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.

Scenario planning helps managers incorporate climate change into their natural resource decision making through a structured “what-if” process of identifying key uncertainties and potential impacts and responses. Although qualitative scenarios, in which ecosystem responses to climate change are derived via expert opinion, often suffice for managers to begin addressing climate change in their planning, this approach may face limits in resolving the responses of complex systems to altered climate conditions. In addition, this approach may fall short of the scientific credibility managers often require to take actions that differ from current practice. Quantitative simulation modeling of ecosystem response to climate conditions and management actions can provide this credibility, but its utility is limited unless the modeling addresses the most impactful and management-relevant uncertainties and incorporates realistic management actions. We use a case study to compare and contrast management implications derived from qualitative scenario narratives and from scenarios supported by quantitative simulations. We then describe an analytical framework that refines the case study’s integrated approach in order to improve applicability of results to management decisions. The case study illustrates the value of an integrated approach for identifying counterintuitive system dynamics, refining understanding of complex relationships, clarifying the magnitude and timing of changes, identifying and checking the validity of assumptions about resource responses to climate, and refining management directions. Our proposed analytical framework retains qualitative scenario planning as a core element because its participatory approach builds understanding for both managers and scientists, lays the groundwork to focus quantitative simulations on key system dynamics, and clarifies the challenges that subsequent decision making must address.

This dataset provides downscaled climate projections at 800m spatial resolution for nine ecologically-relevant climate variables for the north central US region between 35.5N-49N latitude and 88W-118W longitude from 12 Coupled Model Intercomparison Project - Phase 5 (CMIP5) climate model simulations (6GCMs x 2RCPs) which are downscaled using the Multivariate Adaptive Constructed Analog (MACA) method. These projections are available as five different (approximately) 30-year climate normals between 1950 and 2099 as monthly values, except for Aridity Index which are annual values. The five periods for which these climate normals are provided are 1950-1979 and 1980-2005 in the historic, and 2011-2040, 2041-2070 and 2071-2099 in the future. Six GCMs were selected for developing this dataset. This selection was done to facilitate availability of several divergent future scenarios for the north central US region, and are selected based on (a) divergence found for future changes in annual temperature and precipitation for the region based on the projections from 34 CMIP5 GCMs for both RCP 4.5 and RCP 8.5 emissions scenarios, as well as (b) their relatively higher accuracy in representing the historic climate for the western and central US region. The six GCMs include CanESM2, CCSM4, CNRM-CM5, GFDL-ESM2M, HadGEM2-ES and IPSL-CM5A-MR. The nine climate variables include aridity index (unitless), potential evapotranspiration (mm), precipitation (mm), relative humidity (%), downward solar radiation (W.m-2), maximum daily temperature (C), minimum daily temperature (C), average temperature (C), vapor pressure deficit (Pa). Most of these variables were directly available from the 4km MACAv2-METDATA archive at the monthly time frequency, while others such as aridity index, relative humidity, average temperature and vapor pressure deficits were calculated additionally. The climate normals for the different periods (mentioned above) were estimated at 4km spatial resolution and then spatially disaggregated to 800m spatial resolution using bilinear interpolation. A datafile on the elevation of a grid cell at 800m is also made available in this archive.

Water management planners and researchers throughout the world rely on hydrological models to forecast and simulate streamflow hydrology and hydrological events. These simulations are used to inform water management, municipal planning, and ecosystem conservation decisions, as well as to investigate potential effects of climate and land-use change on hydrology. 

Locating meadow study sitesMeadow centers as recorded in the ‘Copy of sitecords_areaelev from Caruthers thesis.xls’ file delivered by Debinski in November 2012 were matched to polygons as recorded in files ‘teton97map_area.shp’ and ‘gallatin97map_area.shp’ both also delivered by Debinski in November 2012.In cases where the meadow center did not fall within a meadow polygon, if there was a meadow polygon of the same meadow TYPE nearby (judgment was used here), the meadow center was matched with the meadow polygon of same meadow TYPE. In total, 29 of 30 Gallatin meadow sites and 21 of 25 Teton meadow sites were positively located.Identifying meadow pixels for analysisThe native MODIS 250-meter grid was reprojected to match meadow data and added to the GIS project window along with the meadow polygons. For context, aerial photography from ESRI’s basemap streaming services were also added to the ArcMap project. MODIS pixels that were at least half-covered by meadow polygon area were used in further ndvi analysis. Meadows that did not cover at least half of one MODIS pixel were eliminated from the analysis. In total, 17 Gallatin meadow sites (M1= 0; M2= 0; M3= 4; M4= 4; M5= 4; M6=5), covering at least half of 39 MODIS pixels (M1= 0; M2= 0; M3= 12; M4= 4; M5= 6; M6= 17), were used in further analysis and 16 Teton meadow sites (M1=3; M2=1; M3=4; M5=5; M6=3) covering at least half of 1252 MODIS pixels (M1= 105; M2= 1; M3= 25; M4=0 ; M5= 19; M6=1102), were used in further analysis.List of site names that were located, but not used in the NDVI analysis b/c they were too small: Gallatin – Porcupine Exclosure; Twin Cabin Willows; Figure 8; Taylor Fork; Teepee Sage; Daly North; Wapiti (Taylor Fork); Specimen Creek; Bacon Rind M1; Bacon Rind M4, Teepee wet; Daly SouthTeton – Cygnet Pond; Christian Pond; Willow Flats North; Willow Flats South; Sound of MusicMODIS preprocessing methods: MODIS MOD13Q1 representing observations of normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) from March 2000 through December 2012 were downloaded from the USGS Land Processes Distributed Area Archive Center (LPDAAC) during the spring of 2013. Also downloaded at the same time were grids that described the estimated reliability of NDVI observations and the actual day of the year for each NDVI observation used in maximum compositing routines by the MODIS program. All MODIS data layers were reprojected to match meadow data layers.

This project conducts an interdisciplinary, technical assessment of key social-ecological vulnerabilities, risks, and response capacities of the Wind River Indian Reservation (WRIR) to inform development of decision tools to support drought preparedness. It also provides opportunities for 1) development of tribal technical capacity for drought preparedness, and 2) educational programming guided by tribal needs, Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK), and indigenous observations of drought for tribal members, with a longer-term goal of transferring lessons learned to other tribes and non-tribal entities. This project has foundational partnerships between the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho tribes of the WRIR, the National Drought Mitigation Center (NDMC) at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, the North Central Climate Science Center (NCCSC) at Colorado State University, University of Wyoming EPSCoR, and multiple government agencies and university partners to develop decision tools to support drought preparedness. Other partners include the USDA Northern Plains Regional Climate Hub and NRCS, the Western Water Assessment at CU Boulder, NOAA National Integrated Drought Information System (NIDIS), the High Plains Regional Climate Center, US Fish and Wildlife Service, USGS, BIA, Great Northern LCC, and other North Central University Consortium scientists. The project’s decision target is a WRIR Drought Management Plan that integrates state-of-the art climate science with hydrologic, social, and ecological vulnerabilities and risks, and identifies response capacities and strategies to support the Tribal Water Code and related resources management.