One of the biggest challenges facing resource managers today is not knowing exactly when, where, or how climate change effects will unfold. To help federal land managers address this need, the North Central Climate Adaptation Science Center (NC CASC) has been working with the National Park Service (NPS) to pioneer an approach for incorporating climate science and scenario planning into NPS planning processes, in particular Resource Stewardship Strategies (RSS). These strategies serve as a long-range planning tool for a national park unit to achieve its desired natural and cultural resource conditions, and are used to guide a park’s full spectrum of resource-specific management plans and day-to-day management activities. To support adaptation planning within national parks, a previous NC CASC project designed an approach for integrating climate science and scenarios into the RSS process using Devils Tower National Monument in Wyoming as a test case. Building on these efforts, the present project applied the lessons drawn from the Devils Tower experience to a different NPS unit and context – Wind Cave National Park in South Dakota. This additional work was important to ensure that findings are relevant to multiple contexts, because RSSs are a cornerstone of NPS planning and are being completed for all NPS units. Not only did this work result in climate-informed resource management goals and actions for Wind Cave (documented as part of the RSS summary document and dynamic RSS database), but it also enabled researchers to refine and publish guidance for incorporating climate science and scenario planning into the RSS process (“Supplemental Guidance: Integration of Climate Change Scenario Planning into the Resource Stewardship Strategy Process”, NPS in press). This RSS supplemental guidance will inform upcoming RSS efforts, including those for Yellowstone National Park and Apostle Islands National Lakeshore. 

This document is a companion to the Resource Stewardship Strategy Development Guide, developed in 2019. This document provides a guide to more thoroughly address climate change in resource stewardship strategies through scenario planning. Scenario planning enables stakeholders to identify key climate sensitivities in resources and management concerns, examine a range of relevant and plausible future conditions, and explore management options that can be appropriate and effective across a range of potential futures. The intent of this guidance is to provide a repeatable methodology that the National Park Service can use to better incorporate scenarios and climate science into resource stewardship strategies.

Abstract (from British Ecological Society): As public land managers seek to adopt and implement conservation measures aimed at reversing or slowing the negative effects of climate change, they are looking to understand public opinion regarding different management strategies. This study explores drivers of attitudes towards different management strategies (i.e. no management, protection and restoration) for a low‐profile but keystone tree species, the whitebark pine Pinus albicaulis , in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. Since the whitebark pine species has a range that traverses different federal land designations, we examine whether attitudes towards management strategies differ by jurisdiction (i.e. wilderness or federal lands more generally). We conducted a web and mail survey of residents from Montana, Idaho and Wyoming, with 1,617 valid responses and a response rate of 16%. We find that active management strategies have substantially higher levels of support than does no management, with relatively little differentiation across protection and activities or across different land designations. We also find that support for management strategies is not influenced by values (political ideology) but is influenced by beliefs (about material vs. post‐material environmental orientation, global climate change and federal spending for public lands) and some measures of experience (e.g. knowledge of threats). This study helps land managers understand that support for active management of the whitebark pine species is considerable and non‐partisan and that beliefs and experience with whitebark pine trees are important for support.

The Climate Adaptation Science Centers have conducted numerous training and skills development activities to support tribal and indigenous partners as they seek to use scientific information and techniques to understand and respond to climate change impacts. Because these activities were generated in different CASC regions, with different tribal / indigenous stakeholders, climate change contexts, and training needs, and because the CASC network encourages innovation, these activities were not developed or implemented in a nationally consistent format. This project seeks to identify relevant activities, gather related materials and links that might benefit others seeking to implement similar activities, provide a basic assessment of content and skills provided across the network, and identify significant apparent gaps in providing these critical skills. It is expected that future phases of this work will seek to develop a more-coherent training curriculum and framework. DOI: https://doi.org/10.21429/h2xm-d734 

Climate change is causing an increase in the amount of forested area burned by wildfires in the western U.S. The warm, dry post-fire conditions of the region may limit tree regeneration in some areas, potentially causing a shift to non-forest vegetation. Managers are increasingly challenged by the combined impacts of greater wildfire activity, the significant uncertainty about whether forests will recover, and limited resources for reforestation efforts. Simultaneously, there has been an increased focus on post-fire reforestation efforts as tree planting has become a popular climate change mitigation strategy across the nation. Therefore, with increased interest and need, it is crucial to identify where varying approaches to support post-fire tree regeneration are most likely to be successful.   This project seeks to help managers target and prioritize various post-fire management approaches and identify the areas where these actions will promote recovery and adaptation or will be less successful due to changing climate conditions. Researchers will quantify how post-fire climate conditions affect both natural and assisted tree regeneration. Then, this information will be used to make a freely available web tool that will predict the probability of post-fire regeneration in recently affected areas for three dominant conifer species: ponderosa pine, Douglas-fir, and western larch. This tool will be applied in collaboration with managers from the Bureau of Land Management and The Nature Conservancy to help prioritize planting efforts on a recent wildfire in Montana. This planting effort will provide an opportunity to test if planting seedlings from warmer and drier areas may allow for adaptation to the warming climate conditions. Combined, the work will help managers to effectively use limited resources by prioritizing where and how to plant seedlings and promote forest regeneration after wildfires. 

