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.

As the National Climate Adaptation Science Center (CASC) develops a strategic effort around fire science, there is a critical need to develop a national-scale synthesis effort that identifies key regional CASC activities previously conducted, as well as major science gaps that may be addressed by a coordinated CASC network approach. The North Central CASC postdoctoral fellow will play a leadership role in the National CASC Climate Adaptation Postdoctoral (CAP) Fellows Future of Fire cohort to help identify the common efforts and leveraging points to shape the national-scale synthesis. Currently there is limited North Central CASC supported fire science available for the North Central region. To meet this need, the North Central CASC postdoctoral fellow will develop region-specific fire information relevant to resource managers that are challenged with making decisions to adapt to changing fire risk and ecosystem responses. This project aims to determine the future size and number of fires, total burn area, and rates of change among years and across space in the contiguous United States. The goal is to explain changes in these fire variables in relation to climate change and changing housing density, which drives human ignitions and fire suppression efforts. To predict the future size and number of fires, statiscal models that look at fire-climate relationships will be applied to climate data output from several global climate models under two future climate scenarios. The results will help improve future fire projections based on climate modeling and data at spatial- and temporal-scales relevant for resource managers, with a focus on: i) identifying regions where fire has historically been infrequent or absent; ii) changes to fire extremes and other important aspects of fire behavior that have an impact on fire operations/management (i.e., timing, intensity, seasonal length); and iii) changes that will exceed the capacity of current institutional management approaches. Additionally, the postdoctoral fellow will help coordinate a team of regional partners, scientists and managers to determine what information is most useful for decision-making. This engagement with practitioners will be beneficial in informing the national-scale synthesis and identification of key metrics.

One of the most visible signs of climate change is less mountain snow. In the Western U.S., deep snow has historically been a cornerstone of life for many plants and animals. For example, snow can provide denning shelter for certain species like the wolverine, and snowmelt provides dependable water to mountain streams that are home to fish like the bull trout. Yet snow losses driven by warming temperatures are already causing land and water managers to rethink whether certain species can thrive in the future. A recently completed study by this research team helped the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service investigate whether wolverines will have enough snow to survive in two areas of the Rocky Mountains.   In June 2020, the project team gathered a large group of regional land managers at a “Snow Collider” workshop event to learn about the wide range of needs for future snow information. Managers identified needs focused on how much snow will be around in the future, as well as how that snow will melt to support streams. This input will guide the direction of the future snow modeling in this study. The main goal of this project is to build better models of future snow conditions for the key areas of the Rocky Mountains identified previously.   The team seeks to understand whether changes in future snowpacks will be sufficient for key species to thrive. This research will zoom in to model future snow conditions at much higher resolutions compared to earlier studies, to allow for an improved method to understand how snow will accumulate and melt across landscapes. This project aims to help managers make more informed decisions about future snow dependent species and choose the most effective ways to allocate resources towards recovery plans and monitoring.

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.

Water resources are critical for ecosystems, agriculture, and communities, and potential climate impacts to hydrologic budgets and cycles are arguably the most consequential to society. Apart from precipitation, evapotranspiration makes up the most significant component of the hydrologic budget. Evapotranspiration is a primary metric for identifying Ecological Drought, a deficit in water availability that negatively impacts ecosystems and ecosystem services. Through an agreement between the USGS Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center Land Cover Monitoring, Assessment and Projection (LCMAP) program and the North Central CASC, Dr. Senay works to integrate and apply remotely sensed data for eco- and agro-hydrologic modeling. He promotes and advances the use of satellite-derived multi-scale evapotranspiration products by the key stakeholders in the irrigation and water resources community for climate adaptation planning.

Abundant scientific research has characterized the relationships between climate and fire in ecosystems of the United States, and there is substantial evidence that the role of fire in ecosystems is likely to change with a changing climate. However, there is considerable local-to-regional heterogeneity in the observed and projected changes, driven by the historical and current patterns in fuel availability and flammability, the nature and interaction of climate changes and their effects on ecosystems, and the role of humans and natural-resource management practices in affecting those trajectories. In particular, changing fire regimes in pose numerous natural resource management challenges. Decision makers in natural-resource management increasingly require information about potential future changes in fire regimes to effectively prepare for and adapt to climate change impacts. An effective forward-looking fire science synthesis is urgently required to reflect the changing dimensions of human fire management, recognizing that fire causes, effects, impacts, and management are all interrelated components of a social-ecological-hydrological system with the potential for profound ecological transformation. To meet this need, we propose to conduct a synthetic research assessment of changing fire dynamics and to relate these changes to natural resource management. Through this project, we will engage a post-doctoral fellow to lead this research, and will conduct an assessment of: 1) the state of the science on how climate change is currently affecting and projected to transform fire processes; 2) how projected changes fit within the context of national patterns and trends; 3) the implications of these changes for natural resource management and climate change adaptation efforts. Products will include one or more peer reviewed manuscript(s) on the regional findings; one or more peer reviewed manuscripts placing these regional findings in a broader national context; and public facing documents and/or communication activities (e.g., webinars) to engage managers with the results of this work.

