NCCASC Publications

Title Year Authors
Balancing multiple management objectives as climate change transforms ecosystems

As climate change facilitates significant and persistent ecological transformations, managing ecosystems according to historical baseline conditions may no longer be feasible. The Resist-Accept-Direct (RAD) framework can guide climate-informed…

2023 Katherine J. Siegel Kyle C. Cavanaugh Laura E. Dee
Identifying opportunity hot spots for reducing the risk of wildfire-caused carbon loss in western US conifer forests

The escalating climate and wildfire crises have generated worldwide interest in using proactive forest management (e.g. forest thinning, prescribed fire, cultural burning) to mitigate the risk of wildfire-caused carbon loss in forests. To…

2023 Jamie L Peeler Lisa McCauley Kerry L Metlen Travis Woolley Kimberley T Davis Marcos D Robles Ryan D Haugo Karin L Riley Philip E Higuera Joseph E Fargione Robert N Addington Steven Bassett Kori Blankenship Michael J Case Teresa B Chapman Edward Smith Randy Swaty Nathan Welch
Scenario-Based Decision Analysis: Integrated scenario planning and structured decision making for resource management under climate change

Managing resources under climate change is a high-stakes and daunting task, especially because climate change and associated complex biophysical responses engender sustained directional changes as well as abrupt transformations. This…

2023 Brian W Miller Mitchell Eaton Amy Symstad Gregor W. Schuurman Imtiaz Rangwala William Travis
PhenoCam: An evolving, open-source tool to study the temporal and spatial variability of ecosystem-scale phenology

Over the last twenty years, phenology—the study of seasonal life cycle events—has emerged as a key subfield of global change biology. Phenology provides an integrated measure of the organismal response to climate change and is a key driver of the…

2023 Andrew D. Richardson
HP-LSP: A reference of land surface phenology from fused Harmonized Landsat and Sentinel-2 with PhenoCam data

Land surface phenology (LSP) products are currently of large uncertainties due to cloud contaminations and other impacts in temporal satellite observations and they have been poorly validated because of the lack of spatially comparable ground…

2023 Khuong H. Tran Xiaoyang Zhang Yongchang Ye Yu Shen Shuai Gao Yuxia Liu Andrew Richardson
Final Report: Future of Fire in the North Central: Towards a National Synthesis for Wildland Fire Under a Changing Climate

In this work we find that the future of fire in the U.S. will likely be characterized by more frequent and larger fires in most regions due to the changing climate and more people starting fires in new places. For the period 2020-2060, we project…

2023 Jennifer Balch
A soil-air temperature model to determine the start of season phenology of deciduous forests

Forest ecosystems play a major role in sequestering atmospheric carbon dioxide, which can help offset the detrimental effects of anthropogenic carbon emissions. However, climate change has and will continue to affect the phenology of forest…

2023 Lily Klinek Jessie Au Christopher YS Wong Troy S Magney Dennis Baldocchi
Solar-induced chlorophyll fluorescence captures photosynthetic phenology better than traditional vegetation indices

Accurate characterization of plant phenology is of great importance for monitoring global carbon, water, and energy cycling. Remotely sensed satellite observations have been widely used to estimate land surface phenology across multiple spatial…

2023 Jingru Zhang Alemu Gonsamo Xiaojuan Tong Jingfeng Xiao Cheryl A. Rogers Shuhong Qin Peirong Liu Peiyang Yu Pu Ma
Actualizing Indigenous Knowledge in tribal wildlife management: basic preconditions

Indigenous Knowledge (IK) is increasingly involved in the contemporary management of natural resources. Tribal wildlife management programs in the United States may be uniquely positioned to effectively and ethically integrate their IK. While a…

2023 Anthony W Ciocco Stefan Tangen Chad Smith
Seventy questions of importance to the conservation of the North Central grasslands of the United States in a changing climate

Successful conservation of ecosystems in a changing climate requires actionable research that directly supports the rethinking and revising of management approaches to address changing risks and opportunities. As an important first step toward…

2023 Christine Miller Hesed Heather Yocum Molly Cross Aparna Bamzai Ben Wheeler Jon P. Beckmann Marissa Ahlering Kimberly R. Hall Emily Boyd-Valandra Danika L. Mosher Brian W Miller Sarah Jaffe
The underappreciated importance of solar radiation in constraining spring phenology of temperate ecosystems in the Northern and Eastern United States

Spring phenology of temperate ecosystems is highly sensitive to climate change, generating various impacts on many important terrestrial surface biophysical processes. Although various prognostic models relying…

2023 Yating Gu Yingyi Zhao Zhengfei Guo Lin Meng Kun Zhang Jing Wang Calvin K.F. Lee Jing Xie Yantian Wang Zhengbing Yan He Zhang Jin Wu
Integrated Rangeland Fire Management Strategy Actionable Science Plan Completion Assessment: Climate and Weather Topic, 2015–20

Loss and degradation of sagebrush (Artemisia spp.) rangelands due to an accelerated invasive annual grass-wildfire cycle and other stressors are significant management, conservation, and economic issues in the western U.S. These…

2023 Christopher R Anthony Matthew J Holloran Mark Ricca Steve Hanser Sue Phillips Paul F Steblein Lief A Wiechman
Where can managers effectively resist climate-driven ecological transformation in pinyon–juniper woodlands of the US Southwest?

Pinyon–juniper (PJ) woodlands are an important component of dryland ecosystems across the US West and are potentially susceptible to ecological transformation. However, predicting woodland futures is complicated by species-specific strategies for…

2023 Adam R Noel Robert K Shriver Shelley Crausbay John B Bradford
Reduced Fire Severity Offers Near-Term Buffer to Climate-Driven Declines in Conifer Resilience Across the Western United States

Increasing fire severity and warmer, drier postfire conditions are making forests in the western United States (West) vulnerable to ecological transformation. Yet, the relative importance of and interactions between these drivers of forest change…

2023 Kimberley Davis Marcos D. Robles Kerry B. Kemp Philip Higuera Teresa Chapman Kerry L. Metlen Jamie L. Peeler Kyle C. Rodman Travis Woolley Robert N. Addington Brian J. Buma C. Alina Cansler Michael J. Case Brandon M. Collin Jonathan Coop Solomon Z. Dobrowski Nathan S. Gill Collin Haffey Lucas B. Harris Brian Harvey Ryan D. Haugo Matthew Hurteau Dominik Kulakowski Caitlin Littlefield Lisa A. McCauley Nicholas Povak Kristen L. Shive Edward Smith Jens T. Stevens Camille Stevens-Rumann Alan H. Taylor Alan J. Tepley Derek J. N. Young Robert A. Andrus Mike Battaglia Julia K. Berkey Sebastian U. Busby Amanda R. Carlson Marin E. Chambers Erich Kyle Dodson Daniel C. Donato Will Downing Paula J. Fornwalt Josh Halofsky Ashley Hoffman Andrés Holz Jose M. Iniguez Meg A. Krawchuk Mark R. Kreider Andrew J. Larson Garrett W. Meigs John Paul Roccaforte Monica T. Rother Hugh Safford Michael Schaedel Jason S. Sibold Megan P. Singleton Monica G. Turner Alexandra K. Urza Kyra D. Clark-Wolf Larissa Yocom Joseph B. Fontaine John L. Campbell
Synthesis of Climate and Ecological Science to Support Grassland Management Priorities in the North Central Region

Grasslands in the Great Plains are of ecological, economic, and cultural importance in the United States. In response to a need to understand how climate change and variability will impact grassland ecosystems and their management in the 21st…

2023 Christine Miller Hesed Heather Yocum Imtiaz Rangwala Amy Symstad Jeff M. Martin Kevin Ellison David J A Wood Marissa Ahlering Katherine J Chase Shelley Crausbay Ana Davidson Julie L. Elliott Jim Giocomo David Hoover Toni Klemm David C Lightfoot Owen P Mckenna Brian W Miller Danika L. Mosher Rachel Chelsea Nagy Jesse B Nippert Jeremy Pittman Lauren M. Porensky Jilmarie Stephens Alexander V Zale
Grassland Management Priorities for the North Central Region

Understanding how climate change and variability will impact grassland ecosystems is crucial for successful grassland management in the 21st century. In 2020, the U.S. Geological Survey North Central Climate Adaptation Science Center (USGS NC…

2023 Christine Miller Hesed Heather Yocum
Final Report: Anticipating Forest Vulnerability to Fire-Catalyzed Ecosystem Change

Forests in the western US are increasingly impacted by climate change. Warm, dry conditions associated with climate change both increases fire activity in western forests and make it more difficult for forests to recover after wildfires. If…

2023 Philip Higuera Kimberley Davis
Changes in wildfire occurrence and risk to homes from 1990 through 2019 in the Southern Rocky Mountains, USA

Wildfires and housing development have increased since the 1990s, presenting unique challenges for wildfire management. However, it is unclear how the relative influences of housing growth and changing wildfire occurrence have altered risk to…

2023 Todd J Hawbaker Paul D Henne Melanie K Vanderhoof Amanda R Carlson Miranda H. Mockrin Volker C Radeloff
An aridity threshold model of fire sizes and annual area burned in extensively forested ecoregions of the western USA

Wildfire occurrence varies among regions and through time due to the long-term impacts of climate on fuel structure and short-term impacts on fuel flammability. Identifying the climatic conditions that trigger extensive fire years at regional…

2023 Paul D Henne Todd J Hawbaker
Final Report: Characterizing Historic Streamflow to Support Drought Planning in the Upper Missouri River Basin

This project combined tree-ring based paleo and modern climate and hydrologic research aimed at understanding the primary influences on drought risk and water reliability in basins critical for western U.S. water resources. New paleohydrologic…

2023 Gregory T Pederson
People, infrastructure, and data: A pathway to an inclusive and diverse ecological network of networks

Macrosystem-scale research is supported by many ecological networks of people, infrastructure, and data. However, no network is sufficient to address all macrosystems ecology research questions, and there is much to be gained by conducting…

2022 Michael D. SanClements Sydne Record Kevin C. Rose Alison Donnelly Steven S. Chong Katharyn Duffy Alesia Hallmark James B. Heffernan Jianguo Liu Jessica J. Mitchell David J. P. Moore Kusum Naithani Catherine M. O'Reilly Eric R. Sokol Kaitlin Stack Whitney Samantha R. Weintraub-Leff Di Yang
Harnessing the NEON data revolution to advance open environmental science with a diverse and data-capable community

It is a critical time to reflect on the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) science to date as well as envision what research can be done right now with NEON (and other) data and what training is needed to enable a diverse user…

2022 Rachel Chelsea Nagy Jennifer Balch Erin K. Bissell Megan Cattau Nancy Glenn Benjamin S. Halpern Nayani Ilangakoon Brian Johnson Maxwell Joseph Sergio Marconi Catherine O’Riordan James Sanovia Tyson L. Swetnam William Travis Leah A. Wasser Elizabeth Woolner Phoebe Zarnetske Mujahid Abdulrahim John Adler Grenville Barnes Kristina Bartowitz Rachael E. Blake Sara P. Bombaci Julien Brun Jacob D. Buchanan K. Dana Chadwick Melissa S. Chapman Steven S. Chong Y. Anny Chung Jessica R. Corman Jannelle Couret Erika Crispo Thomas G. Doak Alison Donnelly Katharyn A. Duffy Kelly H. Dunning Sandra M. Duran Jennifer W. Edmonds Dawson E. Fairbanks Andrew J. Felton Christopher R. Florian Daniel Gann Martha Gebhardt Nathan S. Gill Wendy K. Gram Jessica S. Guo Brian Harvey Katherine R. Hayes Matthew R. Helmus Robert T. Hensley Kelly L. Hondula Tao Huang Wiley J. Hundertmark Virginia Iglesias Pierre-Andre Jacinthe Lara S. Jansen Marta A. Jarzyna Tiona M. Johnson Katherine D. Jones Megan A. Jones Michael G. Just Youssef O. Kaddoura Aurora K. Kagawa-Vivani Aleya Kaushik Adrienne B. Keller Katelyn B. S. King Justin Kitzes Michael J. Koontz Paige V. Kouba Wai-Yin Kwan Jalene M. LaMontagne Elizabeth A. LaRue Daijiang Li Bonan Li Yang Lin Daniel Liptzin William Alex Long Adam L. Mahood Samuel S. Malloy Sparkle L. Malone Joseph M. McGlinchy Courtney L. Meier Brett A. Melbourne Nathan Mietkiewicz Jeffrey Morisette Moussa Moustapha Chance Muscarella John Musinsky Ranjan Muthukrishnan Kusum Naithani Merrie Neely Kari Norman Stephanie M. Parker Mariana Perez Rocha Laís Petri Colette A. Ramey Sydne Record Matthew W. Rossi Michael SanClements Victoria M. Scholl Anna K. Schweiger Bijan Seyednasrollah Debjani Sihi Kathleen R. Smith Eric R. Sokol Sarah A. Spaulding Anna I. Spiers Lise A. St. Denis Anika P. Staccone Kaitlin Stack Whitney Diane M. Stanitski Eva Stricker Thilina D. Surasinghe Sarah K. Thomsen Patrisse M. Vasek Li Xiaolu Di Yang Rong Yu Kelsey M. Yule Kai Zhu
Spatial Estimates of Soil Moisture for Understanding Ecological Potential and Risk: A Case Study for Arid and Semi-Arid Ecosystems

