Skip to main content
Advanced Search

Filters: Tags: National CASC (X) > Categories: Publication (X)

149 results (11ms)   

Filters
Date Range
Extensions
Types
Contacts
Tag Types
Tag Schemes
View Results as: JSON ATOM CSV
Historically, drought has been viewed in terms of its agricultural, hydrological, and socioeconomic impacts. How drought affects ecosystems - and the services they provide human communities - is often not discussed. In response, the U.S. Geological Survey's National Climate Adaptation Science Center (NCASC) initiated a national-scale effort that’s addressing this gap in drought research. A new concept – ecological drought – was defined as part of this effort. This geo-narrative explains the concept of ecological drought, and highlights the research and products that were initiated as part of this effort.
Abstract (from http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/279/1732/1366.long): Altered species interactions are difficult to predict and yet may drive the response of ecological communities to climate change. We show that declining snowpack strengthens the impacts of a generalist herbivore, elk ( Cervus elaphus), on a common tree species. Thick snowpack substantially reduces elk visitation to sites; aspen ( Populus tremuloides) shoots in these areas experience lower browsing rates, higher survival and enhanced recruitment. Aspen inside herbivore exclosures have greatly increased recruitment, particularly at sites with thick snowpack. We suggest that long-term decreases in snowpack could help explain a widespread...
Abstract (from http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022169414003990#): Water temperature is a fundamental property of river habitat and often a key aspect of river resource management, but measurements to characterize thermal regimes are not available for most streams and rivers. As such, we developed an artificial neural network (ANN) ensemble model to predict mean daily water temperature in 197,402 individual stream reaches during the warm season (May-October) throughout the native range of brook trout Salvelinus fontinalis in the eastern U.S. We compared four models with different groups of predictors to determine how well water temperature could be predicted by climatic, landform, and land cover...
Climate change is a global problem whose impacts are experienced at the local to regional scale. For this reason, the first step in assessing the impacts of climate change—on a species or an ecosystem, on water resources, or on an aspect of human society such as energy demand or agriculture—is often to develop projections of how temperature, precipitation, and other important aspects of climate might be expected to change in the future at the location of interest. Global climate models produce future climate projections that are usually too coarse to capture the local characteristics that determine climate at any given location: the proximity of that location to a large body of water, for example, which would moderate...
Abstract (from https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11160-017-9477-y): To date, there are few comprehensive assessments of how climate change affects inland finfish, fisheries, and aquaculture at a global scale, but one is necessary to identify research needs and commonalities across regions and to help guide decision making and funding priorities. Broadly, the consequences of climate change on inland fishes will impact global food security, the livelihoods of people who depend on inland capture and recreational fisheries. However, understanding how climate change will affect inland fishes and fisheries has lagged behind marine assessments. Building from a North American inland fisheries assessment, we convened...
Abstract (from http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ele.12568/abstract): Anthropogenic climate change has created myriad stressors that threaten to cause local extinctions if wild populations fail to adapt to novel conditions. We studied individual and population-level fitness costs of a climate change-induced stressor: camouflage mismatch in seasonally colour molting species confronting decreasing snow cover duration. Based on field measurements of radiocollared snowshoe hares, we found strong selection on coat colour molt phenology, such that animals mismatched with the colour of their background experienced weekly survival decreases up to 7%. In the absence of adaptive response, we show that these mortality...
Abstract: Greenhouse gas-induced climate change will have notable effects on the Great Lakes region, in the atmosphere, land surfaces, and lakes themselves. Simulations of these effects were carried out using the Coupled Hydrosphere-Atmosphere Research Model (CHARM), driven by output from the Canadian General Circulation Model version 3 (CRCM3) for past and future time periods. This results in increased downward longwave radiation and near-surface air temperature. The air temperature increases during summer have strong spatial minima directly over the lakes that are limited to the lowest model layer and seem to be associated with frequent fog depicted by CHARM. Precipitation is also generally increased, with the...
Abstract (from http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10980-015-0205-5): Context The Florida Everglades has diminished in size and its existing wetland hydrology has been altered. The endangered snail kite (Rostrhamus sociabilis) has nearly abandoned the Everglades, and its prey, the apple snail (Pomacea paludosa), has declined. Objective We developed a population model (EverSnail) to understand apple snail response to inter- and intra-annual fluctuations in water depths over the Everglades landscape. EverSnail was developed as a tool to understand how apple snails respond to different hydrologic scenarios. Methods EverSnail is an age- and size-structured, spatially-explicit landscape model of P. paludosa...
Abstract (from Ecological Society of America): Species that are primarily seral may form stable (self‐sustaining) communities under certain disturbance regimes or environmental conditions, yet such populations may also be particularly vulnerable to ecological change. Aspen (Populus spp.) are generally considered seral throughout the Northern Hemisphere, including P. tremuloides, the most widely distributed tree species in North America. Recent declines in aspen populations have occurred, especially along drought‐sensitive margins of its range and where fire exclusion and herbivory have promoted community transition. However, aspen also forms stable stands, and examination of the mechanisms that influence persistence...
