Members of the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho Tribes have been working with an interdisciplinary team of social, ecological, and climate scientists from the North Central CSC, the High Plains Regional Climate Center, and the National Drought Mitigation Center along with other university and agency partners to prepare regular climate and drought summaries to aid in managing water resources on the Wind River Reservation and in surrounding areas. 

This data set provides the abiotic water balance variables used for species distribution modelings for Pinus albicaulis within the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem

The North Central Climate Science Center funded research activities in order to provide pertinent climate information to natural resource managers in our region to evaluate impacts of climatic changes and to develop strategies to respond to changes affecting their natural and cultural resources.  These funded activities provided improved past and current climate data sets, such as the high resolution temperature data, regional reconstruction. In addition, we have developed climate information from the latest international climate projections. We used this information and additional climate information to evaluate and assess impacts on ecosystem and natural resources. Ecosystem responses were studied across the region and included examples from controls on sagebrush establishment, whitebark pine vulnerability to climate change, grassland dynamics in mountain and prairie areas, and changes in water dynamics affecting water fowl in the prairie pothole area.  Adaptation research efforts and development of strategies with various natural resource managers from federal, state, and Native American communities were carried out. A major focus on drought was defined and the Drought Risk and Adaptation in the Interior (DRAI) research efforts was developed under this funding. We used survey and interviews to gain insights in how various climate changes, especially those related to drought conditions, have been affecting their management practices. This information was important in guiding further research with our management communities related to what climate information would be useful, what impacts are being observed or of concern to these management entities, and what pathways are open to meet changes. Our research and engagement activities were generated in partnership with National Park Service managers, Native American leaders, and groups working with various non-governmental organizations, such as The Nature Conservancy. In addition, information on climate changes and impacts were incorporated in regional assessment efforts for the Colorado Vulnerability Study.

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 Rocky Mountains and high plains region of the United States. However, recent drought impacts and climate change projections have increased the need for a systematized way to document and understand drought in a manner that is meaningful to public land and resource managers. The purpose of this exploratory study was to characterize the ways in which some federal and tribal natural resource managers experienced and dealt with drought on lands managed by the U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) and tribes in two case site examples (northwest Colorado and southwest South Dakota) that have experienced high drought exposure in the last two decades. The authors employed a social–ecological system framework, whereby key informant interviews and local and regional drought indicator data were used characterize the social and ecological factors that contribute to drought vulnerability and the ways in which drought onset, persistence, severity, and recovery impact management. Results indicated that local differences in the timing, decisions, and specific management targets defined within the local social–ecological natural resource contexts are critical to understanding drought impacts, vulnerabilities, and responses. These findings suggest that manager-defined social–ecological contexts are critically important to understand how drought is experienced across the landscape and the indices that are needed to inform adaptation and response strategies.

The NC CSC project "Wind River Indian Reservation’s (WRIR) Vulnerability to the Impacts of Drought and the Development of Decision Tools to Support Drought Preparedness" supports tribal resource managers working with university and government partners to co-develop science, decision support tools, and a management plan for drought.

The project team, funded by the NC CSC, worked in two river basins in southwestern Colorado (San Juan and Gunnison) to focus on five objectives: 1) understand social-ecological vulnerabilities, 2) create scenarios and models to facilitate decision making, 3) develop actionable adaptation strategies, 4) identify institutional arrangements needed for adaptation, and 5) document and transfer best practices. The team was interested in the intersection of the climate system, the ecological system, and the social system. Social and natural scientists worked together and with many stakeholders to achieve these objectives.

Managing plant and wildlife species under climate change offers a substantial challenge. Federal agencies have adapted a framework for considering climate change when implementing management actions. This project was designed to demonstrate how elements of that framework, climate science, ecological forecasting, and natural resource management, can be linked to best maintain natural resources under climate change. The project focused on the whitebark pine (WBP) tree. This species occupies high mountain forests and uniquely provides foods and habitats for other species. WBP populations have undergone massive die-offs over the past decade due to pest outbreaks associated with climate warming. In the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE), federal agencies have been working together since 1999 to develop a strategy for restoring the lost WBP forests. This project was designed to provide guidance as to how to place management treatments in the landscape to be most effective under climate change. We analyzed relationships between WBP and climate during the past 15,000 years and forecasted potential response to climate change to the year 2100. In collaboration with federal managers, we used the results to develop a management strategy to maintain a viable population of WBP in the GYE under projected future climates. Simulation modeling experiments revealed that our “climate-informed” strategy is likely to be more effective under future climates than the current federal strategy. Our federal partners are now incorporating knowledge developed in the project into a revised version of the WBP management strategy. Public surveys conducted by the project revealed a high level of public support for such restoration efforts for this climatesensitive keystone tree species. 

This is a spatially-explicit state-and-transition simulation model of rangeland vegetation dynamics in southwest South Dakota. It was co-designed with resource management partners to support scenario planning for climate change adaptation. The study site encompasses part of multiple jurisdictions, including Badlands National Park, Buffalo Gap National Grasslands, and Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. The model represents key vegetation types, grazing, exotic plants, fire, and the effects of climate and management on rangeland productivity and composition (i.e., distribution of ecological community phases). See Miller et al. (2017) for further details. The model was built using the ST-Sim software platform (www.apexrms.com/stsm). ST-Sim allows users to develop and run spatially-explicit, stochastic state-and-transition simulation models (STSMs) of vegetation change, and is designed to simulate and compare possible vegetation conditions across a landscape over time by considering the interaction between succession, disturbances and management. ST-Sim is the latest in a 20-year lineage of STSM development tools that includes the Vegetation Dynamics Development Tool (VDDT), the Tool for Exploratory Landscape Scenario Analysis (TELSA), and the Path Landscape Model (Path). ST-Sim is intended as an upgrade to Path: in addition to all of the previous Path features, ST-Sim also provides a new option to run raster-based, spatially-explicit simulations.