Soil temperature and moisture (soil-climate) affect plant growth and microbial metabolism, providing a mechanistic link between climate and growing conditions. However, spatially explicit soil-climate estimates that can inform management and…

2022 Michael S O'Donnell Daniel Manier
Training and Capacity Building Activities of Climate Adaptation Science Centers for the Benefit of Tribal and Indigenous Communities, 2010–2019

Tribal nations and Indigenous communities are key collaborators on adaptation work within the Climate Adaptation Science Center (CASC) network. The centers have partnered with numerous Tribal and Indigenous communities on projects or activities…

2022 Tori Pfaeffle Robin O'Malley Aparna Bamzai Stefan Tangen
Rapidly Assessing Social Characteristics of Drought Preparedness and Decision Making: A Guide for Practitioners

This guide is intended to provide managers, decision makers, and other practitioners with advice on conducting a rapid assessment of the social dimensions of drought. Findings from a rapid assessment can provide key social context that may aid in…

2022 Katherine R Clifford Julia (Contractor) B Goolsby Amanda E Cravens Ashley (Contractor) E Cooper
SpatialNSM Software: Spatial estimates of soil-climate properties using a modified Newhall simulation model

We developed a framework to estimate high-resolution spatiotemporal soil moisture (monthly, annual, and seasonal) and temperature-moisture regimes. Our approach uses the Newhall simulation model (NSM) which we fully describe in the Larger…

2022 Michael S O'Donnell Daniel Manier
When Do Climate Services Achieve Societal Impact? Evaluations of Actionable Climate Adaptation Science

To cope with complex environmental impacts in a changing climate, researchers are increasingly being asked to produce science that can directly support policy and decision making. To achieve such societal impact, scientists are using climate…

2022 Aparna Bamzai Renee McPherson
Tackling the Science Usability Gap in a Warming World: Co-Producing Useable Climate Information for Natural Resource Management

Developing scientific information that is used in policy and practice has been a longstanding challenge in many sectors and disciplines, including climate change adaptation for natural resource management. One approach to address this problem…

2022 Molly Cross Lauren Oakes Heidi E. Kretser Raymond Bredehoft Paul Dey Anika Mahoney Noelle Smith Ian Tator Jim Wasseen
Final Report: Understanding Local Resistance and Resilience to Future Habitat Change in the Sagebrush Ecosystem

The sagebrush ecosystem is home to diverse wildlife, including charismatic species such as pronghorn, pygmy rabbits, mule deer and Greater Sage-Grouse. Historic and contemporary land-uses, large wildfires, non-native (introduced) plant invasions…

2022 Daniel Manier Michael S O'Donnell
Quantifying the demographic vulnerabilities of dry woodlands to climate and competition using rangewide monitoring data

Climate change is expected to alter the distribution and abundance of tree species, impacting ecosystem structure and function. Yet, anticipating where this will occur is often hampered by a lack of understanding of how demographic rates, most…

2022 Robert K Shriver Charles B Yackulic David M. Bell John B Bradford
A novel algorithm for the generation of gap-free time series by fusing harmonized Landsat 8 and Sentinel-2 observations with PhenoCam time series for detecting land surface phenology

Vegetation phenology is one of the most sensitive indicators to environmental and climate changes. In order to characterize the seasonal variation in relatively pure or homogenous vegetation types, fine spatial resolution…

2022 Khuong H. Tran Xiaoyang Zhang Alexander R. Ketchpaw Jianmin Wang Yongchang Ye Yu Shen
Demographic uncertainty and disease risk influence climate-informed management of an alpine species

Climate change is expected to disproportionately affect species occupying ecosystems with relatively hard boundaries, such as alpine ecosystems. Wildlife managers must identify actions to conserve and manage alpine species into the future, while…

2022 Justin A. Gude Nicholas J. DeCesare Kelly M. Proffitt Sarah N. Sells Robert A. Garrott Imtiaz Rangwala Mark Biel Jessica Coltrane Julie Cunningham Tammy Fletcher Karen Loveless Rebecca Mowry Megan O'Reilly Ryan Rauscher Michael Thompson
Fire-catalyzed vegetation shifts in ponderosa pine and Douglas-fir forests of the western United States

Increased wildfire activity combined with warm and dry post-fire conditions may undermine the mechanisms maintaining forest resilience to wildfires, potentially causing ecosystem transitions, or fire-catalyzed vegetation shifts. Stand-replacing…

2022 Kimberley T Davis Philip Higuera Solomon Z Dobrowski Sean A Parks John T Abatzoglou Monica T Rother Thomas T Veblen
Integrating climate-informed planning into State Wildlife Action Plans in the North Central United States

State fish and wildlife agencies are required to submit a State Wildlife Action Plan (SWAP) every 10 years to be eligible for grants through the State Wildlife Grant Program. With the next round of revisions due in 2025, the U.S. Geological…

2022 Kimberly E Szcodronski Indigo T Bannister Blake R Hossack Alisa A Wade Wilcox
Democratizing macroecology: Integrating unoccupied aerial systems with the National Ecological Observatory Network

Macroecology research seeks to understand ecological phenomena with causes and consequences that accumulate, interact, and emerge across scales spanning several orders of magnitude. Broad-extent, fine-grain information (i.e., high spatial…

2022 Michael J. Koontz Victoria M Scholl Anna I. Spiers Megan Cattau John Adler Joseph McGlinchy Tristan Goulden Brett A. Melbourne Jennifer Balch
Grassland easement acquisition: Conversion hazard rate, additionality, spatial spillover, and heuristics

This study investigates optimal grassland easement acquisition strategies with a focus on the roles of environmental benefit additionality and spatial spillover effect of grassland conversion. Numerical analysis shows that the optimal solution…

2022 Ruiqing Miao Hongli Feng David Hennessy Gaurav Arora Charles R. Loesch
Final Report: Engaging with Stakeholders to Produce Actionable Science: Moving from Theory to Practice

Over time, the idea of the public value of federally funded science has slowly transitioned from basic science that helps fight disease and maintain national security (Bush 1945) to use-inspired science that directly informs decisions about the…

2022 Aparna Bamzai
Dry forest decline is driven by both declining recruitment and increasing mortality in response to warm, dry conditions

Aim


Anticipating when and where changes in species' demographic rates will lead to range shifts in response to changing climate remains a major challenge. Despite evidence of increasing mortality in dry forests across the globe in…

2022 Robert K. Shiver Charles B Yackulic David M. Bell John B Bradford
Management Foundations for Navigating Ecological Transformation by Resisting, Accepting, or Directing Social–Ecological Change

Despite striking global change, management to ensure healthy landscapes and sustained natural resources has tended to set objectives on the basis of the historical range of variability in stationary ecosystems. Many social–ecological systems are…

2022 Dawn R Magness Linh Hoang R Travis Belote Jean Brennan Wylie Carr F Stuart Chapin, III Katherine R Clifford Wendy Morrison John M Morton Helen R Sofaer
Resist, accept, and direct responses to biological invasions: A social–ecological perspective

Biological invasions represent an important and unique case of ecological transformation that can strongly influence species and entire ecosystems. Challenges in managing invasions arise on multiple fronts, ranging from diverse and often…

2022 Jason Dunham Joseph R Benjamin David J. Lawrence Katherine R Clifford
Statistical considerations of nonrandom treatment applications reveal region-wide benefits of widespread post-fire restoration action

Accurate predictions of ecological restoration outcomes are needed across the increasingly large landscapes requiring treatment following disturbances. However, observational studies often fail to account for nonrandom treatment application,…

2022 Allison B Simler-Williamson Matthew Germino
Harnessing NEON to evaluate ecological tipping points: Opportunities, challenges, and approaches

The combination of continuing anthropogenic impact on ecosystems across the globe and the observation of catastrophic shifts in some systems has generated substantial interest in understanding and predicting ecological tipping points. The recent…

2022 Ranjan Muthukrishnan Katherine Hayes Kristina Bartowitz Megan Cattau Brian Harvey Claire Lunch
Streamflow reconstructions from tree rings and variability in drought and surface water supply for the Milk and St. Mary River basins

The Milk and St. Mary Rivers are international waterways straddling the United States and Canada and traversing four Tribal Nations before draining into the Missouri and South Saskatchewan Rivers respectively. Management of water resources in the…

2022 Justin T Martin Gregory T Pederson
Overcoming “analysis paralysis” through better climate change scenario planning

This "In Brief" article describes the use of scenario planning to facilitate climate change adaptation in the National Park Service. It summarizes best practices and innovations for using climate change scenario planning, with an…

2022 Gregor W. Schuurman Brian W Miller Amy Symstad Amber N. Runyon Brecken (Contractor) C Robb
Interannual variation in climate contributes to contingency in post-fire restoration outcomes in seeded sagebrush steppe

Interannual variation, especially weather, is an often-cited reason for restoration “failures”; yet its importance is difficult to experimentally isolate across broad spatiotemporal extents, due to correlations between weather and site…

2022 Allison B Simler-Williamson Cara V Applestein Matthew Germino
Final Report: Integrating Climate Considerations into Grazing Management Programs in National Parks

The National Park Service (NPS) is responsible for managing livestock grazing in nearly 100 parks, and several park grazing management planning efforts are currently underway. However, there is a recognized need to update grazing management…

2022 Brian W Miller Amanda R. Hardy
Final Report: Predicting Future Forage Conditions for Elk and Mule Deer in Montana and Wyoming

Ungulate populations across the West have adapted to specific patterns in forage quantity, quality, and timing that ultimately influence the number of animals. We assessed potential for climate change to affect forage quality and availability for…

2022 Tabitha A Graves
U.S. fires became larger, more frequent, and more widespread in the 2000s

Recent fires have fueled concerns that regional and global warming trends are leading to more extreme burning. We found compelling evidence that average fire events in regions of the United States are up to four times the size, triple the…

2022 Virginia Iglesias Jennifer Balch William Travis
From flowering to foliage: Accelerometers track tree sway to provide high-resolution insights into tree phenology

Trees are bioindicators of global climate change and regional urbanization, but available monitoring tools are ineffective for fine-scale observation of many species. Using six accelerometers mounted on two urban ash trees (Fraxinus americana),…

2022 Deidre Jaeger A.C.M. Looze M.S. Raleigh Brian W Miller Jonathan M Friedman C.A. Wessman
PaleoTransformation Analysis Model Code

This project investigated how climate change over the last 21,000 years, which was characterized by significant warming, influenced vegetation in the Southern and Middle Rockies. We found that rapid vegetation change was initiated across these…

2022
The role of landscape characteristics in climate-driven rapid ecological change over the last 21,000 years in the Middle and Southern Rockies, U.S.A.

These model objects are the outputs of two Bayesian hierarchical models (one for the Middle Rockies and one for the Southern Rockies) to explore the role of landscape characteristics in climate-driven ecological change and transformation. We used…

2022
Climate drivers of rapid ecological change at the landscape scale over the last 21,000 years in the Middle and Southern Rockies, U.S.A.