In order for the field of science to uphold principles of transparency, openness, and reproducibility, policies and practices that incentivize the open sharing of data will be needed (Nosek et al.,2015). A shift to a more open science paradigm will require changes on the parts of government agencies, academicinstitutions, funding agencies/organizations, journals, and the researchers themselves. For example, journals are now beginning to require that data be shared in order for manuscripts to be published in accordance with guidelines created by the Transparency and Openness Promotion (TOP) Committee (Nosek et al.,2015). Major biophysical and social science journals are among the signatories to the TOP guidelines,...
Abstract: Toxic blooms of golden alga (GA, Prymnesium parvum) in Texas typically occur in winter or early spring. In North America, they were first reported in Texas in the 1980s, and a marked range expansion occurred in 2001. Although there is concern about the influence of climate change on the future distribution of GA, factors responsible for past dispersals remain uncertain. To better understand the factors that influence toxic bloom dispersal in reservoirs, this study characterized reservoir water quality associated with toxic GA blooms since 2001, and examined trends in water quality during a 20-year period bracketing the 2001 expansion. Archived data were analyzed for six impacted and six nonimpacted reservoirs...
Abstract (from MDPI): Intermittent and ephemeral streams represent more than half of the length of the global river network. Dryland freshwater ecosystems are especially vulnerable to changes in human-related water uses as well as shifts in terrestrial climates. Yet, the description and quantification of patterns of flow permanence in these systems is challenging mostly due to difficulties in instrumentation. Here, we took advantage of existing stream temperature datasets in dryland streams in the northwest Great Basin desert, USA, to extract critical information on climate-sensitive patterns of flow permanence. We used a signal detection technique, Hidden Markov Models (HMMs), to extract information from daily...
Abstract (from http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/fwb.12569/abstract): Lakes Michigan and Huron, which are undergoing oligotrophication after reduction of phosphorus loading, invasion by dreissenid mussels and variation in climate, provide an opportunity to conduct large-scale evaluation of the relative importance of these changes for lake productivity. We used remote sensing, field data and an information-theoretic approach to identify factors that showed statistical relationships with observed changes in chlorophyll a (chla) and primary production (PP). Spring phosphorus (TP), annual mean chla and PP have all declined significantly in both lakes since the late 1990s. Additionally, monthly mean...
Abstract: Native freshwater mussels are long-lived, sessile, benthic invertebrates that may be extremely susceptible to elevated water temperatures because of their patchy distribution, limited dispersal and mobility, and larval dependence on fish. Recent research suggests that many species may be living close to their upper thermal limits and that some rivers have seen a shift in species composition to more thermally tolerant mussel species. We tested the hypothesis that elevated water temperatures (20, 25, 30, and 35°C) adversely affected the survival and physiology of juvenile mussels and physiology of adult mussels. In juveniles, the 28-d LT50s ranged from 25.3 to 30.3°C. H eart rate was significantly affected...
Water laws and drought plans are used to prioritize and allocate scarce water resources. Both have historically been human-centric, failing to account for non-human water needs. In this paper, we examine the development of instream flow legislation and the evolution of drought planning to highlight the growing concern for the non-human impacts of water scarcity. Utilizing a new framework for ecological drought, we analyzed five watershed-scale drought plans in southwestern Montana, USA to understand if, and how, the ecological impacts of drought are currently being assessed. We found that while these plans do account for some ecological impacts, it is primarily through the narrow lens of impacts to fish as measured...
The American Fisheries Society and the Human Dimensions Research Unit of Cornell University have been engaged by NCCWSC to lead 5-year reviews of the CSCs. The purpose of the CSC review and evaluation is to: 1. Evaluate the effectiveness of each CSC in meeting project goals. 2. Assess the level of scientific contribution and achievement at each CSC with respect to climate modeling, climate change impacts assessments, vulnerability and adaptation of fish, wildlife and their habitats, and collaborative development of adaptation strategies for regional stakeholders, and education and training of graduate and post‐doctoral fellows 3. Evaluate the competencies and efficiencies of each host university in managing...
The American Fisheries Society and the Human Dimensions Research Unit of Cornell University have been engaged by NCCWSC to lead 5-year reviews of the CSCs. The purpose of the CSC review and evaluation is to: 1. Evaluate the effectiveness of each CSC in meeting project goals. 2. Assess the level of scientific contribution and achievement at each CSC with respect to climate modeling, climate change impacts assessments, vulnerability and adaptation of fish, wildlife and their habitats, and collaborative development of adaptation strategies for regional stakeholders, and education and training of graduate and post‐doctoral fellows 3. Evaluate the competencies and efficiencies of each host university in managing...
Abstract (from Canadian Science Publishing): Managing fisheries through rapid environmental change requires diverse approaches for identifying and adapting to novel ecological conditions. For the Wisconsin Ceded Territory, we calculated 473 adult walleye (Sander vitreus) production (P), biomass (B), and P/B estimates for 1990–2012. Frequency distributions for production statistics were right-skewed, indicating the fishery is generally dominated by low production populations. Mean P, B, and P/B were significantly elevated in natural recruitment (NR) lakes compared with combination (NR + stocking) and stocked-only lakes. Furthermore, combination populations had significantly higher production compared with stocked-only...