Trout are one of the most culturally, economically, and ecologically important groups of freshwater fishes in the Rocky Mountain region. However, human impacts and climate change are significantly altering freshwater ecosystems that support native trout species. Despite their broad importance, many of the region’s trout populations are threatened and some require immediate conservation efforts to reverse their decline. Although work is being done to understand and mitigate these changes, the ability to accurately assess vulnerability is currently limited due to a lack of data-driven approaches that incorporate uncertainty and adaptive capacity at scales relevant to effective management.   USGS researchers will use fisheries data collected by natural resource managers to assess the status and vulnerability of native trout populations to climate change and human activities across the Greater Yellowstone and Crown of the Continent Ecosystems of the northern Rocky Mountains, USA and Canada. The project has three primary objectives: 1) quantify the impacts of climate change, habitat loss, and invasive species on native trout populations across this region, 2) develop a robust framework that incorporates multiple data sources and empirical relationships to estimate climate vulnerability and convey uncertainty in the projections, and 3) develop an innovative data visualization and decision support tool in conjunction with local and regional stakeholders and management.  Results from this project will be used by natural resource managers and stakeholders to inform pro-active on-the-ground conservation and restoration actions for improving native trout resilience and adaptation across these important ecosystems. 

Native American tribes are interested in managing their homelands for future generations, using both Indigenous and western science to make decisions in culturally appropriate ways. In particular, there is interest in strategic grazing management as a natural climate solution to strengthen the resilience of grasslands to a changing climate. This includes the restoration of free-ranging bison as well as the management of cattle (and domestic bison) in ways that approximate wild bison grazing behavior, to capture similar ecological and climate change benefits.   Despite the growing interest in grazing management as a tool for grassland resilience and soil health, there has not been a systematic synthesis that directly relate to bison and cattle management decisions being made by Tribes and First Nations. Furthermore, the existing evidence is framed from a western scientific perspective and does not account for the rich knowledge of Indigenous science and cultural practice. Given the growing movement for Indigenous-held lands to be managed in culturally-appropriate ways, it is crucial that efforts to develop management recommendations take both Indigenous and western science into account.   To address these needs, the Wildlife Conservation Society and the Blackfeet Nation are partnering to launch an Indigenous Scholars Hub that will bring together Blackfeet Nation decision makers and Indigenous graduate students to: 1) co-create a synthesis and future research plan on bison and cattle grazing as a tool for climate adaptation and 2) link Indigenous and western science on grazing to inform on-going land use planning, bison restoration, and cattle grazing management decisions. Results of this review will be shared with other Native American tribes also interested in the topic.  The Indigenous Scholars Hub will be a pilot for weaving together Indigenous and western science, provide key information for decision-makers, and create a mentoring networking to support early career Indigenous researchers who wish to contribute to durable conservation of their homelands. 

Pinyon-juniper woodlands are important ecosystems in the western U.S. that provide numerous critical environmental, economic, and cultural benefits. For example, pinyon pines are a significant cultural resource for multiple Native American Tribes and provide necessary habitat for plants and wildlife (including at risk species, such as the pinyon-jay). Despite their importance, stress put on pinyon-juniper woodlands by wildfires and other interacting effects of climate change are causing major population declines of these woodland trees. Such changes to pinyon-juniper woodlands lead to uncertainty for land managers on best practices for protecting these ecosystems from stand replacing fire (where most or all of the trees are killed), and restoring pinyon-juniper communities when fire does occur. To address these uncertainties, researchers are collaborating with a diverse set of land managers, scientists and tribal partners to answer two questions: (1) How does a holistic understanding of the ways tree thinning and fire affect pinyon-juniper woodlands lead to improved management options? and (2) What innovative restoration techniques can restore pinyon-juniper communities following fire in the face of climate change? The research team will use long-term observational data and sites managed by federal and tribal partners to explore ecosystem health and regeneration patterns over pinyon-juniper woodlands that have experienced thinning or fire. This will include assessments of rare and threatened plant species. The researchers will also test a suite of novel restoration options following past fires to provide tools for pinyon-juniper restoration success in places where natural post-fire regrowth is not occurring. Taken together, this inclusive research project will address some of the most pressing resource management information needs in order to develop strategies to sustain pinyon-juniper woodlands and the many services they provide.

Science communication scholarship claims that engagement, dialogue, and interaction are important communicative components. But there are relatively very few studies of dialogic science communication processes from a science communication perspective. This study bridges science communication, interpersonal communication, and science-policy interface research and practice to learn how an interpersonal theory models science-policy communication. When science informs policy and land management, myriad science and policy actors must work together to come to a shared understanding of how science will be used. However, there may be differences across the science-policy interface. How do scientists structure research goals, and how do policymakers and managers set research goals? How do timelines differ? How do communication styles, cultures, and values differ? Can they come to a shared understanding? This work studies the policy side of a particular science-policy interface (coproduction) and describes how science stakeholders, or “information seekers,” evaluate the utility of working with information providers from organizations outside their own to inform their own science and policy. Information seekers were interviewed, and they provided insights into their perceptions of (1) the trustworthiness and credibility of information providers, (2) their ability to communicate across the interface, (3) the usefulness of the information provided, and more. Results inform future coproduction practice, but also, this study demonstrates a successful application of an interpersonal communication theory to a science-policy interface. Future work might make further use of the predictive and explanatory utility of this model in science communication with high-priority stakeholders, and interpersonal theories and models arguably stand to further inform the dialogic components of science communication.