The North Central Climate Science Center (NC CSC) involved federal, state, tribal, and university partners to implement a pilot study aimed at developing data and information exchange protocols and identifying analytical needs across a broad network of partners. The study was organized around a set of management questions identified by the NC CSC’s partners. Issues related to species, landscapes, and ecosystem connections were used to orient the study across various scales of decision-making.   As part of the study, researchers prototyped the use of climate projections in ecosystem, habitat, and wildlife impact models, to inform resource management and planning decisions. Capabilities and constraints associated with information exchange and analysis between federal and non-federal partners were then assessed.   This study resulted in the development of an innovative platform geared towards user-friendly information exchange and analysis, providing new views of data critical to supporting researchers and decision-makers in analyzing climate-associated risk events and mitigating their effects.    

Colorado State University organized and hosted a workshop aimed at developing an information technology framework for data integration related to climate change impacts on ecosystems and landscape conservation. The workshop included key federal and state agency partners, tribal governments, and universities. The objective of the workshop was to develop an information technology strategy to handle the various data, information, and computational services which the eight regional DOI Climate Science Centers will be responsible for delivering to stakeholders.   Issues covered during the workshop included distributed computing and data storage; information security issues across federal, state, university, and public portals; analysis across multiple scales and sectors; and exchanging information to multiple user communities. The workshop was charged with developing a framework that could serve the needs of the regional Climate Science Centers, which include local to regional, cross-regional, and national level considerations. The workshop also provided guidance for a pilot study focused on evaluating the current and future capacity to analyze, archive, and distribute information across various information technology infrastructure types.

In the Great Plains, climate change is expected to result in more frequent and intense droughts, severe rainfall events, and heat waves. Adapting to changing conditions will require coordination in the research and observation capabilities of multiple organizations, institutions, and government programs. In light of these needs, researchers worked with federal, state, tribal, university, and non-governmental organization partners to (1) synthesize the current state of ecosystems in the Great Plains; (2) assess the ability of human and ecological communities in the region to adapt to climate change; and (3) develop a process to improve future assessments of the vulnerability of the region’s natural and cultural resources to climate change. A key finding of the assessment is that multiple climatic and non-climatic stressors put agriculture, water, ecosystems, and rural and tribal communities at risk. For example, rising temperatures and a projected increase in extreme summer temperatures in the Great Plains could have significant implications for water availability for conservation efforts, energy production, and agriculture. This project resulted in an improved understanding of the base knowledge of various agencies related to climate change impacts and potential response strategies for dealing with its effects.

Maintaining the native prairie lands of the Northern Great Plains (NGP), which provide an important habitat for declining grassland species, requires anticipating the effects of increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations and climate change on the region’s vegetation. Specifically, climate change threatens NGP grasslands by increasing the potential encroachment of native woody species into areas where they were previously only present in minor numbers. This project used a dynamic vegetation model to simulate vegetation type (grassland, shrubland, woodland, and forest) for the NGP for a range of projected future climates and relevant management scenarios. Comparing results of these simulations illustrates the sensitivity of woody encroachment projections to climate change factors. Improved understanding of the effects of increasing CO2, climate change, and land management practices on potential woody encroachment will be used to guide management practices to be most effective in protecting grassland habitat in the NGP into the future.

Throughout western North America, warming associated with climate change is leading to both earlier spring peak streamflows and earlier seed dispersal, potentially reducing seedling establishment and in turn reducing the quality of riparian (near-river) forests, which provide critical habitat for diverse birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians, and insects, and food and shade for fish and other aquatic animals. This project aimed to predict these effects of climate change on cottonwood and willow tree regeneration in western forests by linking models of seed dispersal timing, streamflow hydrology, and seedling establishment, focusing on the upper South Platte River Basin as a study area. Results are expected to help land managers anticipate future changes in riparian wildlife habitat quality, and potentially to respond to these changes by actively re-vegetating high-priority areas, or by working with water management agencies to schedule dam releases that favor cottonwood and willow establishment.