These model objects are the outputs of three Boosted Regression Tree models (for three different time periods) to explore the role of climate change and variability in driving ecological change and transformation. Response variables were the…

2022
Eyes on the herd: Quantifying ungulate density from satellite, unmanned aerial systems, and GPS collar data

Novel approaches for quantifying density and distributions could help biologists adaptively manage wildlife populations, particularly if methods are accurate, consistent, cost-effective, rapid, and sensitive to change. Such approaches may also…

2022 Tabitha A Graves Michael (Contractor) J Yarnall Aaron N Johnston Todd M Preston Geneva W Chong Eric K. Cole William M Janousek Paul C Cross
Murky waters: divergent ways scientists, practitioners, and landowners evaluate beaver mimicry

Beaver mimicry is a fast-growing conservation technique to restore streams and manage water that is gaining popularity within the natural resource management community because of a wide variety of claimed socio-environmental benefits. Despite a…

2022 Tori Pfaeffle Megan A. Moore Amanda E Cravens Jamie McEvoy Aparna Bamzai
Predicting Playa Inundation Using a Long Short-Term Memory Neural Network

In the Great Plains, playas are critical wetland habitats for migratory birds and a source of recharge for the agriculturally important High Plains aquifer. The temporary wetlands exhibit complex hydrology, filling rapidly via local rain storms…

2022 Kylen Solvik Anne M. Bartuszevige Meghan Bogaerts Maxwell Joseph
Grassland easement evaluation and acquisition with uncertain conversion and conservation returns

We develop an analytical framework to examine an agency's optimal grassland easement acquisition while accounting for landowners’ optimal decisions under uncertainty in both conversion and conservation returns. We derive the value of “wait…

2022 Ruiqing Miao David Hennessy Hongli Feng
Landscape-scale forest restoration decreases vulnerability to drought mortality under climate change in southwest USA ponderosa forest

Drought-induced tree mortality is predicted to increase in dry forests across the globe as future projections show hotter, drier climates. This could potentially result in large-scale tree die-offs, changes in species composition, and loss of…

2022 Lisa A. McCauley John B Bradford Marcos D. Robles Robert K. Shriver Travis J. Woolley Caitlin M Andrews
Diurnal and seasonal dynamics of solar-induced chlorophyll fluorescence, vegetation indices, and gross primary productivity in the boreal forest

Remote sensing of solar-induced chlorophyll fluorescence (SIF) provides a powerful proxy for gross primary productivity (GPP). It is particularly promising in boreal ecosystems where seasonal downregulation of photosynthesis occurs without…

2022 Zoe Pierrat Troy Magney Nicholas C. Parazoo Katja Grossmann David R. Bowling Ulli Seibt Bruce Johnson Warren Helgason Alan Barr Jacob Bortnik Alexander Norton Andrew Maguire Christian Frankenberg Jochen Stutz
Uncertainty, Complexity and Constraints: How Do We Robustly Assess Biological Responses under a Rapidly Changing Climate?

How robust is our assessment of impacts to ecosystems and species from a rapidly changing climate during the 21st century? We examine the challenges of uncertainty, complexity and constraints …

2022 Imtiaz Rangwala Wynne Moss Jane Wolken Renee Rondeau Karen Newlon John Guinotte William Travis
Conservation under uncertainty: Innovations in participatory climate change scenario planning from U.S. national parks

The impacts of climate change (CC) on natural and cultural resources are far-reaching and complex. A major challenge facing resource managers is not knowing the exact timing and nature of those impacts. To confront this problem, scientists,…

2022 Brian W Miller Gregor W. Schuurman Amy J. Symstad Amber N. Runyon Brecken C. Robb
CASC Project Evaluation Survey Template

The design of this survey protocol is based on the indicator framework presented in Wall et. al (2017 https://doi.org/10.1175/WCAS-D-16-0008.1) and is intended to evaluate projects…

2022 Aparna Bamzai Jill Lackett Renee McPherson
Tree mortality response to drought-density interactions suggests opportunities to enhance drought resistance

The future of dry forests around the world is uncertain given predictions that rising temperatures and enhanced aridity will increase drought-induced tree mortality. Using forest management and ecological restoration to reduce density and…

2021 John B Bradford Robert K. Shriver Marcos D. Robles Lisa A. McCauley Travis J. Woolley Caitlin M Andrews Michael Crimmins David M. Bell
OpenET: Filling a Critical Data Gap in Water Management for the Western United States

The lack of consistent, accurate information on evapotranspiration (ET) and consumptive use of water by irrigated agriculture is one of the most important data gaps for water managers in the western United States (U.S.) and other arid…

2021 Forrest Melton Justin Huntington Robyn Grimm Jamie Herring Maurice Hall Dana Rollison Tyler Erickson Richard Allen Martha Anderson Joshua B. Fisher Ayse Kilic Gabriel B Senay John Volk Christopher Hain Lee Johnson Anderson Ruhoff Philip Blankenau Matt Bromley Will Carrara Britta Daudert Conor Doherty Christian Dunkerly MacKenzie O Friedrichs Alberto Guzman Gregory Halverson Jody Hansen Jordan Harding Yanghui Kang David Ketchum Blake Minor Charles Morton Samuel Ortega-Salazar Thomas Ott Mutlu Ozdogan Peter M. ReVelle Mitch Schull Carlos Wang Yun Yang Ray G. Anderson
Institutional barriers to actionable science: Perspectives from decision support tool creators

Scholars have identified a ‘usability gap’ between science and its ability to inform real-world decisions as well as a range of factors that facilitate or impede attempts to span the usability gap with information products. However, most…

2021 Olivia Pearman Amanda E Cravens
Predicting Water Temperature Dynamics of Unmonitored Lakes With Meta-Transfer Learning

Most environmental data come from a minority of well-monitored sites. An ongoing challenge in the environmental sciences is transferring knowledge from monitored sites to unmonitored sites. Here, we demonstrate a novel transfer-learning framework…

2021 Jared Willard Jordan S Read Alison P Appling Samantha K Oliver Xiaowei Jia Vipin Kumar
A New Approach to Evaluate and Reduce Uncertainty of Model-Based Biodiversity Projections for Conservation Policy Formulation

Abstract (from Bioscience): Biodiversity projections with uncertainty estimates under different climate, land-use, and policy scenarios are essential to setting and achieving international targets to mitigate biodiversity loss. Evaluating and…

2021 Bonnie J Myers Sarah R Weiskopf Alexey Shiklomanov Simon Ferrier Ensheng Weng Kimberly Casey Mike Harfoot Stephen T Jackson Allison Leidner Timothy Lenton Gordon Luikart Hiroyuki Matsuda Nathalie Pettorelli Isabel Rosa Alex Ruane Gabriel B Senay Shawn Serbin Derek Tittensor Douglas Beard
Responding to Ecological Transformation: Mental Models, External Constraints, and Manager Decision-Making

Ecological transformation creates many challenges for public natural resource management and requires managers to grapple with new relationships to change and new ways to manage it. In the context of unfamiliar trajectories of ecological change,…

2021 Katherine R Clifford Amanda E Cravens Corrine Knapp
A Science Agenda to Inform Natural Resource Management Decisions in an Era of Ecological Transformation

Earth is experiencing widespread ecological transformation in terrestrial, freshwater, and marine ecosystems that is attributable to directional environmental changes, especially intensifying climate change. To better steward ecosystems facing…

2021 Shelley Crausbay Helen R Sofaer Amanda E Cravens Brian C Chaffin Katherine R Clifford John Gross Corrine Knapp David Lawrence Dawn Magness Abraham J Miller-Rushing Gregor W Schuurman Camille Stevens-Rumann
Navigating Ecological Transformation: Resist–Accept–Direct as a Path to a New Resource Management Paradigm

Natural resource managers worldwide face a growing challenge: Intensifying global change increasingly propels ecosystems toward irreversible ecological transformations. This nonstationarity challenges traditional conservation goals and human well…

2021 Gregor M Schuurman David N Cole Amanda E Cravens Scott Covington Shelley Crausbay Cat Hawkins Hoffman David J Lawrence Dawn Magness John M Morton Elizabeth A Nelson Robin O'Malley
Are drought indices and climate data good indicators of ecologically relevant soil moisture dynamics in drylands?

Droughts are disproportionately impacting global dryland regions where ecosystem health and function are tightly coupled to moisture availability. Drought severity is commonly estimated using algorithms such as the standardized precipitation-…

2021 David M Barnard Matthew Germino John B Bradford Rory (Contractor) C O'connor Caitlin M Andrews Robert K Shriver
A new approach for representing agent-environment feedbacks: coupled agent-based and state-and-transition simulation models

Context


Agent-based models (ABMs) and state-and-transition simulation models (STSMs) have proven useful for understanding processes underlying social-ecological systems and evaluating practical questions about how systems might respond to…

2021 Brian W Miller Leonardo Frid
Engaging with stakeholders to produce actionable science: a framework and guidance

Natural and cultural resource managers are increasingly working with the scientific community to create information on how best to adapt to the current and projected impacts of climate change. Engaging with these managers is a strategy that…

2021 Aparna Bamzai-Dodson Amanda E Cravens Alisa A Wade Wilcox Renee McPherson
Divergent, plausible, and relevant climate futures for near- and long-term resource planning

Scenario planning has emerged as a widely used planning process for resource management in situations of consequential, irreducible uncertainty. Because it explicitly incorporates uncertainty, scenario planning is regularly employed in climate…

2021 David J. Lawrence Amber N. Runyon John Gross Gregor W. Schuurman Brian W Miller
PS3: The Pheno-Synthesis software suite for integration and analysis of multi-scale, multi-platform phenological data

Phenology is the study of recurring plant and animal life-cycle stages which can be observed across spatial and temporal scales that span orders of magnitude (e.g., organisms to landscapes). The variety of scales at which phenological…

2021 Jeffrey T.Morisette Katharyn A. Duffy Jake Weltzin Dawn M Browning R. Lee Marsh Aaron M Friesz (CTR) Luke Zachmann Kyle D Enns Vincent A. Landau Kathy Gerst Theresa Crimmins Katherine D. Jones Tony Chang Brian W Miller Thomas K Maiersperger Andrew D. Richardson
Runoff response to directional land cover change across reference basins in the conterminous United States

Land cover change plays a critical role in influencing hydrological responses. Change in land cover has impacted runoff across basins with substantial human interference; however, the impacts in basins with minimal human interference have been…

2021 Kul Khand Gabriel Senay
Historical changes in plant water use and need in the continental United States

A robust method for characterizing the biophysical environment of terrestrial vegetation uses the relationship between Actual Evapotranspiration (AET) and Climatic Water Deficit (CWD). These variables are usually estimated from a water balance…

2021 Michael T. Tercek Dave Thoma John Gross Kirk Sherrill Stefanie Kagone Gabriel Senay
Divergent climate change effects on widespread dryland plant communities driven by climatic and ecohydrological gradients

Plant community response to climate change will be influenced by individual plant responses that emerge from competition for limiting resources that fluctuate through time and vary across space. Projecting these responses requires an approach…

2021 Kyle Palmquist Daniel R Schlaepfer Rachel R. Renne Stephen Torbit Kevin Doherty Thomas E Remington Greg Watson John B Bradford William Lauenroth
Optimal Color Composition Method for Generating High-Quality Daily Photographic Time Series From PhenoCam

Phenology camera (PhenoCam) data and the derived green chromatic coordinate (GCC) time series are commonly used to track seasonal changes in canopy greenness. However, the GCC time series is noisy because color distortion commonly exists in the…

2021 Qing Li Miaogen Shen Xuehong Chen Cong Wang Jin Chen Xin Cao Xihong Cui
Understanding the future of big sagebrush regeneration: challenges of projecting complex ecological processes

Regeneration is an essential demographic step that affects plant population persistence, recovery after disturbances, and potential migration to track suitable climate conditions. Challenges of restoring big sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata) after…

2021 Daniel R Schlaepfer John B Bradford William Lauenroth Robert K. Shriver
Limited shifts in the distribution of migratory bird breeding habitat density in response to future changes in climate

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…

2021 Owen P Mckenna David M Mushet Samuel (Contractor) R Kucia Elyssa C Mcculloch
A typology of drought decision making: Synthesizing across cases to understand drought preparedness and response actions

Drought is an inescapable reality in many regions, including much of the western United States. With climate change, droughts are predicted to intensify and occur more frequently, making the imperative for drought management …

2021 Amanda E Cravens Jen Henderson Jack Friedman Nina Burkardt Ashley (Contractor) E Cooper Tonya Haigh Michael Hayes Jamie McEvoy Stephanie Paladino Adam K Wilke Hailey Wilmer
Use of PhenoCam Measurements and Image Analysis to Inform the ALMANAC Process-based Simulation Model

Near-surface remote sensing has been used to document seasonal growth patterns (i.e. phenology) for plant communities in diverse habitats. Phenology from this source may only apply to the area within the images. Meanwhile ecosystem models can…

2021 Jacqueline Jacot James R. Kiniry Amber S. Williams Addison Coronel Jianzhong Su Gretchen Miller Binayak Mohanty Amartya Saha Nuria Gomez-Casanovas Jane M. F. Johnson Dawn M. Browning
Climate change scenario planning for resource stewardship at Wind Cave National Park: Climate change scenario planning summary

This report explains scenario planning as a climate change adaptation tool in general, then describes how it was applied to Wind Cave National Park as the second part of a pilot project to dovetail climate change scenario planning with National…

