The Northwest and North Central Climate Adaptation Science Centers (NW and NC CASCs) work in partnership with regional natural resource management communities to provide high priority science information and products needed for climate adaptation. In parallel with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) Region 6, the NW and NC CASCs prioritize science to inform sagebrush steppe and grassland ecosystem conservation, emphasizing the application of climate adaptation strategies that support at-risk populations and human-ecological communities within these ecosystems. To improve their ability to deliver effective and actionable science, the NW and NC CASCs must continually engage with regional partners and stakeholders to understand their natural resource management priorities.   Through this project, the NW and NC CASCs are working closely with USFWS staff to help achieve CASC and USFWS objectives for delivering actionable science. The project team is working on a range of efforts, including:  Identifying ways to fill climate information needs for Endangered Species Act (ESA) Species Status Assessments for at-risk species, including sagebrush- and grassland-associated species, by engaging closely with USFWS Endangered Species Coordinators and biologists in Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, Kansas, Nebraska and North and South Dakota,  Developing and disseminating resource management-relevant scientific products generated through projects funded by the NW and NC CASCs and the Landscape Conservation Cooperatives (Great Northern, Southern Rockies, Plains and Prairie Potholes),  Gauging the climate adaptation training needs of tribal, federal, state, and local natural resources managers, especially in sagebrush steppe and grassland ecosystems with the goal of creating a Western Climate Adaptation Training Center, and  Expanding the range of regional partners that the NW and NC CASCs work with.  This work will facilitate the NW and NC CASCs’ ability to inform climate adaptation management approaches through applied science and targeted adaptation training. 

Natural resource managers planning for increased incidence of droughts, floods, and other climate change impacts in the North Central region are in charge of management strategies that can impact the well-being of rural communities in the region. Gaining a better understanding of how resource management decisions may impact rural communities can allow for better consideration of the costs and benefits of resource management decisions. Identifying these impacts is especially important as these communities are often already unfairly disadvantaged and more vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. This project will focus on exploring the ways in which natural resource management decisions affect rural and tribal communities by identifying what communities are most vulnerable to climate change impacts and their connection to natural resource management decisions. The project will also examine how impacts to rural communities are currently taken into account when resource managers develop management plans and explore ways in which such impacts might be better represented in future decision-making processes. This research is intended to forge stronger connections between the North Central Climate Adaptation Science Center, resource managers, and rural communities, laying a foundation for future partnerships and collaborations to promote healthy ecosystems and communities in the face of climate change.

The USGS National Climate Adaptation Science Center (NCASC) is currently engaged in an Ecological Drought initiative, focused on understanding the impacts of drought on natural ecosystems across the country. This project supported the Ecological Drought initiative by creating an Intermountain West Drought Social Science Synthesis Working Group. The goal of this working group was to investigate human dimensions of ecological drought across the intermountain west from a comparative, regional perspective. Throughout the Intermountain West, there has been significant investment in understanding how social factors influence manager and citizen experiences of drought in particular locations. Yet there is still a gap in knowledge of how human dimensions of drought impacts, planning, and resilience are similar and different across cases and regions. The working group engaged social scientists from federal agencies and universities to identify common trends in drought management across the Intermountain West to inform more effective drought preparedness and response across the region. Project outputs included two conference sessions, a typology manuscript to be submitted by the end of FY19, and the conceptual framing of a rapid assessment methodology that was subsequently developed into a standalone project.  

The USGS National Climate Change and Wildlife Science Center (NCCWSC) is currently engaged in an Ecological Drought initiative, focused on understanding the impacts of drought on natural ecosystems across the country. This project was designed to support the Ecological Drought initiative by creating a USGS EcoDrought Actionable Science Working Group. The goal of this working group was to identify science needs for drought-related decisions and to provide natural resource managers with practical strategies for adapting to and planning for drought.   The working group engaged social scientists to garner advice on relevant social science research questions and data needs, as well as to identify any regulatory, institutional, or cultural barriers that may impede adaptation efforts by managers. This approach was taken to help ensure that the science being produced on ecological drought is actionable – that is, it addressed critical stakeholder questions, took into account the complex social dynamics of drought adaptation, and was created to be easily used by decision-makers.   The ultimate goal of the working group was to use integrated social-ecological analysis to forecast the potential implications of drought, to provide better access to climate and drought-related data, and to develop tools that enable managers to visualize the potential impacts of management decisions before they are implemented.

Even when faced with uncertainty about future climate conditions, resource managers are tasked with making planning and adaptation decisions that impact important natural and cultural resources. Species distribution models are widely used by both researchers and managers to estimate species responses to climate change. These models combine data on environmental variables (e.g., temperature, precipitation) with field samples of a species’ presence, absence, and/or abundance to project and visualize potential habitat of the species across space and time. However, species distribution modeling software previously developed and supported by USGS (the Software for Assisted Habitat Modeling [SAHM] package for VisTrails) is no longer under active development. Furthermore, species distribution models alone are not able to represent all of the complex ecological dynamics that dictate actual species’ distributions; thus, species distribution models are most powerful when coupled to other types of modeling approaches. There is a need to develop a new system for generating, running, and visualizing species distribution models and for connecting them to other modeling tools. The goal of this project is to design and develop a prototype package for running species distribution models in the software platform, SyncroSim. This prototype package will improve the functionality of species distribution models for researchers and resource managers by: 1. allowing end users to customize existing species distribution models written in the R programming language, visualize and store data for different scenarios of species distribution model inputs and outputs, and run species distribution model workflows from SyncroSim; and 2. laying the foundation for more seamless integration of species distribution models with other modeling approaches.

