Pinyon-juniper woodlands are a major part of western landscapes and are valued for recreational use, cultural resources, watershed protection, and wildlife habitats. These woodlands have been identified by several stakeholders, including natural resource management entities, federal and state agencies, and numerous tribal nations, as important ecosystems that are currently threatened by land treatments, changes in disturbance regimes such as drought and fire, and widespread tree mortality. Currently there exist competing objectives for the management of these systems, including the desire to preserve pinyon-juniper viability as climate conditions continue to shift, as well as the need to track these systems to ensure their ranges do not expand into historically non-forested areas. The Southern Rockies Landscape Conservation Cooperative (SRLCC), which considers pinyon-juniper woodlands among their focal resources, recently conducted vulnerability assessments of these woodlands in the four corners and upper Rio Grande landscapes. In a series of workshops to discuss these assessments, stakeholders identified the need for synthesizing regional knowledge of pinyon-juniper woodland structure and dynamics, which can differ dramatically due to the geographically broad distribution of this ecosystem.   The goal of this project is to synthesize the state of the science on pinyon-juniper woodland ecosystems by examining previous research and management practices to identify what is known and what remains to be studied. To do this, researchers are compiling published, peer-reviewed, scientific manuscripts and agency reports on the structure, function, and management of pinyon-juniper ecosystems into a comprehensive database. Unpublished material from land managers who work with pinyon-juniper systems, libraries at the US Forest Service, USGS, and other agencies will also be incorporated. The end product will be a state of the science report evaluating the influence current management decisions and climatic conditions have on possible adaptation strategies for pinyon-juniper woodlands.

Species distribution models (SDMs) are commonly used to assess potential climate change impacts on biodiversity, but several critical methodological decisions are often made arbitrarily. We compare variability arising from these decisions to the uncertainty in future climate change itself. We also test whether certain choices offer improved skill for extrapolating to a changed climate and whether internal cross-validation skill indicates extrapolative skill. We compared projected vulnerability for 29 wetland-dependent bird species breeding in the climatically dynamic Prairie Pothole Region, USA. For each species we built 1,080 SDMs to represent a unique combination of: future climate, class of climate covariates, collinearity level, and thresholding procedure. We examined the variation in projected vulnerability attributed to each uncertainty source. To assess extrapolation skill under a changed climate, we compared model predictions with observations from historic drought years. Uncertainty in projected vulnerability was substantial, and the largest source was that of future climate change. Large uncertainty was also attributed to climate covariate class with hydrological covariates projecting half the range loss of bioclimatic covariates or other summaries of temperature and precipitation. We found that choices based on performance in cross-validation improved skill in extrapolation. Qualitative rankings were also highly uncertain. Given uncertainty in projected vulnerability and resulting uncertainty in rankings used for conservation prioritization, a number of considerations appear critical for using bioclimatic SDMs to inform climate change mitigation strategies. Our results emphasize explicitly selecting climate summaries that most closely represent processes likely to underlie ecological response to climate change. For example, hydrological covariates projected substantially reduced vulnerability, highlighting the importance of considering whether water availability may be a more proximal driver than precipitation. However, because cross-validation results were correlated with extrapolation results, the use of cross-validation performance metrics to guide modeling choices where knowledge is limited was supported.

The Liaison Project increased communications between the North Central Climate Science Center (NC CSC), other USGS Science Centers and potential collaborators including active members of the four Landscape Conservation Cooperatives (LCC) included in the NC CSC area. The project was initiated with listening sessions to determine partners’ interest in liaising with the NC CSC, and USGS liaison proposals were selected based on demonstrated ability to continue and initiate relationships with state, federal, tribal, university and other partners. Increased communications has resulted in activities to co-produce knowledge to support management decisions that are impacted by climate.

The Evaporative Demand Drought Index (EDDI) is an experimental drought monitoring and early warning guidance tool. It examines how anomalous the atmospheric evaporative demand (E0; also known as "the thirst of the atmosphere") is for a given location and across a time period of interest. EDDI is multi-scalar, meaning that this period—or "timescale"—can vary to capture drying dynamics that themselves operate at different timescales; we generate EDDI at 1-week through 12-month timescales. This webpage offers a frequently updated assessment of current conditions across CONUS, southern parts of Canada, and northern parts of Mexico; a tool to generate historical time series of EDDI for a user-selected region; introductions to the EDDI team; and a list of resources for users to explore EDDI and its applications further.

This dataset represents the area in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem prioritized for different whitebark pine(Pinus albicaulis) management activities, summarized by climate suitability zones. This data was developed for use in a landscape simulation modeling study aimed at evaluating how well alternative management strategies maintain whitebark pine populations under historical climate and future climate conditions. For the study, we developed three spatial management alternatives for whitebark pine in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem representing no active management, current management, and climate-informed management. These management alternatives were implemented in the simulaton model FireBGCv2 under historical climate and three future climate change scenarios - the HadGEM-ES, CESM1-CAM5, and CNRM-CM5 Global Circulation Models under the RCP 8.5 emissions scenario. We worked with the Greater Yellowstone Coordinating Committee's (GYCC) Whitebark Pine Subcommittee to develop this spatial representation of their current management strategy. The treatments mapped represent a set of the treatments recommended in the GYCC Whitebark Pine 2011 Strategy document and include planting blister-rust resistant whitebark pine seedlings, competition removal thinning, wildland fire use and prescribed fire, and protection from mountain pine beetles using verbenone and carbaryl. We used historical and future projections of climate suitability based on species distribution models for whitebark pine (Chang et al. 2014) to map zones of core, deteriorating, and future whitebark pine habitat. Core zones were those areas that are currently suitable for whitebark and remain suitable in the future. Deteriorating zones were where the climatic conditions for whitebark pine are expected to decline. Future zones were areas that are projected to become newly suitable for whitebark pine. We then overlaid our climate zones for whitebark pine with similar projections of future climate suitability for all of whitebark pine’s competitors - Engelmann spruce, subalpine fir, lodgepole pine, and Douglas-fir (Piekielek et al. 2015. We discussed the different combinations of climate suitability zones (core, deteriorating, future) and potential future level of competition (low or high) from other species with the GYCC Whitebark Pine Subcommittee to determine which management activities should be prioritized within each management zone. The result is a map of management zones where different activities are prioritized to meet the goal of maintaining whitebark pine populations. This was used to determine which treatments would be implemented spatially during the simulation modeling, dependent upon additional criteria related to simulated stand-level conditions. In this dataset, we used the resulting map of spatially prioritized management activities to summarize the area prioritized for each management activity that fell within Core, Deteriorating, and Future climate suitability zones

