Dry stream sections are characteristic of most prairie streams. Native fish are highly adapted to variable environments, using refuge habitats (e.g., remaining wet stream fragments) to recolonize areas after seasonal drying. However, dams and other barriers can prevent recolonization of seasonally-dry stream sections habitats known to be critical spawning and rearing areas for many species. This phenomenon will likely become more common as climate change causes increasingly severe droughts, and larger sections of streams become seasonally dry. This could lead to local loss of native prairie fishes, an already at-risk group. Fisheries managers in Wyoming and Montana have limited data on climate impacts to prairie fishes, limiting their ability to prioritize management actions. This is in part because the ecology and possible climate adaptation strategies for many prairie fishes are poorly understood. Managers also have limited time to assess the success of potential restoration actions to increase fish resilience to seasonal drying and ways to increase refuge habitat. This project aims to provide landscape-level maps and resources that will help managers prioritize where and for which species management actions, such as water and habitat conservation and restoration measures, could be most beneficial. A research team will assess which species are most sensitive to drought in addition to expanding a newly created model of streamflow permanence to map drought refuges for vulnerable species. The project will also monitor stream restoration case studies to determine if process-based restoration techniques can be used to increase streamflow permanence and connectivity. Lastly, this work will be leveraged to create a short, species-specific guide to climate adaptation techniques. This guide will help agencies, landowners, conservation districts, and public interest groups determine what can be done to benefit at-risk species in their area of interest.

The Northern Glaciated Plains in the upper Midwest United States is a region where fishing generates millions of dollars a year for local and state economies. Maintaining these revenues requires the management of fish populations that are popular and accessible (e.g. boat ramps, public land access) to anglers. Fisheries throughout the world are currently undergoing unprecedented changes to water levels and habitat quality resulting from climate change. The consequences of climate change to Northern Glaciated Plains fisheries are unknown but pose an immediate challenge for resource managers as angler access and opportunities can be jeopardized when: a) boat ramps become inaccessible due to changing water levels, and b) altered water quality negatively affects desired fish species. This project aims to provide fisheries managers with information about how climate change may alter the hydrology of Northern Glaciated Plains lakes and the impact those changes may have on fish communities, angler access, angler behavior, and angler expenditures. A hydrologic model will be used to predict changes in lake size and water quality based on weather conditions under a changing climate. This information will then be used to 1) predict changes in fish communities, 2) identify current angler access locations that are at risk of becoming inaccessible, 3) determine whether anglers will change the amount of time they spend fishing, and 4) decern how these changes ultimately affect the amount of money anglers spend in this region. By understanding which lakes will experience change and how, fisheries managers will be able to make decisions at state or regional levels about infrastructure development (number and location of new boat ramps) and ecosystem management (species and locations of fish stocking) that will maintain angler satisfaction and the economic benefits of recreational fisheries.

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.

The Prairie Pothole Region is recognized as one of the most critical breeding habitats for waterfowl in North America and is used by an estimated 50–80 % of the continent’s breeding duck population. The ongoing acquisition program of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service National Wildlife Refuge System has conserved approximately 1.3 million hectares of critical breeding-waterfowl habitat. This current conservation approach assumes that past distributions of waterfowl habitat and populations are relatively representative of future distributions, however, due to changes in the area’s hydrology this may not be the case. Understanding how climate change may impact these wetland and grassland ecosystems is key for management agencies to set priorities for future conservation actions. The goal of this project is to co-produce novel information for land-management agencies to better plan for future impacts of climate change on the wetland habitat for breeding waterfowl pairs in the U.S. Prairie Pothole Region. The researchers will use a mechanistic hydrology model with U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service datasets that span multiple decades and predictive breeding waterfowl pair statistical models to simulate wetland-waterfowl responses under different climate futures. By working directly with scientists and decision makers at the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, the team will ensure delivery of actionable science that can readily inform the agency about potential climate-driven impacts to breeding waterfowl pairs in currently monitored wetlands. This project will generate new, more robust predictions of the future status of the wetland ecosystem and waterfowl habitat of the Prairie Pothole Region.