Natural resource managers consistently identify invasive species as one of the biggest challenges for ecological adaptation to climate change. Yet climate change is often not considered during their management decision making. Given the many ways that invasive species and climate change will interact, such as changing fire regimes and facilitating the migration of high priority species, it is more critical than ever to integrate climate adaptation science and natural resource management. The coupling of climate adaptation and invasive species management remains limited by a lack of information, personnel, and funding. Those working on ecological adaptation to climate change have reported that information is not available or is not presented in a way that informs invasive species management. This project will expand the successful model of the Northeast Regional Invasive Species and Climate Change Management Network to the North Central region of the U.S. This effort will integrate the research and management of invasive species, climate change, and fire under one umbrella. Stakeholders in the North Central region have identified invasive species, woody encroachment, wildfire, and habitat and ecological transformation as key management issues which this project will address. A primary activity will be to host two Science Integration Workshops to pair management needs with research directions. From these workshops, strategic scientific products will be derived that include synthesis of existing information in a workshop report, summaries on management challenges adapted for the region, blog posts for managers, and collaboration with land managers to access and utilize existing climate and invasive species information and tools. The research team will work together with managers to understand key management needs surrounding invasive plant species in a changing climate.

Tribal resource managers in the southwest U.S. are facing a host of challenges related to environmental change, including increasing temperatures, longer periods of drought, and invasive species. These threats are exacerbating the existing challenges of managing complex ecosystems. In a rapidly changing environment, resource managers need powerful tools and the most complete information to make the most effective decisions possible.   Traditional Ecological Knowledge has enabled Indigenous peoples to adaptively manage and thrive in diverse environments for thousands of years, yet it is generally underutilized and undervalued, particularly in the context of western scientific approaches. Traditional Ecological Knowledge and western science offer complementary insights and, together, can facilitate climate change adaptation. This project will use both methods of understanding the environment to provide tribal resource managers cutting edge information about what their environment looked like in the past to better understand it in the present and make more informed decisions for the future.   In particular, this project will work directly with Ute Mountain Ute decision-makers in using a combination of Traditional Ecological Knowledge and paleo-ecological records to explore past vegetation changes relevant to the stakeholder community. This work will then inform a forward-looking assessment of climate change impacts and adaptation options. Tribal youth will be involved in collecting information, and in developing and distributing outreach materials that summarize the work. By utilizing both Traditional Ecological Knowledge and western science techniques, this project will: 1) show how two different methods of understanding the environment can be utilized in a resource management context to assist with decision making, 2) establish how useful these methods are in tandem, and 3) provide southwest resource managers with better historic and holistic information to use in resource management decision making. 

State Wildlife Action Plans are intended to provide proactive planning and guidance for the management of rare or imperiled species, including Species of Greatest Conservation Need. States must update their State Wildlife Action Plans every 10 years, but planners often lack the capacity or resources to integrate climate change into their planning. Revised State Wildlife Action Plans for most states in the North Central region are due by 2025. Providing support and building capacity for climate-informed State Wildlife Action Plans will be most useful now, before revisions are underway in most states. To increase the capacity for state wildlife agencies, this project will identify priority needs and provide support for states in the North Central region to integrate climate science and adaptation into their State Wildlife Action Plans. The research team will first engage with State Wildlife Action Plan staff to learn their priorities and needs for climate planning support. Then, based on these discussions, researchers will collaboratively develop a synthesis product designed to support several states in the region to better integrate climate adaptation strategies into their State Wildlife Action Plans. By co-developing a climate support product with states, we expect there will be better opportunities for shared learning, reduced time/cost for states, and increased capacity for states to integrate climate into their conservation plans.

As pressures from climate change and other anthropogenic stressors, like invasive species, increase, new challenges arise for natural resource managers who are responsible for the health of public lands. One of the greatest challenges these managers face is that the traditional way of managing resources might not be as effective, or in some cases might be ineffective, in light of transformational ecological impacts that exist at the intersection of society and ecosystems. Thus, managers are struggling to understand how they should be managing shared natural resources and landscapes in this new era. This project studies the decision-making process of federal land managers to illuminate how decisions are being navigated and what strategies managers are developing to address challenges. To examine this issue, the project will use a comparative case study design focused on the Kenai Peninsula in Alaska and the East Jemez Landscape in New Mexico, both of which are experiencing transformational ecological change and related management challenges. The project uses semi-structured interviews with natural resource managers from both case study sites to identify important factors shaping manager decision making and to explain factors that differ between them. For instance, how are managers’ choice of strategies influenced by the agency to which they belong? This research will contribute to a new climate adaptation and conservation knowledge base and offer information about how decisions are currently being made on public lands. The findings will help support public land management and conservation efforts and inform researchers as to what type of science would be most usable for managers tackling ecological transformation.

The NC CASC has conducted numerous training and skills development activities to support partners and researchers as they seek to use scientific information and techniques to understand and respond to climate change impacts. Training topics range from basics of climate data integration (climate 101) to more specific topics like climate training activities for Tribes and Indigenous Communities and training videos on climate projection tools like the Climate Futures Toolbox. To learn more about upcoming training events, check NCCASC website for events regularlly and sign up for the NCCASC newsletter for announcements.