2021 Amber N. Runyon Gregor W. Schuurman Brian W Miller Amy Symstad Amanda R. Hardy
Yellowstone's Old Faithful Geyser Shut Down by a Severe Thirteenth Century Drought

To characterize eruption activity of the iconic Old Faithful Geyser in Yellowstone National Park over past centuries, we obtained 41 new radiocarbon dates of mineralized wood preserved in the mound of silica that precipitated from erupted waters…

2021 Shaul Hurwitz John KIng Gregory T Pederson Justin T Martin David E Damby Michael Manga Jefferson D. G. Hungerford Sara E Peek
Management opportunities and research priorities for Great Plains grasslands

The Great Plains Grassland Summit: Challenges and Opportunities from North to South was held April 10-11, 2018 in Denver, Colorado to provide syntheses of information about key grassland topics of interest in the Great Plains; networking and…

2021 Deborah M. Finch Carolyn Baldwin David P. Brown Katelyn P. Driscoll Erica Fleishman Paulette L Ford Brice Hanberry Amy Symstad Bill Van Pelt Richard Zabel
Using scenarios to evaluate vulnerability of grassland communities to climate change in the southern great plains of the United States

Scenario planning is a useful tool for identifying key vulnerabilities of ecological systems to changing climates, informed by the potential outcomes for a set of divergent, plausible, and relevant climate scenarios. We evaluated potential…

2021 Daniel Manier Natasha B Carr Gordon C Reese Lucy E Burris
The Vulnerability, Impacts, Adaptation and Climate Services Advisory Board (VIACS AB v1.0) contribution to CMIP6

This paper describes the motivation for the creation of the Vulnerability, Impacts, Adaptation and Climate Services (VIACS) Advisory Board for the Sixth Phase of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP6), its initial activities, and its…

2021 Alex C. Ruane Claas Teichmann Nigel W. Arnell Timothy R. Carter Kristie L. Ebi Katja Frieler Clare M. Goodess Bruce Hewitson Radley Horton R. Sari Kovats Heike K. Lotze Linda O. Mearns Antonio Navarra Dennis Ojima Keywan Riahi Cynthia Rosenzweig Matthias Themessl Katharine Vincent
Chapter 25 - Extremes in evaporative demand and their implications for droughts and drought monitoring in the 21st century

Evaporative demand (E0) both drives and responds to droughts based on interactions across the land surface-atmosphere interface, and can be exploited to signal agricultural, hydrologic, and ecological droughts. In this chapter, we argue that…

2021 Mike Hobbins Imtiaz Rangwala Joseph Barsugli Candida Dewes
Using Regional Climate Projections to Guide Grassland Community Restoration in the Face of Climate Change

Grassland loss has been extensive worldwide, endangering the associated biodiversity and human well-being that are both dependent on these ecosystems. Ecologists have developed approaches to restore grassland communities and many have been…

2021 Kristin Kane Diane Debinski Chris Anderson John D. Scasta David M. Engle James R. Miller
Synthesis of Climate Adaptation Planning in Wildland Ecosystems

The chapters of this book have delved into the timely and important topic of science and management of wildland ecosystems in the face of climate and land use change. The period of the book’s development (2011–2015) was one of rapid advancement…

2021 Andrew Hansen David M Theobald S. Thomas Olliff William Monahan
Why Study Climate Change in Wildlands?

Most nations around the world set aside some lands from where people live and work for the benefit of nature. Wildland ecosystems are those lands occupied chiefly by native plants and animals, not intensively used as urban or residential areas,…

2021 Andrew Hansen
Collaborative Research and Management Interactions in Response to Climate Change

Since the passage of the U.S Global Change Research Act of 1990, several actions have been carried out in the Great Plains, including development of the first Great Plains regional climate assessment (National Climate Assessment Synthesis Team…

2021 Dennis Ojima
The signature of sea surface temperature anomalies on the dynamics of semiarid grassland productivity

We used long-term observations of grassland aboveground net plant production (ANPP, 1939– 2016), growing seasonal advanced very-high-resolution radiometer remote sensing normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) data (1982–2016), and…

2021 Maosi Chen Bill Parton Stephen J. Del Grosso Melannie D Hartman Ken Day Compton Tucker Justin D Derner Alan K Knapp William K Smith Dennis Ojima Wei Gao
Long-Term (1986–2015) Crop Water Use Characterization over the Upper Rio Grande Basin of United States and Mexico Using Landsat-Based Evapotranspiration

The evaluation of historical water use in the Upper Rio Grande Basin (URGB), United States and Mexico, using Landsat-derived actual evapotranspiration (ETa) from 1986 to 2015 is presented here as the first study of its kind to apply satellite…

2021 Gabriel Senay Matthew P Schauer Naga Manohar Velpuri Ramesh K Singh Stefanie Kagone MacKenzie O Friedrichs Marcy E. Litvak Kyle R Douglas-Mankin
Characterizing Crop Water Use Dynamics in the Central Valley of California Using Landsat-Derived Evapotranspiration

Understanding how different crops use water over time is essential for planning and managing water allocation, water rights, and agricultural production. The main objective of this paper is to characterize the spatiotemporal dynamics of crop…

2021 Matthew P Schauer Gabriel Senay
Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) Storage Change Characteristics (2003–2016) over Major Surface Basins and Principal Aquifers in the Conterminous United States

In this research, we characterized the changes in the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) monthly total water storage anomaly (TWSA) in 18 surface basins and 12 principal aquifers in the conterminous United States during 2003–2016.…

2021 Naga Manohar Velpuri Gabriel Senay Jessica M Driscoll Samuel W Saxe Lauren E Hay William H Farmer Julie E Kiang
Operational Global Actual Evapotranspiration: Development, Evaluation, and Dissemination

Satellite-based actual evapotranspiration (ETa) is becoming increasingly reliable and available for various water management and agricultural applications from water budget studies to crop performance monitoring. The Operational Simplified…

2021 Gabriel Senay Stefanie Kagone Naga Manohar Velpuri
Evaluation of hydrologic impact of an irrigation curtailment program using Landsat satellite data

Upper Klamath Lake (UKL) is the source of the Klamath River that flows through southern Oregon and northern California. The UKL Basin provides water for 81,000+ ha (200,000+ acres) of irrigation on the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation Klamath Project…

2021 Naga Manohar Velpuri Gabriel Senay Matthew P Schauer C Amanda Garcia Ramesh K Singh MacKenzie O Friedrichs Stefanie Kagone Jonathan V Haynes Terrence D Conlon
Regional crop water use assessment using Landsat‐derived evapotranspiration

Reliable information on water use and availability at basin and field scales are important to ensure the optimized constructive uses of available water resources. This study was conducted with the specific objective to estimate Landsat-based…

2021 Arun Bawa Gabriel Senay Sandeep Kumar
Recent Climate Changes Across the Great Plains and Implications for Natural Resource Management Practices

The Great Plains region plays an important role in providing water and land resources and habitat for wildlife and livestock, crops, energy production, and other critical ecosystem services to support rural livelihoods. The semiarid conditions of…

2021 Dennis Ojima Richard T Conant Bill Parton Jill Lackett Trevor Even
Water Reliability in the West - 2021 SECURE Water Act Report 2021 Marketa Mcguire Subhrendu Gangopadhyay Justin T Martin Gregory T Pederson Connie A Woodhouse Jeremy Littell
Detecting shrub recovery in sagebrush steppe: comparing Landsat-derived maps with field data on historical wildfires

Background: The need for basic information on spatial distribution and abundance of plant species for research and management in semiarid ecosystems is frequently unmet. This need is particularly acute in the large areas impacted by megafires in…

2021 Cara V Applestein Matthew Germino
Weather affects post-fire recovery of sagebrush-steppe communities and model transferability among sites

Altered climate, including weather extremes, can cause major shifts in vegetative recovery after disturbances. Predictive models that can identify the separate and combined temporal effects of disturbance and weather on plant communities and that…

2021 Cara V Applestein Trevor Caughlin Matthew Germino
The impact of production network economies on spatially-contiguous conservation– Theoretical model with evidence from the U.S. Prairie Pothole Region

This paper examines the impact of production network economies on designing cost-effective conservation targeting strategies. We first develop a theoretical model to study the decision to convert land from an extensive (or biodiversity-friendly)…

2021 Gaurav Arora Hongli Feng David A. Hennessy Charles R. Loesch Susan Kvas
Weather and distance to fire refugia limit landscape‐level occurrence of fungal disease in an exotic annual grass

The enemy release hypothesis proposes that invasion by exotic plant species is driven by their release from natural enemies (i.e. herbivores and pathogens) in their introduced ranges. However, in many cases, natural enemies, which may be…

2021 Cara V Applestein Allison B Simler-Williamson Matthew Germino
Final Report: Enabling Climate-Informed Planning and Decisions about Species of Conservation Concern in the North Central Region: Phase 2

Time and money for conservation are limited, so there is a need for responsible investments that embrace the realities of climate change. Droughts, floods, wildfires, hotter temperatures, declining snowpack, and changing streamflow are already…

2021 Molly Cross
Increased burning in a warming climate reduces carbon uptake in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem despite productivity gains

The effects of changing climate and disturbance on mountain forest carbon (C) stocks vary with tree species distributions and over elevational gradients. Warming can not only increase C uptake by stimulating productivity at high elevations but…

2021 Paul D Henne Todd J Hawbaker Robert M. Scheller Feng Zhao Hong S. He Wenru Xu Zhiliang Zhu
Human activities and weather drive contact rates of wintering elk

Wildlife aggregation patterns can influence disease transmission. However, limited research evaluates the influence of anthropogenic and natural factors on aggregation. Many managers would like to reduce wildlife contact rates, driven by…

2021 William M Janousek Tabitha A Graves Ethan (Contractor) E Berman Geneva W Chong Eric K. Cole Sarah R. Dewey Aaron N Johnston Paul C Cross
Climate resilient management in response to flash droughts in the US Northern Great Plains

The Northern Great Plains (NGP) region plays a very important role in providing water and land resources and other critical ecosystem services to support rural livelihoods. Semi-arid conditions and the tight coupling of livelihood enterprises…

2021 Dennis Ojima
Building Loss in WUI Disasters: Evaluating the Core Components of the Wildland–Urban Interface Definition

Accurate maps of the wildland–urban interface (WUI) are critical for the development of effective land management policies, conducting risk assessments, and the mitigation of wildfire risk. Most WUI maps identify areas at risk from wildfire by…

2021 Michael D. Caggiano Todd J Hawbaker Benjamin M. Gannon Chad M. Hoffman
A climate change indicator framework for rangelands and pastures of the USA

Rangelands and pastures include grasslands, savannas, shrublands, and woodlands and are often maintained to support grazing animals. Rangelands and pastures cover more than one-third of the land area in the USA and a similar extent globally. The…

2021 Dennis Ojima Rebecca Aicher Steven R. Archer Derek W. Bailey Susan M. Casby-Horton Nancy Cavallaro Julian J. Reyes John A. Tanaka Robert A. Washington-Allen
Tracking rates of postfire conifer regeneration vs. deciduous vegetation recovery across the western United States

Postfire shifts in vegetation composition will have broad ecological impacts. However, information characterizing postfire recovery patterns and their drivers are lacking over large spatial extents. In this analysis, we used Landsat imagery…

2021 Melanie K Vanderhoof Todd J Hawbaker Andrea M Ku Kyle E Merriam Erin Berryman Megan Cattau
A new framework to map fine resolution cropping intensity across the globe: Algorithm, validation, and implication

Accurate estimation of cropping intensity (CI), an indicator of food production, is well aligned with the ongoing efforts to achieve sustainable development goals (SDGs) under diminishing natural resources. The advancement in satellite remote…

2020 Chong Liu Qian Zhang Shiqi Tao Jiaguo Qi Mingjun Ding Qihui Guan Bingfang Wu Miao Zhang Mohsen Nabil Fuyou Tian Hongwei Zeng Ning Zhang Ganbat Bavuudorj Emmanuel Rukundo Wenjun Liu José Bofana Awetahegn Niguse Beyene Abdelrazek Elnashar
The role of economic returns in land use change: Evidence from farm-level data in the US Northern Great Plains

Conversion of grassland to cropland in the US Prairie Pothole Region is of longstanding concern. The region's grasslands are carbon (C) sinks and provide important breeding grounds for many migratory bird species. Crop production requires…

2020 Mary Doidge David A. Hennessy Hongli Feng
2,200-Year tree-ring and lake-sediment based snowpack reconstruction for the northern Rocky Mountains highlights the historic magnitude of recent snow drought

