The goal of Climate Futures Toolbox is to provide easy climate data access (MACA v2) to support climate scenario planning. This package allows you to: Quickly acquire climate data subsets for a spatial region of interest Summarize climate data at daily timesteps, and compute derived quantities Contrast reference and target time periods to understand differences in climate over time, and Easily work with climate data, without having to worry about the details of how it is stored or formatted

With support from the USGS Community for Data Integration (CDI), researchers at the North Central CASC will develop and implement an efficient and robust “Climate Scenarios Toolbox” to help on-the-ground management partners access and interpret relevant climate data, assess resource vulnerabilities to climate variability and change, and design adaptation strategies.

Federal land managers need an adaptive management framework to accommodate changing conditions and that allows them to effectively link the appropriate science to natural resource management decision-making across jurisdictional boundaries. FRAME-SIMPPLLE is a collaborative modeling process designed to accomplish this goal by coupling the adaptive capabilities of the SIMPPLLE modeling system with accepted principles of collaboration. The two essential components of the process are FRAME (Framing Research in support of the Adaptive Management of Ecosystems), which creates a collaborative problem-solving environment, and SIMPPLLE (SIMulating Patterns and Processes at Landscape Scales), which is a vegetation dynamics modeling system. The resulting collaborative modeling process allows decision makers to optimize the management of multiple resources and evaluate the likely outcome of various choices. The approach involves collaboratively engaging resource managers, modelers, and scientists in framing the science issues embedded in key natural resource management issues and then developing the SIMPPLLE modeling approach to address those issues. Through a prototype collaborative modeling effort at Mesa Verde National Park, a process has been developed for adaptive, multi-objective resource management. What is needed now is an effort to refine the approach and establish a transportable methodology that is applicable across a wide range of ecosystems. In the Northern Rockies, managers have expressed an interest in exploring this approach at Glacier National Park, the Crown of the Continent Ecosystem, and the Rocky Mountain Front. This project utilized and evaluated the FRAME-SIMPPLLE approach to (1) explore adaptive management for climate and landscape change in the Northern Rockies, (2) recommend how to foster the long-term development of such collaborative planning tools as a joint effort between the USGS and the Institute of the Environment; (3) develop graduate student mentoring opportunities focused on collaborative planning and adaptive management science, and (4) investigate the use of GIS to further landscape science and conservation, especially related to energy development.

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.