North Central Climate Adaptation Science Center

James Rattling Leaf and Brian Miller to Participate in Rising Voices Workshop

NC CASC’s consultant to the Great Plains Tribal Water Alliance, James Rattling Leaf, and Research Ecologist, Brian Miller are scheduled to participate in the virtual 9th Annual Rising Voices Workshop from September 29th- October 1st.

New Project on Management Decisions for Amphibians Fully Open

A new NC CASC-funded project, led by PI Amanda Kissel, is now fully open. The project, “A Framework for Guiding Management Decisions for Amphibians in an Uncertain Future,” will determine which amphibians in the North Central region of the U.S. are at the greatest risk from the effects of climate change.

NC CASC-USGS team members publish new paper, "Engaging with stakeholders to produce actionable science: a framework and guidance"

NC CASC-USGS team members Aparna Bamzai-Dodson, Amanda Cravens, Alisa Wade, and Renee McPherson (SC CASC) have published a new paper, "Engaging with stakeholders to produce actionable science: a framework and guidance" in Weather, Climate, and Society.

James Rattling Leaf Helps Standing Rock Sioux Tribe Host Climate Change Summit, Several NC CASC Staff Presented

NC CASC’s consultant to the Great Plains Tribal Water Alliance, James Rattling Leaf, helped the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe organize and host a two-day Climate Change Summit on September 9-10th in Bismarck, North Dakota.

Upcoming NCASC Webinar: Setting Habitat Protection and Restoration Priorities in a Warming World: Lessons From Wyoming

Join the National CASC for an upcoming webinar, “Setting Habitat Protection and Restoration Priorities in a Warming World: Lessons From Wyoming,” presented by Paul Dey and NC CASC CP Molly Cross at the Wildlife Conservation Society.

Imtiaz Rangwala Speaks at CIRES and DRI Webinar on Drought Tools

NC CASC’s Climate Science Lead, Imtiaz Rangwala, and his partners at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder (CIRES) and Desert Research Institute (DRI) discussed different drought tools for drought early warning and research on a webinar organized by NIDIS.

DOI Signs a Major Tribal Water Compact

On Friday, September 17th, the Department of the Interior (DOI) signed off on a major tribal water rights compact with the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes of Montana. The compact will work to improve tribal water infrastructure and is the largest tribal water rights settlement in history by total federal cost.

When

Forest impacts on snow water resources: management and climate adaptation possibilities Presented by: Dr. Keith Musselman, Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, University of Colorado Boulder Abstract: Most of the snow water resources that feed North America’s large rivers originate from forested land. Forest canopies greatly affect the snow on the ground. Forest cover intercepts snowfall that subsequently sublimates back to the atmosphere – a water resource that is never realized. At the same time, forest canopy shelters snow from wind and shades it from solar radiation, facilitating the persistent provision of meltwater late into the spring. In this talk, I present both empirical data and models to review how forest structure impacts snow and the critical consequences of climate change and forest structure degradation on the hydrology, meteorology and ecology of forests. The challenges and possibilities to inform adaptive response by forest management practitioners and the needs for robust, community-based predictive models are discussed. About the speaker: Dr. Keith Musselman is a research associate at INSTAAR. As a hydrologist, Keith assesses climate change and land cover impacts on freshwater availability, streamflow, and flood risk across a spectrum of scale. Keith holds a B.S. in Geology from the University of Vermont, an M.S. in Hydrology and Water Resources from the University of Arizona, and a Ph.D. in Civil Engineering from UCLA. As a postdoc, he worked for the University of Saskatchewan on the topics of forest hydrology and land cover change. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) from 2015-2017 where he helped to advance hydrologic model treatment of cold region processes. Now at the University of Colorado Boulder, Keith leads multiple large interdisciplinary research projects including a team of 20 people to assess climate change impacts on Indigenous communities in Alaska and the Yukon using co-production. Keith has authored 30 publications including recent high-profile papers on snowmelt and flood risk in current and future climates.

NC CASC Webinar Series: "Forest impacts on snow water resources: management and climate adaptation possibilities"

Most of the snow water resources that feed North America’s large rivers originate from forested land. Forest canopies greatly affect the snow on the ground. Forest cover intercepts snowfall that subsequently sublimates back to the atmosphere – a water resource that is never realized.

Grasslands, and the depressional wetlands that exist throughout them, are endangered ecosystems that face both climate and land-use change pressures. Tens of millions of dollars are invested annually to manage the existing fragments of these ecosystems to serve as critical breeding habitat for migratory birds. The North American Prairie Pothole Region (PPR) contains millions of depressional wetlands that produce between 50% and 80% of the continent’s waterfowl population. Previous modeling efforts suggested that climate change would result in a shift of suitable waterfowl breeding habitat from the central to the southeast portion of the PPR, an area where over half of the depressional wetlands have been drained. The implications of these projections suggest a massive investment in wetland restoration in the southeastern PPR would be needed to sustain waterfowl populations at harvestable levels. We revisited these modeled results indicating how future climate may impact the distribution of waterfowl-breeding habitat using up-to-date climate model projections and a newly developed model for simulating prairie-pothole wetland hydrology. We also presented changes to the number of “May ponds,” a metric used by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to estimate waterfowl breeding populations and establish harvest regulations. Based on the output of 32 climate models and two emission scenarios, we found no evidence that the distribution of May ponds would shift in the future. However, our results projected a 12% decrease to 1% increase in May pond numbers when comparing the most recent climate period (1989–2018) to the end of the 21st century (2070–2099). When combined, our results suggest areas in the PPR that currently support the highest densities of intact wetland basins, and thus support the largest numbers of breeding-duck pairs, will likely also be the places most critical to maintaining continental waterfowl populations in an uncertain future.