In recent decades, Rocky Mountain accumulated snowpack levels have experienced rapid declines, yet long-term records of snowpack prior to the installation of snowpack observation stations in the early and mid 20th century are limited. To date, a…

2020 Spruce W. Schoenemann Justin T Martin Gregory T Pederson David B. McWethy
Navigating Climate Adaptation on Public Lands: How Views on Ecosystem Change and Scale Interact with Management Approaches

Managers are increasingly being asked to integrate climate change adaptation into public land management. The literature discusses a range of adaptation approaches, including managing for resistance, resilience, and transformation; but many…

2020 Katherine R Clifford Laurie Yung William Travis Renee Rondeau Betsy Neely Imtiaz Rangwala Nina Burkardt Carina Wyborn
Comparative Quality and Trend of Remotely Sensed Phenology and Productivity Metrics across the Western United States

Vegetation phenology and productivity play a crucial role in surface energy balance, plant and animal distribution, and animal movement and habitat use and can be measured with remote sensing metrics including start of season (SOS), peak…

2020 Ethan E Berman Tabitha A Graves Nathaniel L Mikle Jerod A. Merkle Aaron N Johnston Geneva W Chong
Quantifying the demographic vulnerabilities of dry woodlands to climate and competition using range-wide monitoring data

Climate change is expected to alter the distribution and abundance of tree species, impacting ecosystem structure and function. Yet, anticipating where this will occur is often hampered by a lack of understanding of how demographic rates, most…

2020 Robert K. Shriver Charles B Yackulic David M. Bell John B Bradford
Science Communication and Coproduction: Applying the Theory of Motivated Information Management to the Science-Policy Interface

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…

2020 Lindsey Middleton
Public Opinion about Management Strategies for a Low‐Profile Species Across Multiple Jurisdictions: Whitebark Pine in the Northern Rockies

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…

2020 Elizabeth A Shanahan Eric D Raile Helen T Naughton Michael P Wallner Kendall A Houghton
Supplemental Guidance: Integration of Climate Change Scenario Planning into the Resource Stewardship Strategy Process

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.…

2020
Final Report - Refining Guidance for Incorporating Climate Science and Scenario Planning into National Park Service Resource Stewardship Strategies

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…

2020 Morgan Elmer Brian W Miller
Increased drought severity tracks warming in the United States’ largest river basin

Abstract (from PNAS): Recent decades have seen droughts across multiple US river basins that are unprecedented over the last century and potentially longer. Understanding the drivers of drought in a long-term context requires extending…

2020 Justin T. Martin Gregory T. Pederson Connie A. Woodhouse Edward R. Cook Gregory J. McCabe Kevin J. Anchukaitis Erika K. Wise Patrick J. Erger Larry Dolan Marketa McGuire Subhrendu Gangopadhyay Katherine J. Chase Jeremy S. Littell Stephen T. Gray Scott St. George Jonathan M. Friedman David J. Sauchyn Jeannine-Marie St-Jacques John King
Building Adaptive Capacity in Tribal Communities of the Missouri River Basin to Manage Drought and Climate Extremes: A Case Study from the Wind River Indian Reservation

Abstract (from DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln): Native American peoples of the Northern and Central Plains have long endured harsh climate conditions, such as floods and droughts, and they possess valuable…

2020 Crystal J. Stiles Natalie Umphlett Mitch Cottenoir
Integrating Multiscale Seasonal Data for Resource Management

Scientists gathered at a workshop in Cambridge, Mass., last June to identify opportunities and challenges associated with integrating multiscale, multiplatform streams of data to produce higher-level phenological data products (e.g., models) and…

2020 Andrew D. Richardson Jake F Weltzin Jeffrey T. Morisette
Tracking vegetation phenology across diverse North American biomes using PhenoCam imagery

Vegetation phenology controls the seasonality of many ecosystem processes, as well as numerous biosphere-atmosphere feedbacks. Phenology is also highly sensitive to climate change and variability. Here we present a series of datasets, together…

2020 Andrew D. Richardson Koen Hufkens Tom Milliman Donald M. Aubrecht Min Chen Josh M. Gray Miriam R. Johnston Trevor F. Keenan Stephen T. Klosterman Margaret Kosmala Eli K. Melaas Mark A. Friedl Steve Frolking
Phenocams Bridge the Gap between Field and Satellite Observations in an Arid Grassland Ecosystem

Near surface (i.e., camera) and satellite remote sensing metrics have become widely used indicators of plant growing seasons. While robust linkages have been established between field metrics and ecosystem exchange in many land cover types,…

2020 Dawn M. Browning Jason W. Karl David Morin Andrew D. Richardson Craig E. Tweedie
Intercomparison of phenological transition dates derived from the PhenoCam Dataset V1.0 and MODIS satellite remote sensing

Phenology is a valuable diagnostic of ecosystem health, and has applications to environmental monitoring and management. Here, we conduct an intercomparison analysis using phenological transition dates derived from near-surface PhenoCam imagery…

2020 Andrew D. Richardson Koen Hufkens Tom Milliman Steve Frolking
An Empirical Assessment of the MODIS Land Cover Dynamics and TIMESAT Land Surface Phenology Algorithms

Observations of vegetation phenology at regional-to-global scales provide important information regarding seasonal variation in the fluxes of energy, carbon, and water between the biosphere and the atmosphere. Numerous algorithms have been…

2020 Radost Stanimirova Zhanzhang Cai Eli K. Melaas Josh M. Gray Lars Eklundh Per Jönsson Mark A. Friedl
Understanding the relationship between vegetation greenness and productivity across dryland ecosystems through the integration of PhenoCam, satellite, and eddy covariance data

Drylands account for approximately 40% of the global land surface and play a dominant role in the trend and variability of terrestrial carbon uptake and storage. Gross ecosystem photosynthesis – termed gross primary productivity (GPP) – is a…

2020 Dong Yan Russell L. Scott David Moore Joel A. Biederman William K. Smith
Comparison of Grassland Phenology Derived from MODIS Satellite and PhenoCam Near-Surface Remote Sensing in North America

Ground validation of satellite-based vegetation phenology has been challenging because ground phenology data are sparsely distributed and mostly observed from limited numbers of plant species at discrete phenophases. The recently developed…

2020 Tengfei Cui Lawrence Martz Eric G. Lamb Liang Zhao Xulin Guo
Urbanization and climate change jointly shift land surface phenology in the northern mid-latitude large cities

Land surface phenology (LSP) has been widely used as the “footprint” of urbanization and global climate change. Shifts of LSP have cascading effects on food production, carbon sequestration, water consumption, biodiversity, and public health.…

2020 Tong Qiu Conghe Song Yulong Zhang Hongsheng Liu James Vose
Tracking vegetation phenology across diverse biomes using Version 2.0 of the PhenoCam Dataset

Monitoring vegetation phenology is critical for quantifying climate change impacts on ecosystems. We present an extensive dataset of 1783 site-years of phenological data derived from PhenoCam network imagery from 393 digital cameras, situated…

2020 Bijan Seyednasrollah Adam M. Young Koen Hufkens Tom Milliman Mark A. Friedl Steve Frolking Andrew D. Richardson
Small-scale water deficits after wildfires create long-lasting ecological impacts

Abstract (from IOPScience): Ecological droughts are deficits in soil-water availability that induce threshold-like ecosystem responses, such as causing altered or degraded plant-community conditions, which can be exceedingly difficult to reverse…

2020 Rory C O'Connor Matthew Germino David M Barnard Caitlin M. Andrews John B Bradford David S Pilliod Robert S Arkle Robert K Shriver
Continental-scale land surface phenology from harmonized Landsat 8 and Sentinel-2 imagery

Dense time series of Landsat 8 and Sentinel-2 imagery are creating exciting new opportunities to monitor, map, and characterize temporal dynamics in land surface properties with unprecedented spatial detail and quality. By combining imagery from…

2020 Douglas Bolton Josh Gray Eli Melaas Minkyu Moon Lars Eklundh Mark Friedl
State of Knowledge on Pinyon-Juniper Communities 2020 Jessica Hartsell John Bradford
Planning for change? Assessing the integration of climate change and land-based livelihoods in Colorado BLM planning documents

Abstract from SpringLink: Many western communities are surrounded by public lands that support land-based and local economies. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) decision-making affects the vulnerability of those land-based livelihoods, especially…

2020 Julia Nave Corrine Noel Knapp Shannon McNeeley
Using the Red Chromatic Coordinate to Characterize the Phenology of Forest Canopy Photosynthesis

Abstract (from ScienceDirect): Vegetation phenology has received increasing attention in climate change research. Near-surface sensing using digital repeat photography has proven to be useful for ecosystem-scale monitoring of vegetation phenology…

2020 Ying Liu Chaoyang Wu Oliver Sonnentag Ankur R. Desai Jian Wang
Repeatable Approaches to Work with Scientific Uncertainty and Advance Climate Change Adaptation in US National Parks

Introduction (From Parks Stewardship Forum) Managers and scientists widely acknowledge climate change as one of the greatest threats to protected areas in the US and worldwide (Gross et al. 2016). The US National Park Service (NPS) began…

2020 A.N. Runyon A.R. Carlson John E. Gross D.J. Lawrence Gregor W. Schuurman
Evidence of Climate Change Impacts on Crop Comparative Advantage and Land Use

Abstract: (From: Wiley Online Library) Relative agricultural productivity shocks emerging from climate change will alter regional cropland use. Land allocations are sensitive to crop profits that in turn depend on yield effects induced by changes…

2019 Guarav Arora Hongli Feng Christopher J. Anderson David A. Hennessy
Final Report: Gaps and Hotspots in the State of Knowledge of Pinyon-Juniper Communities

Abstract From: ScienceDirect (Pinyon-juniper (PJ) plant communities cover a large area across North America and provide critical habitat for wildlife, biodiversity and ecosystem functions, and rich cultural resources. These communities occur…

2019 Jessica A. Hartsell Stella M. Copeland Seth M. Munson Bradley J. Butterfield
Various measures of potential evapotranspiration have species-specific impact on species distribution models

Abstract From: (The growth and distribution of plant species in water limited environments is often limited by the atmospheric evaporative demands which us measured in terms of potential evaporation (PET). While PET estimated by different methods…

2019 Arjun Adhikari Kumar P Mainali Imtaiz Rangwala Andrew Hansen
Who, What, Where, When, and How? A Typology of Drought Decision-Making on Public and Tribal Lands in the North-Central United States

Although drought is a natural part of climate across the north-central United States, how drought is experienced and responded to is the result of complex biophysical and social processes. Climate change assessments indicate drought impacts will…

2019 Tyler A. Beeton Shannon M. McNeeley
1200 Years of Upper Missouri River Streamflow Reconstructed from Tree Rings

Abstract (from ScienceDirect): Paleohydrologic records can provide unique, long-term perspectives on streamflow variability and hydroclimate for use in water resource planning. Such long-term records can also play a key role in placing…

2019 Justin T. Martin Gregory T. Pederson Connie A. Woodhouse Edward R. Cook Gregory J. McCabe Erika K. Wise Patrick Erger Larry Dolan Marketa McGuire Subhrendu Gangopadhyay Katherine Chase Jeremy S. Littell Stephen T. Gray Scott St. George Jonathan Friedman Dave Sauchyn Jeannine St. Jacques John King
Streamflow Reconstruction in the Upper Missouri River Basin Using a Novel Bayesian Network Model 2019 Arun Ravindranath Naresh Devineni Upmanu Lall Edward R. Cook Gregory T Pederson Justin T Martin Connie Woodhouse
Ecological Water Stress under Projected Climate Change across Hydroclimate Gradients in the North-Central United States 2019
Projected Warming Disrupts the Synchrony of Riparian Seed Release and Snowmelt Streamflow

Globally, spring phenology and abiotic processes are shifting earlier with warming. Differences in the magnitudes of these shifts may decouple the timing of plant resource requirements from resource availability. In riparian forests across the…

2019 Laura G. Perry Patrick B. Shafroth Lauren E. Hay Steven L. Markstrom Andrew R. Bock
Clustering and Ensembling Approaches to Support Surrogate‐Based Species Management

Abstract (from Diversity and Distributions): 


Aim


Surrogate species can provide an efficient mechanism for biodiversity conservation if they encompass the needs or indicate the status of a broader set of species. When…

2019 Helen R Sofaer Curtis H Flather Susan K Skagen Valerie Steen Barry Noon
Modeling Phenological Controls on Carbon Dynamics in Dryland Sagebrush Ecosystems

Abstract (from ScienceDirect): Dryland ecosystems play an important role in determining how precipitation anomalies affect terrestrial carbon fluxes at regional to global scales. Thus, to understand how climate change may affect the…

2019 Katherine M.Renwick Aaron Fellows Gerald N. Flerchinger Kathleen A. Lohse Patrick E. Clark William K. Smith Kristen Emmett Benjamin Poulter
Evaluating the Utility of Species Distribution Models in Informing Climate Change-Resilient Grassland Restoration Strategy

Abstract (from Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution): Tallgrass prairie ecosystems in North America are heavily degraded and require effective restoration strategies if prairie specialist taxa are to be preserved. One common management tool used to…

2019 Nicholas J. Lyon Diane Debinski Imtiaz Rangwala
Patterns of Big Sagebrush Plant Community Composition and Stand Structure in the Western United States

Abstract (from ScienceDirect): Big sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata Nutt.) plant communities are found in western North America and comprise a mix of shrubs, forbs, and …

2019 Victoria E. Pennington John B Bradford Kyle A. Palmquist Rachel R. Renne William K. Lauenroth
How much are US households prepared to pay to manage and protect whitebark pine (Pinus albicaulis Engelm.)?