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. However, 'ecological drought' can be difficult to define, let alone to quantify, especially at spatial and temporal scales relevant to land managers. This is despite a growing need to integrate drought-related factors into management decisions as climate changes result in precipitation instability in many semi-arid ecosystems. We asked whether success in restoration seedings of the foundational species big sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata) was related to estimated water deficit, using the SoilWat2 model and data from >600 plots located in previously burned areas in the western United States. Water deficit was characterized by: 1) the standardized precipitation-evapotranspiration index (SPEI), a coarse-scale drought index, and 2) the number of days with wet and warm conditions in the near-surface soil, where seeds and seedlings germinate and emerge (i.e. days with 0-5 cm deep soil water potential > -2.5 MPa and temperature above 0 °C). SPEI, a widely used drought index, was not predictive of whether sagebrush had reestablished. In contrast, wet-warm days elicited a critical drought threshold response, with successfully reestablished sites having experienced 7 more wet-warm days than unsuccessful sites during the first March following summer wildfire and restoration. Thus, seemingly small-scale and short-term changes in water availability and temperature can contribute to major ecosystem shifts, as many of these sites remained shrubless two decades later. These findings help clarify the definition of ecological drought for a foundational species and its imperiled semi-arid ecosystem. Drought is well known to affect the occurrence of wildfires, but drought in the year(s) after fire can determine whether fire causes long-lasting, negative impacts on ecosystems.

The climate of the North Central U.S. is driven by a combination of factors, including atmospheric circulation patterns, the region’s complex topography which extends from the High Rockies to the Great Plains, and variations in hydrology. Together, these factors determine the sustainability of the region’s ecosystems and the services that they provide communities.   In order to understand the vulnerability of the region’s ecosystems to change, it is necessary to have reliable projections of future climate conditions. To address this need, researchers first examined past and present variations in climate and assessed the ability of climate models to effectively project future climate conditions for the region. Second, researchers used these climate models to project how the region’s water balance might change. This information was then used to understand potential future changes in ecosystems that are of interest to stakeholders. For example, researchers found that the increased probability of future drought in Iowa would threaten the state’s tallgrass prairies, as 28 plant species could experience a reduction in habitat suitability by 2040.   This research helps clarify the trajectory of past, present, and future changes in the region’s climate; identifies specific climate conditions associated with extreme events such as drought; and combines this knowledge to evaluate future conditions of ecosystems in the region. Together, this information can be used to support climate adaptation efforts in the North Central region.    

This dataset is a shapefile that contains the grid outlines and identifiers for the tiles produced by the TopoWx ("Topographical Weather/Climate") temperature dataset as applied to the USGS North Central Climate Center Domain and the surrounding area of Montana. The TopoWx dataset contains gridded daily temperature and is an interpolated spatio-temporaldataset in the same vein as the well-known PRISM (http://www.prism.oregonstate.edu) and Daymet products (http://daymet.ornl.gov). Daily Tmin and Tmax are provided at a 30-arcsec resolution (~800m) from 1948-2012 along with the latest 30-year monthly normals (1981-2010). The goals of the TopoWx project were to produce a dataset that: (1) incorporates key landscape-scale physiographic and biophysical factors that influence spatial spatial patterns of temperature;(2) provides estimates of uncertainty; (3) is appropriate for analyzing trends; and (4) is open to the research community for further analysis and improvements.

The North Central Climate Science Center Paleoenvironmental Database serves as an archive of Pleistocene proxy records, metadata and derivative products (e.g., chronologies, vegetation and climate reconstructions), and provides a resource for environmental research, facilitating data viewing, synthesis and joint analysis of multiproxy datasets.  As of March 2014, the database consists of 1270 paleoenvironmental records, including proxies of climate (i.e., tree-rings, borehole temperatures, isotopes, diatoms, electrical conductivity, ice cores, loess accumulation), streamflow (i.e., tree rings), fauna (i.e., fossils), vegetation (i.e., pollen, plant macrofossils) and fire (i.e., tree-scars, charcoal).