and disbursement of these Funds and organizes these actions into a generalized typology of adaptation activities. The information obtained sheds new insight into what adaptation is, in practice, and suggests some next steps to strengthen the empirical database. Ten types of overarching adaptation activities were identified through an analysis of 92 projects financed through these Funds. This paper analyzes these adaptation activities and compares them with theoretical constructs of adaptation typologies. We find that many of the early ideas and concepts advanced by theoreticians are consistent with results from the field. The adaptation categories that recur the most in Global Environment Facility projects are enabling and relatively inexpensive measures, such as those related to capacity building, policy reform, and planning and management. However, a rich panoply of technical actions ranging from information and communications technology, to early warning systems, to new or improved infrastructure, are also identified as common project goals. Future refinements of the costs of various adaptation actions, the mixture of technical and management options, and evaluating the efficacy of actions implemented, will be key to informing the future global adaptation agenda.

Abstract (from http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/15-1061/abstract): Weather and climate affect many ecological processes, making spatially continuous yet fine-resolution weather data desirable for ecological research and predictions. Numerous downscaled weather data sets exist, but little attempt has been made to evaluate them systematically. Here we address this shortcoming by focusing on four major questions: (1) How accurate are downscaled, gridded climate data sets in terms of temperature and precipitation estimates? (2) Are there significant regional differences in accuracy among data sets? (3) How accurate are their mean values compared with extremes? (4) Does their accuracy depend on spatial resolution? We compared eight widely used downscaled data sets that provide gridded daily weather data for recent decades across the United States. We found considerable differences among data sets and between downscaled and weather station data. Temperature is represented more accurately than precipitation, and climate averages are more accurate than weather extremes. The data set exhibiting the best agreement with station data varies among ecoregions. Surprisingly, the accuracy of the data sets does not depend on spatial resolution. Although some inherent differences among data sets and weather station data are to be expected, our findings highlight how much different interpolation methods affect downscaled weather data, even for local comparisons with nearby weather stations located inside a grid cell. More broadly, our results highlight the need for careful consideration among different available data sets in terms of which variables they describe best, where they perform best, and their resolution, when selecting a downscaled weather data set for a given ecological application.

EDDI is a drought indicator that uses atmospheric evaporative demand (E0) anomalies across a time-window of interest relative to its climatology to indicate the spatial extent and severity of drought. This page provides access to near-real-time (with a five-day latency, i.e., the most recent information is five days old) EDDI plots with time windows integrating E0 anomalies from 1 to 12 weeks and 1 to 12 months from the most current date. E0 is calculated using the Penman Monteith FAO56 reference evapotranspiration formulation driven by temperature, humidity, wind speed, and incoming solar radiation from the North American Land Data Assimilation System (NLDAS-2) dataset. For a particular time-window, EDDI is estimated by standardizing the E0 anomalies relative to the whole period of the record (1979-present), using a non-parametric method (see Hobbins et al., 2016). For plotting purposes, EDDI values are binned into different percentile categories analogous to the US Drought Monitor plots. However, in case of EDDI plots, both drought and anomalously wet categories are shown. EDDI data are available at a ~12-km resolution across CONUS since January 1, 1980, and are updated daily. EDDI has the potential to offer early warning of agricultural drought, hydrologic drought, and fire-weather risk by providing real-time information on the emergence or persistence of anomalous evaporative demand in a region. A particular strength of EDDI is in capturing the precursor signals of water stress at weekly to monthly timescales, which makes EDDI a strong tool for drought preparedness at those timescales.