Abstract (from OxfordAcademic): The whitebark pine (Pinus albicaulis Engelm.) tree species faces precipitously declining populations in many locations. It is a keystone species found primarily in high-elevation forests across the Western…

2019 Helen T Naughton Kendall A Houghton Eric D Raile Elizabeth A Shanahan Michael P Wallner
Risks of hydroclimatic regime shifts across the western United States 2019 Subhrendu Gangopadhyay Gregory McCabe Gregory Pederson Justin Martin Jeremy Littell
Increasing carbon footprint of grain crop production in the US Western Corn Belt

Abstract (from IOP Science): Global agriculture is challenged to increase soil carbon sequestration and reduce greenhouse gas emissions while providing products for an increasing population. Growing crop production could be achieved through…

2019 Chaoqun Lu Zhen Yu Hanqin Tian David A Hennessy Hongli Feng Mahdi Al-Kaisi Yuyu Zhou Tom Sauer Raymond Arritt
Climate and water balance change among public, private, and tribal lands within Greater Wild land Ecosystems across North Central USA 2019 Arjun Adhikari Andrew Hansen
How and why Upper Colorado River Basin land, water, and fire managers choose to use drought tools (or not)

On the Western Slope of Colorado, variable climate and precipitation conditions are typical. Periods of drought—which may be defined by lack of water, high temperatures, low soil moisture, or other indicators—cause a range of impacts across…

2018 Amanda E. Cravens
STEPWAT2: An individual‐based model for exploring the impact of climate and disturbance on dryland plant communities

The combination of climate change and altered disturbance regimes is directly and indirectly affecting plant communities by mediating competitive interactions, resulting in shifts in species composition and abundance. Dryland plant communities,…

2018 Kyle A. Palmquist John B. Bradford Trace E. Martin Daniel R. Schlaepfer William K. Lauenroth
Regional Climate Response Collaboratives: Multi-Institutional Support for Climate Resilience 2018 Kristen Averyt Justin D. Derner Lisa Dilling Rafael Guerrero Linda Joyce Shannon McNeeley Elizabeth McNie Jeffrey T Morisette Dennis Ojima Robin O'Malley Dannele Peck Andrea J. Ray Matt Reeves William Travis
Land use change and habitat fragmentation of wildland ecosystems of the North Central United States 2018 Arjun Adhikari Andrew Hansen
State-and-transition models: Conceptual versus simulation perspectives, usefulness and breadth of use, and land management applications

State-and-Transition Simulation Modeling (STSM) is a quantitative analysis method that can consolidate a wide array of resource management issues under a “what-if” scenario exercise. STSM can be seen as an ensemble of models, such as climate…

2018 Louis Provencher Leonardo Frid Christina Czembor Jeffrey T. Morisette
Preparing for an uncertain future: migrating shorebird response to past climatic fluctuations in the Prairie Potholes

Abstract from Ecosphere: The Prairie Pothole Region, situated in the northern Great Plains, provides important stopover habitat for migratory shorebirds. During spring migration in the U.S. Prairie Potholes, 7.3 million…

2018 Valerie Steen Susan K. Skagen Barry R. Noon
Factors Affecting Wheat Production Decisions: Producer survey findings 2018 Tony Wang David Hennessy Hongli Feng
Determinants of Motives for Land Use Decisions at the Margins of the Corn Belt 2018 Tong Wang Moses Luri Larry Janssen David Hennessy Hongli Feng Michael Wimberly Gaurav Arora
Land surface phenology

Certain vegetation types (e.g., deciduous shrubs, deciduous trees, grasslands) have distinct life cycles marked by the growth and senescence of leaves and periods of enhanced photosynthetic activity. Where these types exist, recurring changes in…

2018 Jonathan M. Hanes Liang Liang Jeffrey T. Morisette
Combining remote sensing and water-balance evapotranspiration estimates for the conterminous United States

Evapotranspiration (ET) is a key component of the hydrologic cycle, accounting for ~70% of precipitation in the conterminous U.S. (CONUS), but it has been a challenge to predict accurately across different spatio-temporal scales. The increasing…

2018 Meredith Reitz Gabriel Senay Ward E. Sanford
Projecting species’ vulnerability to climate change: Which uncertainty sources matter most and extrapolate best?

Species distribution models (SDMs) are commonly used to assess potential climate change impacts on biodiversity, but several critical methodological decisions are often made arbitrarily. We compare variability arising from these decisions to the…

2017 Valerie Steen Helen R Sofaer Susan K Skagen Andrea Ray Barry Noon
Co-producing simulation models to inform resource management: a case study from southwest South Dakota 2017 Brian W Miller Amy Symstad Leonardo Frid Nicholas A. Fisichelli Gregor W. Schuurman
Anatomy of an interrupted irrigation season: Micro-drought at the Wind River Indian Reservation 2017 Shannon McNeeley Candida F. Dewes Crystal J. Stiles Tyler A. Beeton Imtiaz Rangwala Michael T. Hobbins Cody L. Knutson
Crossing boundaries in a collaborative modeling workspace

There is substantial literature on the importance of bridging across disciplinary and science–management boundaries. One of the ways commonly suggested to cross boundaries is for participants from both sides of the boundary to jointly produce…

2017 Jeffrey T. Morisette Amanda E. Cravens Brian W. Miller Marian Talbert Colin Talbert Catherine S. Jarnevich Michelle Fink Karin Decker Eric Odell
Integrating research tools to support the management of social-ecological systems under climate change

Developing resource management strategies in the face of climate change is complicated by the considerable uncertainty associated with projections of climate and its impacts and by the complex interactions between social and ecological variables…

2017 Brian W. Miller Jeffrey T. Morisette
Multiple methods for multiple futures: Integrating qualitative scenario planning and quantitative simulation modeling for natural resource decision making

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,…

2017 Amy J. Symstad Nicholas A. Fisichelli Brian W. Miller Erika Rowland Gregor W. Schuurman
Climate and soil texture influence patterns of forb species richness and composition in big sagebrush plant communities across their spatial extent in the western US

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…

2017 Victoria E. Pennington Kyle A. Palmquist John B. Bradford William K. Lauenroth
Evaluation of the Global Land Data Assimilation System (GLDAS) air temperature data products

There is a high demand for agrohydrologic models to use gridded near-surface air temperature data as the model input for estimating regional and global water budgets and cycles. The Global Land Data Assimilation System (GLDAS) developed by…

2017 Lei Ji Gabriel B. Senay James P. Verdin
Ten ways remote sensing can contribute to conservation

In an effort to increase conservation effectiveness through the use of Earth observation technologies, a group of remote sensing scientists affiliated with government and academic institutions and conservation organizations identified 10…

2017 Robert A. Rose Dirck Byler J. Ron Eastman Erica Fleishman Gary Geller Scott Goetz Liane Guild Healy Hamilton Matt Hansen Rachel Headley Jennifer Hewson Ned Horning Beth A. Kaplin Nadine Laporte Allison K. Leidner Peter Leimgruber Jeffrey T. Morisette John Musinsky Lilian Pintea Ana Prados Volker C. Radeloff Mary Rowen Sassan Saatchi Steve Schill Karyn Tabor Woody Turner Anthony Vodacek James Vogelmann Martin Wegmann David Wilkie Cara Wilson
Expanding vulnerability assessment for public lands: The social complement to ecological approaches

Abstract (from http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2212096317300153): In recent years, federal land management agencies in the United…

2017 Shannon M. McNeeley Trevor L. Even John B.M. Gioia Corrine N. Knapp Tyler A. Beeton
Analyses of historical and projected climates to support climate adaptation in the northern Rocky Mountains: Chapter 4

Most of the western United States is experiencing the effects of rapid and directional climate change (Garfin et al. 2013). These effects, along with forecasts of profound changes in the future, provide strong motivation for resource managers to…

2017 John E. Gross Michael Tercek Kevin Guay Tony Chang Marian Talbert Ann Rodman David Thoma Patrick Jantz Jeffrey T. Morisette
Sustainable Climate Change Adaptation in Indian Country

Abstract (from http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/10.1175/WCAS-D-16-0121.1): Much of the academic literature and policy discussions about sustainable…

2017 Shannon McNeeley
Designing ecological climate change impact assessments to reflect key climatic drivers

Identifying the climatic drivers of an ecological system is a key step in assessing its vulnerability to climate change. The climatic dimensions to which a species or system is most sensitive – such as means or extremes – can guide methodological…

2017 Helen R. Sofaer Joseph J. Barsugli Catherine S. Jarnevich John T. Abatzoglou Marian Talbert Brian W. Miller Jeffrey T. Morisette
Drought risk assessment under climate change is sensitive to methodological choices for the estimation of evaporative demand

Abstract (from http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.017404… studies have projected increases in drought…

2017 Candida F. Dewes Imtiaz Rangwala Joseph Barsugli Michael T. Hobbins Sanjiv Kumar
Evapotranspiration in the Nile Basin: Identifying dynamics and drivers, 2002–2011

Analysis of the relationship between evapotranspiration (ET) and its natural and anthropogenic drivers is critical in water-limited basins such as the Nile. The spatiotemporal relationships of ET with rainfall and vegetation dynamics in the Nile…

2017 Henok Alemu Armel T. Kaptue Gabriel Senay Michael C. Wimberly Geoffrey M. Henebry
Partitioning evapotranspiration into green and blue water sources in the conterminous United States

In this study, we combined two actual evapotranspiration datasets (ET), one obtained from a root zone water balance model and another from an energy balance model, to partition annual ET into green (rainfall-based) and blue (surface/groundwater)…

2017 Naga Manohar Velpuri Gabriel Senay
Great Plains Regional Technical Input Report

Prepared for the 2013 National Climate Assessment and a landmark study in terms of its breadth and depth of coverage, Great Plains Technical Input Report is the result of a collaboration among numerous local, state, federal, and…

2017
Chapter 9: Risk Assessment; Climate Change and United States Forests

Abstract (from http://www.springer.com/us/book/9789400775145): This volume offers a scientific assessment of the effects of climatic variability and change on forest resources…

2017 Dennis Ojima
Evaluating new SMAP soil moisture for drought monitoring in the rangelands of the US High Plains

Level 3 soil moisture datasets from the recently launched Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) satellite are evaluated for drought monitoring in rangelands.Validation of SMAP soil moisture (SSM) with in situ and modeled estimates showed high level…

2017 Naga Manohar Velpuri Gabriel B. Senay Jeffrey T. Morisette
A “toad’s eye” view of drought: regional socio-natural vulnerability and responses in 2002 in Northwest Colorado

Abstract (from http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10113-014-0585-0): Drought is a part of the normal climate variability and the life and…

2017 Shannon McNeeley
The Cultural Theory of Risk for Climate Change Adaptation

Abstract (from http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/WCAS-D-13-00027.1): The way in which people perceive climate change risk is informed by their social…

2017 Shannon McNeeley Heather Lazrus
Complex Response of White Pines to Past Environmental Variability Increases Understanding of Future Vulnerability

Abstract (from http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.012443… niche models predict plant responses to…

2017 Virginia Iglesias Teresa R. Krause Cathy Whitlock
Colorado Climate Change Vulnerability Study

This report was submitted to the Colorado Energy Office in 2015 and was edited by Eric Gordon (University of Colorado Boulder) and Dennis Ojima (Colorado State University). It was based on a study that evaluated Colorado's…

2017 Eric Gordon Roberta Klein Veva Deheza Shannon McNeeley
Satellite-based water use dynamics using historical Landsat data (1984-2014) in the southwestern United States

