Pan evaporation is a measure of atmospheric evaporative demand (E0) for which long term and spatially distributed observations are available from the NOAA Cooperative Observer (COOP) Network. However, this data requires extensive quality control and homogenization due to documented and undocumented station moves and other factors including human errors in recording or digitization. Station-based Pan Evaporation measurements (in mm) from 247 stations across the continental United States were compiled and quality controlled for the analysis shown in Dewes et al., 2017. This dataset reports warm season (May-October; for 21 stations the data is only available for May-September) pan evaporation with at least 20 years of data between 1950 and 2001. Both monthly values and long-term monthly averages are made available, including the climatological measure for standard deviation and coefficient of variation. Dewes et al. (2017) used this dataset to evaluate the ability of different E0 formulations – Hargreaves-Samani, Priestly-Taylor, and Penman-Monteith – to reproduce the spatial patterns of observed warm-season E0 and its interannual variability. This data is an extension of the dataset described in Hobbins (2004) and Hobbins et al. (2004) with 21 additional stations north of 41oN latitude. The extension was needed in order to include data in the North Central Climate Science Center region. For these added stations, the procedure described in Hobbins (2004) for quality control was applied, including an adjustment in the mean when documented station moves occurred, and the removal of obvious outliers. The quality control procedure for the extended dataset did not automate tests for undocumented inhomogeneities for these stations. For all stations, a visual inspection of the timeseries was used to add additional breakpoints in the data for homogenization (only two were added in the extended set), and to eliminate two stations from consideration.

Abstract (from http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2212096317300153): In recent years, federal land management agencies in the United States have been tasked to consider climate change vulnerability and adaptation in their planning. Ecological vulnerability approaches have been the dominant framework, but these approaches have significant limitations for fully understanding vulnerability in complex social-ecological systems in and around multiple-use public lands. In this paper, we describe the context of United States federal public lands management with an emphasis on the Bureau of Land Management to highlight this unique decision-making context. We then assess the strengths and weaknesses of an ecological vulnerability approach for informing decision-making. Next, we review social vulnerability methods in the context of public lands to demonstrate what these approaches can contribute to our understanding of vulnerability, as well as their strengths and weaknesses. Finally, we suggest some key design principles for integrated social-ecological vulnerability assessments considering the context of public lands management, the limits of ecological vulnerability assessment, and existing approaches to social vulnerability assessment. We argue for the necessity of including social vulnerability in a more integrated social-ecological approach in order to better inform climate change adaptation.

In southwestern Colorado, land managers anticipate the impacts of climate change to include higher temperatures, more frequent and prolonged drought, accelerated snowmelt, larger and more intense fires, more extreme storms, and the spread of invasive species. These changes put livelihoods, ecosystems, and species at risk. Focusing on communities in southwestern Colorado’s San Juan and Gunnison river basins, this project will expand opportunities for scientists, land managers, and affected residents to identify actions that can support resilience and adaptation in the face of changing climate conditions.   This project builds on the project “Building Social and Ecological Resilience to Climate Change in southwestern Colorado: Phase 1”. Phase 1 focused on developing integrated social-ecological science and adaptation strategies for four target landscapes: spruce-fir forests, pinyon-juniper woodlands, sagebrush scrublands, and seeps, springs and wetlands.   Phase 2 will further advance adaptation strategy development in the region and share the results with other communities, land managers, and decision-makers. Specifically, researchers will identify concrete actions that can be taken to carry out each adaptation strategy, and will develop solutions to address barriers identified by stakeholders in Phase 1 that could impede implementation. Ultimately, this project will result in landscape-scale conservation goals and actions that conserve key species, ecosystems, and resources, address the economic and social systems of local communities, and provide science resources for natural resource managers in the face of a changing climate.

The goal of this project was to identify climate-related scientific information needs in the North Central region that will support the management of key species and help avoid species declines. Researchers worked closely with state fish and wildlife agencies, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, tribes, and other relevant natural resource management and conservation agencies to identify priority information needs and to design and implement studies that will address these needs.   Researchers identified stakeholders, including those engaged by the North Central Climate Science Center USGS Liaisons project. Researchers worked with stakeholders to identify priority conservation targets. Selected targets were those that are of high priority to managers, are the subject of a pending or planned decision or action, and for which the decision would benefit from information on climate change exposure, impacts, or adaptation. The outcome was the identification of key climate science needs that can help advance near-term conservation decision-making. As a final component of the project, researchers initiated working groups to spearhead the development of research plans that can address these priority, stakeholder-defined climate science needs in the region. These working groups were comprised of management representatives and researchers affiliated with the North Central Climate Science Center.   By working closely with resource managers to identify information gaps and initiate plans to address these gaps, this project was designed to support the development of usable, relevant, and timely science that directly addresses on-the-ground needs.