This dataset represents the area in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem prioritized for different whitebark pine(Pinus albicaulis) management activities, summarized by land classes. This data was developed for use in a landscape simulation modeling study aimed at evaluating how well alternative management strategies maintain whitebark pine populations under historical climate and future climate conditions. For the study, we developed three spatial management alternatives for whitebark pine in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem representing no active management, current management, and climate-informed management. These management alternatives were implemented in the simulaton model FireBGCv2 under historical climate and three future climate change scenarios - the HadGEM-ES, CESM1-CAM5, and CNRM-CM5 Global Circulation Models under the RCP 8.5 emissions scenario. We worked with the Greater Yellowstone Coordinating Committee's (GYCC) Whitebark Pine Subcommittee to develop this spatial representation of their current management strategy. The treatments mapped represent a set of the treatments recommended in the GYCC Whitebark Pine 2011 Strategy document and include planting blister-rust resistant whitebark pine seedlings, competition removal thinning, wildland fire use and prescribed fire, and protection from mountain pine beetles using verbenone and carbaryl. We used historical and future projections of climate suitability based on species distribution models for whitebark pine (Chang et al. 2014) to map zones of core, deteriorating, and future whitebark pine habitat. Core zones were those areas that are currently suitable for whitebark and remain suitable in the future. Deteriorating zones were where the climatic conditions for whitebark pine are expected to decline. Future zones were areas that are projected to become newly suitable for whitebark pine. We then overlaid our climate zones for whitebark pine with similar projections of future climate suitability for all of whitebark pine’s competitors - Engelmann spruce, subalpine fir, lodgepole pine, and Douglas-fir (Piekielek et al. 2015. We discussed the different combinations of climate suitability zones (core, deteriorating, future) and potential future level of competition (low or high) from other species with the GYCC Whitebark Pine Subcommittee to determine which management activities should be prioritized within each management zone. The result is a map of management zones where different activities are prioritized to meet the goal of maintaining whitebark pine populations. This was used to determine which treatments would be implemented spatially during the simulation modeling, dependent upon additional criteria related to simulated stand-level conditions. In this dataset, we used the resulting map of spatially prioritized management activities to summarize the area prioritized for each management activity that fell within different land classifications (mutliple use forests, National Park Service lands, Wilderness lands, and non-federal lands).

Natural resource managers face the need to develop strategies to adapt to projected future climates. Few existing climate adaptation frameworks prescribe where to place management actions to be most effective under anticipated future climate conditions.  We developed an approach to spatially allocate climate adaptation actions and applied the method to whitebark pine (WBP; Pinus albicaulis) in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE).  WBP is expected to be vulnerable to climate-mediated shifts in suitable habitat, pests, pathogens, and fire. We worked with a team of biologists and managers to identify management actions aimed at mitigating climate impacts to WBP. Identified actions were spatially allocated across the GYE under two management strategies: (1) current management and (2) climate-informed management which used projected climate suitability for WBP and competing tree species to place management actions.  The current management strategy reflected current legal, policy and access contraints, such as restricting active management in Wilderness and remote locations, while the climate-informed management strategy was designed to maximize preservation of WBP forests regardless of such constraints. Thus, the climate-informed strategy highlighted how the spatial location of management actions might need to shift to most effectively maintain WBP forests under future climate conditions. The spatial distribution of actions and area treated differed among the current and climate-informed management strategies, with 33-60% more wilderness area prioritized for action under climate-informed management. High priority areas for implementing management actions include the 1-8% of the GYE where current and climate-informed management agreed, since this is where actions are most likely to be successful in the long-term and where current management permits implementation. Areas where climate-informed strategies agreed with one another but not with current management (6-22% of the GYE) are potential locations for experimental testing and monitoring of management actions. Our method for prioritizing locations for climate-adaptation actions is applicable to any species for which information regarding climate vulnerability and climate-mediated risk factors is available.

Rates of climate and land use change vary across the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains as do the responses of ecosystems to these changes. Knowledge of locations of rapid land use and climate change and changes in ecosystem services such as water runoff and ecological productivity are important for vulnerability assessment and crafting locally relevant adaptation strategies to cope with these changes. This project assessed the loss of public, private, and tribal lands due to ongoing land use intensifications and fragmentation extents across the NC CSC domain. In addition, the project evaluated how the climate, ecosystem processes, and vegetation have shifted over the past half century and how they are projected to change in the coming century under various future scenarios. These analyses were carried out in GWEs and EPA III level ecoregions centered at public, tribal, and private lands. These areas of natural vegetation provide ecosystem services important to local people and knowledge of patterns of climate and ecological change are important to resource managers. The results of the project can be used by the NC CSC Adaptation team to work with local stakeholders to develop strategies for coping with and adapting to the ongoing land use change and projected changes in climate.