Historical (1984-2014) Landsat-based ET maps were generated for Palo Verde Irrigation District (PVID) and eight other sub-basins in parts of Middle and Lower Central Valley, California. A total of 3,396 Landsat images were processed using the…

2017 Gabriel Senay Matthew Schauer MacKenzie O. Friedrichs Naga Manohar Velpuri Ramesh K. Singh
Adaptation: U.S. National Climate Assessment 2014

Chapter on Adaptation for the 2014 National Climate Assessment. Adaptation refers to action to prepare for and adjust to new conditions, thereby reducing harm or taking advantage of new opportunities. Adaptation planning is occurring in…

2017 Rosina Bierbaum Arthur Lee Joel Smith Maria Blair Lynne M. Carter F. Stuart Chapin III Susan Ruffo Paul Fleming Shannon McNeeley Missy Stults Laura Verduzco Emily Seyller
Spatial and ecological variation in dryland ecohydrological responses to climate change: implications for management

Abstract (from http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ecs2.1590/full): Ecohydrological responses to climate change will exhibit spatial variability and…

2017 Kyle A. Palmquist Daniel R. Schlaepfer John B. Bradford William K Lauenroth
Evaluation of downscaled, gridded climate data for the conterminous United States

Abstract (from http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/15-1061/abstract): Weather and climate affect many ecological processes, making spatially…

2017 Behnke, R. Vavrus, S. Allstadt, A. Albright, T. Thogmartin, W. E. Radeloff, V. C.
A typology of adaptation actions: A global look at climate adaptation actions financed through the Global Environment Facility

Abstract (from http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959378014000065): Climate change impacts threaten existing development efforts…

2017 Bonizella Biagini Rosina Bierbaum Missy Stults Saliha Dobardzic Shannon M. McNeeley
Drought Risk and Adaptation in the Interior United States: Understanding the importance of local context for resource management in times of drought

Abstract (from http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/WCAS-D-15-0042.1): Drought is a natural part of the historical climate variability in the northern…

2017 Shannon M. McNeeley Tyler A. Beeton Dennis S. Ojima
Using NDVI and EVI to Map Spatiotemporal Variation in the Biomass and Quality of Forage for Migratory Elk in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem 2017 Erica L. Garroutte Andrew J. Hansen Rick L. Lawrence
High-Resolution Climate Modeling for Regional Adaptation

Climate policy developers and natural resource managers frequently desire high-resolution climate data to prepare for future effects of climate change. But they face a long-standing problem: the vast majority of climate models have been run at…

2017 Imtiaz Rangwala Candida Dewes Joseph Barsugli
Woody encroachment in northern Great Plains grasslands: Perceptions, actions, and needs

The United States Northern Great Plains (NGP) has a high potential for landscape-scale conservation, but this grassland landscape is threatened by encroachment of woody species. We surveyed NGP land managers to identify patterns in, and…

2017 Amy J. Symstad Sherry A. Leis
Sagebrush, greater sage-grouse, and the occurrence and importance of forbs

Big sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata Nutt.) ecosystems provide habitat for sagebrush-obligate wildlife species such as the Greater Sage-Grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus). The understory of big sagebrush plant communities is composed of grasses…

2016 Victoria E. Pennington Daniel R. Schlaepfer Jeffrey L. Beck John B. Bradford Kyle A. Palmquist William K. Lauenroth
Extending ordinal regression with a latent zero-augmented beta distribution

Ecological abundance data are often recorded on an ordinal scale in which the lowest

category represents species absence. One common example is when plant species cover

is visually assessedwithin bounded quadrats and then assigned to…

2016 Kathryn M. Irvine T.J. Rodhouse Ilai. N. Keren
Remotely Sensed Land Skin Temperature as a Spatial Predictor of Air Temperature across the Conterminous United States

Abstract (from http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/JAMC-D-15-0276.1): Remotely sensed land skin temperature (LST) is increasingly being used to…

2016 Jared W. Oyler Solomon Z. Dobrowski Zachary A. Holden Steven W. Running
Seed bank and big sagebrush plant community composition in a range margin for big sagebrush

The potential influence of seed bank composition on range shifts of species due to climate change is unclear. Seed banks can provide a means of both species persistence in an area and local range expansion in the case of increasing habitat…

2016 Trace E. Martyn John B. Bradford Daniel R. Schlaepfer Ingrid C. Burke William K. Laurenroth
Strategic Grasslands Conversions and Conservation Easement Acquisitions in the Dakotas: Analysis using Remotely Sensed Data 2016 Gaurav Arora David Hennessy Hongli Feng Peter T. Wolter
Grassland Easement Evaluation and Acquisition: an Integrated Framework 2016 Ruiqing Miao David A. Hennessy Hongli Feng
Farmers’ Rankings of the Determinants of Land Use Decisions at the Margins of the Corn Belt 2016 Tong Wang Luri Moses Larry Janssen David Hennessy Hongli Feng Michael Wimberly Gaurav Arora
Crop competitiveness and climate change in the northern Great Plains

Abstract (from http://econpapers.repec.org/paper/agsaaea16/235895.htm): We evaluate the regional-level agricultural impacts of climate change in the Northern…

2016 Gaurav Arora Hongli Feng David A. Hennessy Christopher J Anderson
Rotational Grazing and Land Conversion in South Dakota

An increase in land conversion from grassland to cropland in the United States has attracted attention in recent years. According to Claassen et al. (2011a), grassland to cropland conversion is concentrated in the Northern Plains, including…

2016 Tony Wang Hongli Feng David Hennessy Mary Doidge
Resource management and operations in southwest South Dakota: Climate change scenario planning workshop summary January 20-21, 2016, Rapid City, SD

The Scaling Climate Change Adaptation in the Northern Great Plains through Regional Climate Summaries and Local Qualitative-Quantitative Scenario Planning Workshops project synthesizes climate data into 3-5 distinct but plausible climate…

2016 Nicholas A. Fisichelli Gregor W. Schuurman Amy J. Symstad Andrea Ray Brian Miller Molly Cross Erika Rowland
Resource management and operations in central North Dakota: Climate change scenario planning workshop summary November 12-13, 2015, Bismarck, ND

The Scaling Climate Change Adaptation in the Northern Great Plains through Regional Climate Summaries and Local Qualitative-Quantitative Scenario Planning Workshops project synthesizes climate data into 3-5 distinct but plausible climate…

2016 Nicholas A. Fisichelli Gregor Schuurman Amy J. Symstad Andrea Ray Jonathan M. Friedman Brian Miller Erika Rowland
Projected wetland densities under climate change: Habitat loss but little geographic shift in conservation strategy

Climate change poses major challenges for conservation and management because it alters the area, quality, and spatial distribution of habitat for natural populations. To assess species’ vulnerability to climate change and target ongoing…

2016 Helen R. Sofaer Susan K. Skagen Joseph J. Barsugli Benjamin S. Rashford Gordon C. Reese Jennifer A. Hoeting Andrew W. Wood Barry R. Noon
Implications of climate change for wetland-dependent birds in the Prairie Pothole Region

The habitats and food resources required to support breeding and migrant birds dependent on North American prairie wetlands are threatened by impending climate change. The North American Prairie Pothole Region (PPR) hosts nearly 120 species of…

2016 Valerie Steen Susan K. Skagen Cynthia P. Melcher
Using maximum topology matching to explore differences in species distribution models

Species distribution models (SDM) are used to help understand what drives the distribution of various plant and animal species. These models are typically high dimensional scalar functions, where the dimensions of the domain correspond to…

2016 Jorge Poco Harish Doraiswamy Marian Talbert Jeffrey Morisette Claudio Silva
A comprehensive review of climate adaptation in the United States: more than before, but less than needed

We reviewed existing and planned adaptation activities of federal, tribal, state, and local governments and the private sector in the United States (U.S.) to understand what types of adaptation activities are underway across different sectors and…

2016 Bierbaum, Rosina Smith, Joel B. Lee, Arthur Blair, Maria Carter, Lynne Chapin, F. Stuart Fleming, Paul Ruffo, Susan Stults, Missy McNeeley, Shannon Wasley, Emily Verduzco, Laura
Mid-latitude shrub steppe plant communities: Climate change consequences for soil water resources

In the coming century, climate change is projected to impact precipitation and temperature regimes worldwide, with especially large effects in drylands. We use big sagebrush ecosystems as a model dryland ecosystem to explore the impacts of…

2016 Kyle A. Palmquist Daniel R. Schlaepfer John B. Bradford Willliam K. Lauenroth
Benefits and limitations of using decision analytic tools to assess uncertainty and prioritize Landscape Conservation Cooperative information needs

The Landscape Conservation Cooperatives (LCCs) are a network of partnerships throughout North America that are tasked with integrating science and management to support more effective delivery of conservation at a landscape scale. In order to…

2016 Max Post van der Burg Catherine Cullinane Thomas Tracy R. Holcombe Richard D. Nelson
Sediment accumulation in prairie wetlands under a changing climate: The relative roles of landscape and precipitation

Sediment accumulation threatens the viability and hydrologic functioning of many naturally formed depressional wetlands across the interior regions of North America. These wetlands provide many ecosystem services and vital habitats for diverse…

2016 Susan K. Skagen Lucy E. Burris Diane A. Granfors
Complex Challenges of Maintaining Whitebark Pine in Greater Yellowstone under Climate Change: A Call for Innovative Research, Management, and Policy Approaches 2016 Andrew Hansen Kathryn Ireland Kristin Legg Robert Keane Edward Barge Martha Jenkins Michiel Pillet Hansen, Andrew Ireland, Kathryn Legg, Kristin Keane, Robert Barge, Edward Jenkins, Martha Pillet, Michiel
Connecting models to movements: testing connectivity model predictions against empirical migration and dispersal data 2016 Meredith L. McClure Andrew J. Hansen Robert M. Inman
Evaluating Landsat 8 evapotranspiration for water use mapping in the Colorado River Basin

Evapotranspiration (ET) mapping at the Landsat spatial resolution (100 m) is essential to fully understand water use and water availability at the field scale. Water use estimates in the Colorado River Basin (CRB), which has diverse…

2016 Gabriel Senay MacKenzie O. Friedrichs Ramesh K. Singh Naga Manohar Velpuri
Caveats for correlative species distribution modeling

Correlative species distribution models are becoming commonplace in the scientific literature and public outreach products, displaying locations, abundance, or suitable environmental conditions for harmful invasive species, threatened and…

2016 Catherine S. Jarnevich Thomas J. Stohlgren Sunil Kumar Jeffrey T. Morisette Tracy R. Holcombe
Comparison of four different energy balance models for estimating evapotranspiration in the Midwestern United States

The development of different energy balance models has allowed users to choose a model based on its suitability in a region. We compared four commonly used models—Mapping EvapoTranspiration at high Resolution with Internalized Calibration (METRIC…

2016 Ramesh K. Singh Gabriel B. Senay
EDDI: A Powerful Tool For Early Drought Warning

This 2-pager describes the Evaporative Demand Drought Index (EDDI), which is a drought index that can serve as an indicator of both rapidly evolving “flash” droughts (developing over a few weeks) and sustained droughts (developing over months but…

2015 Imtiaz Rangwala Mike Hobbins Joseph Barsugli Candida Dewes
Elevation-dependent warming in mountain regions of the world

There is growing evidence that the rate of warming is amplified with elevation, such that high-mountain environments experience more rapid changes in temperature than environments at lower elevations. Elevation-dependent warming (EDW) can…

2015 Mountain Research Initiative EDW Working Group
Historic and projected climate change in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem 2015 Tony Chang Andrew Hansen
Climate Change in Wildlands: Pioneering Approaches to Science and Management

Abstract (from http://www.islandpress.org/book/climate-change-in-wildlands): Scientists have been warning for years that human activity is heating up the…

2015 Andrew Hansen William Monahan David Theobald Thomas Olliff
Using custom scientific workflow software and GIS to inform protected area climate adaptation planning in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem

Abstract (from http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1574954115001466): Anticipating the ecological effects of climate change to inform…

2015 Nathan Piekielek Andrew Hansen Tony Chang
Combining state-and-transition simulations and species distribution models to anticipate the effects of climate change

Abstract (from http://www.aimspress.com/article/10.3934/environsci.2015.2.400): State-and-transition simulation models (STSMs) are known for their…

2015 Brian Miller Leonardo Frid Tony Chang Nathan Piekielek Andrew Hansen Jeffrey T Morisette
SNOTEL sensor upgrade has caused temperature record inhomogeneities for the Intermountain West: Implications for climate change impact assessments