Climate affects both the demographics of the Greater sage-grouse bird and the condition and long-term viability of their habitats, including sage-steppe communities. This project builds on collaboration among federal land managers, state wildlife biologists, scientists, and other organizations to create a long-term framework for implementing adaptive management for the sage-grouse. The study examined factors that might be limiting grouse numbers and will investigate components of weather patterns in relation to projected climate change models. Precipitation and temperature, as well as variables such as evaporation and soil moisture, will be considered. Overall, the project focused on (1) providing workshops to foster collaboration and interpretation of climate information, (2) developing a sage-steppe habitat map, and (3) suggesting recommendations for an adaptive management framework. 

Climate scientists need more and better information about the needs of decision-makers and managers, while decision-makers need better information about how a changing climate may affect their management and conservation objectives. The goal of this project was to build connections between the Plains and Prairie Potholes Landscape Conservation Cooperative (PPP-LCC), the North Central Climate Science Center (NC CSC), and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Climate Prediction and Projection Pilot Platform (NCPP) to facilitate a link between the users and producers of climate information, as well as to identify gaps between available and desired data. This project developed a conceptual model of the interactions between climate change, land use change, and conservation and adaptation in the Plains and Prairie Potholes (PPR) region of the North Central U.S. Relating climate variations to the prevailing land use and socioeconomic issues in the region helped to produce a framework enabling climate scientists to guide managers towards currently available and useful climate information and to design future research to address remaining key uncertainties affecting conservation decisions in the region.

With joint funding from the North Central Climate Science Center (NC CSC) and NASA's Earth Science Applied Sciences Program, the NC CSC supports resource managers and their decision process through its Resource for Vulnerability Assessment, Adaptation and Mitigation Planning (ReVAMP), a collaborative research/planning effort supported by high performance computing and modeling resources. The NC CSC focuses primarily on climate data as input to the ReVAMP. In this project the NASA DEVELOP program was used to evaluate how remote sensing data sets can contribute to the ecological response models that are implemented in the ReVAMP system. This work demonstrates the utility of remote sensing in vulnerability assessment and ensures remote sensing data sets are fully embedded in the ReVAMP system. The use of remote sensing products helped to scale ground-based measurement collected on managed lands to larger regions more suitable for analysis against climate modeling grids. The NASA DEVELOP program covered the cost of six graduate students and the NC CSC covered 3 months of time dedicated to faculty advisors for the DEVELOP students.

The climate of the North Central U.S. is driven by a combination of factors, including atmospheric circulation patterns, the region’s complex topography which extends from the High Rockies to the Great Plains, and variations in hydrology. Together, these factors determine the sustainability of the region’s ecosystems and the services that they provide communities.   In order to understand the vulnerability of the region’s ecosystems to change, it is necessary to have reliable projections of future climate conditions. To address this need, researchers first examined past and present variations in climate and assessed the ability of climate models to effectively project future climate conditions for the region. Second, researchers used these climate models to project how the region’s water balance might change. This information was then used to understand potential future changes in ecosystems that are of interest to stakeholders. For example, researchers found that the increased probability of future drought in Iowa would threaten the state’s tallgrass prairies, as 28 plant species could experience a reduction in habitat suitability by 2040.   This research helps clarify the trajectory of past, present, and future changes in the region’s climate; identifies specific climate conditions associated with extreme events such as drought; and combines this knowledge to evaluate future conditions of ecosystems in the region. Together, this information can be used to support climate adaptation efforts in the North Central region.    

Determining which species, habitats, or ecosystems are most vulnerable to climate change enables resource managers to better set priorities for conservation action. To address the need for information on vulnerability, this research project aimed to leverage the expertise of university partners to inform the North Central Climate Science Center on how to best assess the vulnerability of elements of biodiversity to climate and land use change in order to inform the development and implementation of management options. Outcomes from this activity were expected to include 1) a framework for modeling vegetation type and species response to climate and land use change, 2) an evaluation of existing alternative vegetation and species response models, and 3) a presentation of vulnerability assessments for managers for incorporation into climate adaptation strategies.