Researchers with the North Central Climate Science Center have made substantial progress in assessing the impacts of climate and land use change on wildlife and ecosystems across the region. Building on this progress, researchers will work with stakeholders to identify adaptation strategies and inform resource management in the areas that will be most affected by changing conditions.   There are several components of this project. First, researchers will use the Department of Interior “resource briefs” as a mechanism to communicate information to resource managers on climate and land use change and their impacts to resources. These briefs will support coordinated management of ecosystems that contain public, private, and tribal lands. Researchers will also inform the development of a multi-state management plan for wolverine, a species being considered for listing, by providing forecasts of how wolverine habitat might change as climate conditions and land use change. Finally, researchers will work with federal and private resource managers in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem and High Divide regions to develop management guidelines under different possible future climate conditions. This project will support resource managers throughout the North Central region in understanding how conditions might change and identifying potential climate adaptation strategies.   This project team is part of the North Central Climate Science Center’s Ecological Impacts Foundational Science Area Team, which supports foundational research and advice, guidance, and technical assistance to other NC CSC projects as they address climate science challenges that are important for land managers and ecologists in the region.

In the North Central U.S., the rate and extent of changing climate conditions has been increasing in recent decades. These changes include shifting precipitation patterns, warming temperatures, and more frequent extreme events, such as droughts and floods. As these changes occur, managers face different challenges and have different needs, depending on the resources they manage. For example, water managers are focused on responding to changes in water availability, while wildlife managers may be more concerned with changing habitat conditions – whether it be for migratory waterfowl, coldwater fish, or large mammals.   In the face of these changes, managers are seeking effective strategies for managing resources. To meet this goal, managers require usable and timely information that is relevant to current needs – known as “actionable science”. The goal of this project is to identify best practices for developing actionable science results, which are often built around strong stakeholder engagement. Researchers will evaluate the different processes – including mechanisms of stakeholder engagement – that have been employed by the North Central Climate Science Center to provide managers with actionable science that supports climate adaptation planning. By identifying best practices for stakeholder engagement, this project will support the North Central CSC’s mission to ensure that their science directly addresses on-the-ground management needs.   This project team is part of the North Central Climate Science Center’s Adaptation Foundational Science Area Team, which supports foundational research and advice, guidance, and technical assistance to other NC CSC projects as they address climate science challenges that are important for land managers and ecologists in the region.  

In the North Central U.S., drought is a dominant driver of ecological, economic, and social stress. Drought conditions have occurred in the region due to lower precipitation, extended periods of high temperatures and evaporative demand, or a combination of these factors. This project will continue ongoing efforts to identify and address climate science challenges related to drought, climate extremes, and the water cycle that are important for natural resource managers and scientists in the North Central region, to support adaptation planning.   To accomplish this goal, researchers sought to (1) provide data and synthesis on drought processes in the region and on how evaporative stress on ecosystems will change during the 21st century; (2) work with stakeholders to provide climate data that can be used to assess climate impacts; (3) improve the usability of an existing drought early warning and monitoring tool known as the Evaporative Drought Demand Index; and (4) develop a new drought monitoring tool to provide better information about moisture availability in soils. Researchers aim to continue to develop and provide information on potential future climate conditions for specific areas that are of interest to stakeholders, in order to understand potential impacts and develop adaptation strategies.   This project team is part of the North Central Climate Science Center’s Climate Drivers Foundational Science Area Team, which supports foundational research and advice, guidance, and technical assistance to other NC CSC projects as they address climate science challenges that are important for land managers and ecologists in the region.

One of the biggest challenges facing resource managers today is not knowing exactly when, where, or how climate change effects will unfold. In order to plan for this uncertain future, managers have begun to use a tool known as scenario planning, in which climate models are used to identify different plausible climate conditions, known as “scenarios”, for a particular area.   In a previous project, researchers with the North Central Climate Science Center worked with natural resource managers at Badlands National Park and on surrounding federal lands to model how different climate scenarios and management activities would impact the area’s resources. The model that was developed answers critical “what if” questions regarding how management actions might affect focal resources, such as grazing lands, under different future climate conditions. Building on this work, researchers will produce management-relevant publications that translate the previous project’s results into a format that can support management planning.   Using insights gained from the previous project, researchers will also design a process for integrating scenario planning and climate science into National Park Service (NPS) Resource Stewardship Strategies. These strategies are part of NPS’s streamlined approach for guiding prioritization of a park’s investments in resource stewardship. Researchers will work with Devils Tower National Monument in Wyoming as a case study for this integration effort.

Article for outlet: Plant Ecology. Abstract: Big sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata Nutt.) plant communities are widespread non-forested drylands in western North American and similar to all shrub steppe ecosystems world-wide are composed of a shrub overstory layer and a forb and graminoid understory layer. Forbs account for the majority of plant species diversity in big sagebrush plant communities and are important for ecosystem function. Few studies have explored the geographic patterns of forb species richness and composition and their relationships with environmental variables in these communities. Our objectives were to examine the small and large-scale spatial patterns in forb species richness and composition and the influence of environmental variables. We sampled forb species richness and composition along transects at 15 field sites in Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, and Wyoming, built species-area relationships to quantify differences in forb species richness at sites, and used Principal Components Analysis and nonmetric multidimensional scaling to identify relationships among environmental variables and forb species richness and composition. We found that species richness was most strongly correlated with soil texture, while species composition was most related to climate. The combination of climate and soil texture influences water availability, with important consequences for forb species richness and composition, which suggests climate-change induced modification of soil water availability may have important implications for plant species diversity in the future. Our paper is the first to our knowledge to examine forb biodiversity patterns in big sagebrush ecosystems in relation to environmental factors across the big sagebrush region.