Throughout western North America, warming associated with climate change is leading to both earlier spring peak streamflows and earlier seed dispersal, potentially reducing seedling establishment and in turn reducing the quality of riparian (near-river) forests, which provide critical habitat for diverse birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians, and insects, and food and shade for fish and other aquatic animals. This project aimed to predict these effects of climate change on cottonwood and willow tree regeneration in western forests by linking models of seed dispersal timing, streamflow hydrology, and seedling establishment, focusing on the upper South Platte River Basin as a study area. Results are expected to help land managers anticipate future changes in riparian wildlife habitat quality, and potentially to respond to these changes by actively re-vegetating high-priority areas, or by working with water management agencies to schedule dam releases that favor cottonwood and willow establishment.

Hydrologic models are used throughout the world to forecast and simulate streamflow, inform water management, municipal planning, and ecosystem conservation, and investigate potential effects of climate and land-use change on hydrology. The USGS Modeling of Watershed Systems (MoWS) group is currently developing the infrastructure for a National Hydrologic Model (NHM) to support coordinated, comprehensive, and consistent hydrologic model development and application. The NHM is expected to provide internally consistent estimates of total water availability, water sources, and streamflow timing, and measures of uncertainty around these estimates, for the entire United States. VisTrails, a scientific workflow and provenance management system (www.vistrails.org), could be used to facilitate consistent, organized, reproducible data management, analysis, and visualization for the NHM. A VisTrails system for the USGS Monthly Water Balance model (MWB) and/or the USGS Precipitation-Runoff Modeling System (PRMS) would be widely used in the NHM effort as well as by numerous agencies and researchers for individual model applications. Project Researchers worked with North Central Climate Science Center (NC CSC) staff to develop a VisTrails system for MWB, as a first step in developing a more complex VisTrails system for PRMS. The resulting VisTrails system for MWB has facilitated consistent, organized, and reproducible model calibration and simulations for monthly streamflow projections by research hydrologists and managers nationwide.

The Prairie Pothole Region spans parts of North and South Dakota, Minnesota, Montana, Iowa and south-central Canada and contains millions of wetlands that provide habitat for breeding and migrating birds. Because it is the continent’s most important breeding area for waterfowl, conservation and management largely focuses on protecting habitat for nesting ducks. However, other wetland-dependent birds also rely on this region, and it is important to understand the degree to which habitat conserved for ducks provides habitat for other species, and how the quality of this habitat will be affected by climate change. Project researchers tested whether waterfowl are effective representatives, or surrogates, for other wetland-dependent birds by predicting how climate change will affect habitat suitability for waterfowl and other species. The team also considered how climate change is likely to affect land-use patterns and agricultural conversion risk, and used these predictions to identify areas of the landscape where both waterfowl and other species were expected to have suitable habitat in the future. This research was intended to help managers efficiently direct their resources towards conserving areas that will provide habitat to a broad suite of species.

Water management planners and researchers throughout the world rely on hydrological models to forecast and simulate streamflow hydrology and hydrological events. These simulations are used to inform water management, municipal planning, and ecosystem conservation decisions, as well as to investigate potential effects of climate and land-use change on hydrology. 

The Prairie Pothole Region (PPR) in the northern Great Plains contains millions of wetlands that provide habitat for breeding and migrating birds. Although conservation and management largely focuses on protecting habitat for nesting ducks, other wetland-dependent birds also rely on this region. Land managers want to know whether habitat conserved for ducks provides habitat for other species and how these habitats will be affected by climate change. A primary goal of this research has been to assist managers in conserving areas that will provide habitat to a broad suite of species. We considered how climate change is likely to affect land-use patterns and agricultural conversion risk. We then predicted how climate change will affect the density and distribution of wetlands under future climate conditions based on models incorporating land-use, climate models, hydrology, and distribution of wetland basins. Although the density of wetlands with water will most likely decline across the region, the distribution of wetlands probably will not shift spatially because the location of wetland basins is static. Species distribution modeling techniques projected that geographic ranges of nearly 30 species of wetland-dependent birds will decline by an average of 31% (range: 75% decline to 16% increase) as the climate warms. To test whether waterfowl are effective representatives, or surrogates, for other wetland-dependent birds, we used data from citizen science bird surveys and species life history to mathematically demonstrate how closely wetland birds associate with waterfowl. At small scales in space and time (for example, a small wetland complex on an annual basis), many waterfowl and other wetland birds species were segregated. Yet at larger scales in space and time, the scales at which habitat protection decisions are made, many species appeared to co-occur because various microhabitats were represented in the larger dynamic landscapes through 30-yr time periods.