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.

In the North Central U.S., temperatures are rising and precipitation patterns are changing, with consequences ranging from more frequent and severe wildfires to prolonged drought to widespread forest pest outbreaks. As a result, land managers are becoming increasingly concerned about how climate change is affecting natural resources and the essential services they provide communities.   The rates and ecological impacts of changing conditions vary across this diverse region, which stretches from the Great Plains to the High Rockies. The goal of this project was to understand how native grasslands, shrublands, and forests will respond to changing conditions. Researchers first modeled how these vegetation types have changed over the past 50 years, then projected how they might change over the next century under different possible future conditions.   Understanding how these native ecosystems may change is critical, particularly in light of the wildlife and communities that depend on them. Species such as the greater sage-grouse, elk, deer, and grizzly bears could lose important habitat if conditions change. Humans could also be impacted – subalpine forests, for example, control snow accumulation and melt, which in turn affect the water supply. The results of this research are meant to be used to support local stakeholders in developing strategies for coping with and adapting to projected changes in vegetation across the North Central region.   This project team is part of the North Central Climate Science Center’s Foundational Science Area Team, which supports foundational research and advice, guidance, and technical assistance to other NC CSC projects as they address climate science challenges that are important for land managers and ecologists in the region.

Covering 120 million acres across 14 western states and 3 Canadian provinces, sagebrush provides critical habitat for species such as pronghorn, mule deer, and sage-grouse – a species of conservation concern. The future of these and other species is closely tied to the future of sagebrush. Yet this important ecosystem has already been affected by fire, invasive species, land use conversion, and now, climate change.   In the western U.S., temperatures are rising and precipitation patterns are changing. However, there is currently a limited ability to anticipate the impacts of climate change on sagebrush. Current methods suffer from a range of weakness that limits the reliability of results. In fact, the current uncertainty about future changes in sagebrush has been identified as a critical constraint on climate change adaptation planning in the West. To address this need, researchers forecasted the effects of climate change on the distribution and abundance of sagebrush, and integrated several modeling approaches that take into account historical data, disturbances such as fire, and changes in temperature and precipitation. This integrated method is expected to produce more accurate estimates of future sagebrush distribution and abundance.   The results of this research will be effectively communicated to land managers so that they can inform conservation planning, and sage-grouse management in particular, across the Intermountain West. Improved sagebrush forecasting will increase the capacity of land managers to prioritize future investments in sagebrush conservation and management by identifying areas where sagebrush are most and least vulnerable to climate change.

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-conifer forests, which have become drought-stressed and vulnerable to high-severity fire after decades of human disturbances and climate warming. This synthesis responds to this need. We present a compilation of existing research across multiple natural resource issues, including disturbance regimes, the legacy effects of past management actions, wildlife habitat, watershed health, restoration concepts from a landscape perspective, and social and policy concerns. We provide considerations for management, while also emphasizing the importance of local knowledge when applying this information at the local and regional level.

Abstract (from http://www.aimspress.com/article/10.3934/environsci.2015.2.400): State-and-transition simulation models (STSMs) are known for their ability to explore the combined effects of multiple disturbances, ecological dynamics, and management actions on vegetation. However, integrating the additional impacts of climate change into STSMs remains a challenge. We address this challenge by combining an STSM with species distribution modeling (SDM). SDMs estimate the probability of occurrence of a given species based on observed presence and absence locations as well as environmental and climatic covariates. Thus, in order to account for changes in habitat suitability due to climate change, we used SDM to generate continuous surfaces of species occurrence probabilities. These data were imported into ST-Sim, an STSM platform, where they dictated the probability of each cell transitioning between alternate potential vegetation types at each time step. The STSM was parameterized to capture additional processes of vegetation growth and disturbance that are relevant to a keystone species in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem—whitebark pine ( Pinus albicaulis). We compared historical model runs against historical observations of whitebark pine and a key disturbance agent (mountain pine beetle,  Dendroctonus ponderosae), and then projected the simulation into the future. Using this combination of correlative and stochastic simulation models, we were able to reproduce historical observations and identify key data gaps. Results indicated that SDMs and STSMs are complementary tools, and combining them is an effective way to account for the anticipated impacts of climate change, biotic interactions, and disturbances, while also allowing for the exploration of management options.

Abstract (from http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1574954115001466): Anticipating the ecological effects of climate change to inform natural resource climate adaptation planning represents one of the primary challenges of contemporary conservation science. Species distribution models have become a widely used tool to generate first-pass estimates of climate change impacts to species probabilities of occurrence. There are a number of technical challenges to constructing species distribution models that can be alleviated by the use of scientific workflow software. These challenges include data integration, visualization of modeled predictor–response relationships, and ensuring that models are reproducible and transferable in an adaptive natural resource management framework. We used freely available software called VisTrails Software for Assisted Habitat Modeling ( VisTrails:SAHM) along with a novel ecohydrological predictor dataset and the latest Coupled Model Intercomparison Project 5 future climate projections to construct species distribution models for eight forest and shrub species in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem in the Northern Rocky Mountains USA. The species considered included multiple species of sagebrush and juniper,  Pinus flexilis,  Pinus contorta,  Pseudotsuga menziesii,  Populus tremuloides,  Abies lasciocarpa, Picea engelmannii, and  Pinus albicaulis. Current and future species probabilities of occurrence were mapped in a GIS by land ownership category to assess the feasibility of undertaking present and future management action. Results suggested that decreasing spring snowpack and increasing late-season soil moisture deficit will lead to deteriorating habitat area for mountain forest species and expansion of habitat area for sagebrush and juniper communities. Results were consistent across nine global climate models and two representative concentration pathway scenarios. For most forest species their projected future distributions moved up in elevation from general federal to federally restricted lands where active management is currently prohibited by agency policy. Though not yet fully mature, custom scientific workflow software shows considerable promise to ease many of the technical challenges inherent in modeling the potential ecological impacts of climate change to support climate adaptation planning.

Abstract (from http://www.islandpress.org/book/climate-change-in-wildlands): Scientists have been warning for years that human activity is heating up the planet and climate change is under way. In the past century, global temperatures have risen an average of 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit, a trend that is expected to only accelerate. But public sentiment has taken a long time to catch up, and we are only just beginning to acknowledge the serious effects this will have on all life on Earth. The federal government is crafting broad-scale strategies to protect wildland ecosystems from the worst effects of climate change. The challenge now is to get the latest science into the hands of resource managers entrusted with protecting water, plants, fish and wildlife, tribal lands, and cultural heritage sites in wildlands. Teaming with NASA and the Department of the Interior, ecologist Andrew Hansen, along with his team of scientists and managers, set out to understand how climate and land use changes affect montane landscapes of the Rockies and the Appalachians, and how these findings can be applied to wildlands elsewhere. They examine changes over the past century as well as expected future change, assess the vulnerability of species and ecosystems to these changes, and provide new, collaborative management approaches to mitigate expected impacts. A series of case studies showcases how managers might tackle such wide-ranging problems as the effects of warming streams on cold-water fish in Great Smoky Mountain National Park and dying white-bark pine stands in the Greater Yellowstone area. A surprising finding is that species and ecosystems vary dramatically in vulnerability to climate change. While many will suffer severe effects, others may actually benefit from projected changes. Climate Change in Wildlands is a collaboration between scientists and managers, providing a science-derived framework and common-sense approaches for keeping parks and protected areas healthy on a rapidly changing planet. - See more at: http://www.islandpress.org/book/climate-change-in-wildlands#sthash.ZdEUAf26.dpuf