"Motivation": The motivation for this briefing is to examine the large inhomogeneity (step shift) in the observed temperature record at the SNOw TELemetry (SNOTEL) stations in the Intermountain West—Colorado,…

2015 Imtiaz Rangwala Tim Bardsley Marcus Pescinski Jim Miller
Wyoming Basin Rapid Ecoregional Assessment

The Wyoming Basin Rapid Ecoregional Assessment was conducted in partnership with the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). The overall goals of the BLM Rapid Ecoregional Assessments (REAs) are to identify important ecosystems and wildlife habitats at…

2015
Influence of Climate Variability and Large-Scale Circulation on Mountain Cryosphere 2015 Imtiaz Rangwala Nick Pepin Mathias Vuille James Miller
The ecology and management of moist mixed-conifer forests in eastern Oregon and Washington: a synthesis of the relevant biophysical science and implications for future land management

Land managers in the Pacific Northwest have reported a need for updated scientific information on the ecology and management of mixed-conifer forests east of the Cascade Range in Oregon and Washington. Of particular concern are the moist mixed-…

2015 Peter Stine Paul Hessburg Thomas Spies Marc Kramer Christopher J. Fettig Andrew Hansen John Lehmkuhl Kevin O'Hara Karl Polivka Peter Singleton Susan Charnley Andrew Merschel Rachel. White
Exposure of U.S. National Parks to land use and climate change 1900–2100 2015
Changing climate suitability for forests in Yellowstone and the Rockies 2015 Andrew Hansen Nathan Piekielek Tony Chang Linda Phillips
Which tree species and biome types are most vulnerable to climate change in the US Northern Rocky Mountains? 2015 Andrew Hansen Linda Phillips
Variability in projected elevation dependent warming in boreal midlatitude winter in CMIP5 climate models and its potential drivers

Abstract (from http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00382-015-2692-0/fulltext.html): The future rate of climate change in mountains has…

2015 Imtiaz Rangwala Eric Sinsky James R. Miller
Complex Response of White Pines to Past Environmental Variability Increases Understanding of Future Vulnerability

Ecological niche models predict plant responses to climate change by circumscribing species distributions within a multivariate environmental framework. Most projections based on modern bioclimatic correlations imply that high-elevation species…

2015 Virginia Iglesias Teresa R. Krause Cathy Whitlock
North Central CSC 2014 Annual Report 2015
Chapter 19: Great Plains; Climate Change Impacts in the United States: The Third National Climate Assessment

The National Climate Assessment summarizes the impacts of climate change on the United States, now and in the future. A team of more than 300 experts guided by a 60-member Federal Advisory Committee produced the report, which…

2015 Mark Shafter Dennis Ojima John M. Antle Doug Kluck Renee McPherson Sascha Petersen Bridget Scanlon Kathleen Sherman
Artificial amplification of warming trends across the mountains of the western United States

Abstract (from http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2014GL062803/abstract): Observations from the main mountain climate station network in the…

2015 Jared Oyler Solomon Dobrowski Ashley P Ballantyne Anna E. Klene Steven W Running
Reconstruction of fire regimes through integrated paleoecological proxy data and ecological modeling

Abstract (from http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpls.2014.00785/abstract): Fire is a key ecological process affecting vegetation dynamics…

2015 Virginia Iglesias Gabriel I. Yospin Cathy Whitlock
Cross-scale assessment of potential habitat shifts in a rapidly changing climate

We assessed the ability of climatic, environmental, and anthropogenic variables to predict areas of high-risk for plant invasion and consider the relative importance and contribution of these predictor variables by considering two spatial scales…

2015 Catherine S. Jarnevich Tracy R. Holcombe Elizabeth S. Bella Matthew L. Carlson Gino Graziano Melinda Lamb Steven S. Seefeldt Jeffrey T. Morisette
Simulated big sagebrush regeneration supports predicted changes at the trailing and leading edges of distribution shifts

Many semi-arid plant communities in western North America are dominated by big sagebrush. These ecosystems are being reduced in extent and quality due to economic development, invasive species, and climate change. These pervasive modifications…

2015 Daniel R. Schlaepfer Kyle A. Taylor Victoria E. Pennington Kellen N. Nelson Trace E. Martin Caitlin M. Rottler William K. Lauenroth John B. Bradford
Patterns and Variability of Projected Bioclimatic Habitat for Pinus albicaulis in the Greater Yellowstone Area

Abstract (from 

http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0111…): Projected climate change at a regional…

2014 Tony Chang Andrew J. Hansen Nathan Piekielek
Estimation of potential evapotranspiration from extraterrestrial radiation, air temperature and humidity to assess future climate change effects on the vegetation of the Northern Great Plains, USA

The potential evapotranspiration (PET) that would occur with unlimited plant access to water is a central driver of simulated plant growth in many ecological models. PET is influenced by solar and longwave radiation, temperature, wind speed, and…

2014 David A. King Dominique M. Bachelet Amy J. Symstad Ken Ferschweiler Michael Hobbins
Vulnerability of breeding waterbirds to climate change in the Prairie Pothole Region, U.S.A.

The Prairie Pothole Region (PPR) of the north-central U.S. and south-central Canada contains millions of small prairie wetlands that provide critical habitat to many migrating and breeding waterbirds. Due to their small size and the relatively…

2014 Valerie Steen Susan K. Skagen Barry R. Noon
Two Approaches for Incorporating Climate Change into Natural Resource Management Planning at Wind Cave National Park

Natural Resource Technical Report NPS/WICA/NRTR—2014/918

2014 Amy J. Symstad Andrew J Long John F Stamm David A. King Dominique M. Bachelet
Creating a topoclimatic daily air temperature dataset for the conterminous United States using homogenized station data and remotely sensed land skin temperature

Abstract (from http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/joc.4127/abstract):  Gridded topoclimatic datasets are increasingly used to drive many…

2014 Oyler, Jared W. Ballantyne, Ashley Jencso, Kelsey Sweet, Michael Running, Steven W.
SAHM:VisTrails (Software for Assisted Habitat Modeling for VisTrails): training course

VisTrails is an open-source management and scientific workflow system designed to integrate the best of both scientific workflow and scientific visualization systems. Developers can extend the functionality of the VisTrails system by creating…

2014 Tracy Holcombe
Natural Regeneration Processes in Big Sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata)

Abstract (from http://www.srmjournals.org/doi/abs/10.2111/REM-D-13-00079.1):  Big sagebrush, 

Artemisia tridentata  Nuttall (…

2014 Daniel R. Schlaepfer William K. Lauenroth John B. Bradford
Using state-and-transition modeling to account for imperfect detection in invasive species management

Buffelgrass, a highly competitive and flammable African bunchgrass, is spreading rapidly across both urban and natural areas in the Sonoran Desert of southern and central Arizona. Damages include increased fire risk, losses in biodiversity, and…

2014 Leonardo Frid Tracy Holcombe Jeffrey T. Morisette Aaryn D. Olsson Lindy Brigham Travis M. Bean Julio L. Betancourt Katherine Bryan
Using habitat suitability models to target invasive plant species surveys

Managers need new tools for detecting the movement and spread of nonnative, invasive species. Habitat suitability models are a popular tool for mapping the potential distribution of current invaders, but the ability of these models to prioritize…

2014 Alycia W. Crall Catherine S. Jarnevich Brendon Panke Nick Young Mark Renz Jeffrey Morisette
A Dynamic Vegetation Model for Estimating the Distribution of Vegetation and Associated Carbon and Nutrient Fluxes, Technical Documentation Version 1.0

Assessments of vegetation response to climate change have generally been made only by equilibrium vegetation models that predict vegetation composition under steady-state conditions. These models do not simulate either ecosystem biogeochemical…

2014 Dominique Bachelet James Lenihan Christopher Daly Ronald P Neilson Dennis S Ojima William J Parton
Remote sensing for inventory and monitoring of the U.S. National Parks.

ABSTRACT: U.S. National Park Service land managers face a variety of challenges to preserving the biodiversity in their parks. A principle challenge is to minimize the impacts of surrounding land use on park condition and biodiversity. In the…

2014 J.E. Gross A.J. Hansen S.J. Goetz D.M. Theobald F.M. Melton N.B. Piekielek R.R. Nemani Y.Q. Yang
Understanding relationships among abundance, extirpation, and climate at ecoregional scales

Abstract (from http://www.esajournals.org/doi/abs/10.1890/12-2174.1):  Recent research on mountain-dwelling species has illustrated changes in species'…

2014 Erik A Beever Dobrowski, S.Z. Long, J. Mynsberge, A.R. Nathan Piekielek
Extent of fragmentation of coarse-scale habitats in and around U.S. National Parks

Abstract (from http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0006320712002388):  U.S. National Park Service land managers face a variety of…

2014 Hansen, Andrew J. Nathan Piekielek
Creating a topoclimatic daily air temperature dataset for the conterminous United States using homogenized station data and remotely sensed land skin temperature

Gridded topoclimatic datasets are increasingly used to drive many ecological and hydrological models and assess climate change impacts. The use of such datasets is ubiquitous, but their inherent limitations are largely unknown or overlooked…

2014 JW Oyler A Ballantyne K Jencso M Sweet S Running
Woodland Dynamics at the Northern Range Periphery: A Challenge for Protected Area Management in a Changing World

Abstract (from http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0070…): Managers of protected natural areas increasingly are…

2014 Scott L. Powell Andrew J. Hansen Thomas J. Rodhouse Lisa K. Garrett Gordon H. Dicus Meghan K. Lonneker
Exposure of US National Parks to Land Use and Climate Change 1900-2100

Abstract (from http://www.esajournals.org/doi/abs/10.1890/13-0905.1):  Many protected areas may not be adequately safeguarding biodiversity from human activities…

2014 Andrew J. Hansen Nathan B. Piekielek Cory Davis Jessica R. Haas David M Theobald John E. Gross William B. Monahan T Olliff Steven W Running
VisTrails SAHM: visualization and workflow management for species habitat modeling

The Software for Assisted Habitat Modeling (SAHM) has been created to both expedite habitat modeling and help maintain a record of the various input data, pre- and post-processing steps and modeling options incorporated in the construction of a…

2014 Morisette, Jeffrey T. Jarnevich, Catherine S. Holcombe, Tracy R. Talbert, Colin B. Ignizio, Drew Talbert, Marian K. Silva, Claudio Koop, David Swanson, Alan Young, Nicholas E.
Data Management Challenges in Species Distribution Modeling

An important component in the fields of ecology and conservation biology is understanding the environmental conditions and geographic areas that are suitable for a given species to inhabit. A common tool in determining such areas is species…

2014 Colin Talbert Marian K Talbert Jeffrey T Morisette David Koop
Climate change and fire effects on a prairie-woodland ecotone: projecting species range shifts with a dynamic global vegetation model

Large shifts in species ranges have been predicted under future climate scenarios based primarily on niche-based species distribution models. However, the mechanisms that would cause such shifts are uncertain. Natural and anthropogenic fires have…

2013 David A. King Dominique M. Bachelet Amy J. Symstad
MODIS phenology image service ArcMap toolbox

Seasonal change is important to consider when managing conservation areas at landscape scales. The study of such patterns throughout the year is referred to as phenology. Recurring life-cycle events that are initiated and driven by environmental…

2013 Colin Talbert Tim J. Kern Jeff Morisette Don Brown Kevin James
Vegetation projections for Wind Cave National Park with three future climate scenarios: Final report in completion of Task Agreement J8W07100052

The effects of climate change on the natural resources protected by Parks will likely be substantial, but geographically variable, due to local variation in climate trajectories and differences among ecosystems in their vulnerability to climate…

2013 David A. King Dominique M. Bachelet Amy J. Symstad
North Central Climate Science Center--science agenda 2012-2017

The information presented here provides the five-year science agenda for the North Central Climate Science Center. It is meant to be a high-level guide that describes the spatial context of the center, the primary partners and stakeholders, and…

2012 Jeffrey T. Morisette
What are plants doing and when? Using plant phenology to facilitate sustainable natural resources management

Climate change models for the northern Rocky Mountains predict changes in temperature and water availability that in turn will alter vegetation. Changes include timing of plant life-history events, or phenology, such as green-up, flowering and…

2012 Geneva W. Chong Leslie A. Allen
Integrating climate-informed planning into State Wildlife Action Plans in the North Central United States

State fish and wildlife agencies are required to submit a State Wildlife Action Plan (SWAP) every 10 years to be eligible for grants through the State Wildlife Grant Program. With the next round of revisions due in 2025, the U.S. Geological…

Kimberly E. Szcodronski, Indigo T. Bannister, Blake R. Hossack, Alisa A. Wade Wilcox