Skip to main content
Advanced Search

Filters: Tags: National CASC (X) > Types: OGC WMS Layer (X)

143 results (75ms)   

Filters
Date Range
Extensions
Types
Contacts
Categories
Tag Types
Tag Schemes
View Results as: JSON ATOM CSV
thumbnail
Previous climate change research for the Colorado River Basin has used down-scaled climate models to predict impacts to hydropower and the potential ability to meet mandated water releases. The Lower Colorado River Basin (LCRB) has one of the most imperiled fish faunas in the nation with about half of the native fish species listed as Threatened or Endangered under the Federal Endangered Species Act. Current water demands for agriculture and human consumption are only slightly less than long-term annual flows. Future projections based on climate change alone indicate decreased precipitation, increased temperatures, and lower annual runoff which will further stress this ecosystem that is experiencing among the highest...
thumbnail
High latitude northern ecosystems are currently warming twice as fast as the global average. Over the last several decades, this has caused dramatic losses of frozen area in the Arctic and sub-Arctic. However, it is unclear how melting coastal mountain glaciers, thawing permafrost, and declines in snowpack will affect the quality of freshwater habitat for culturally and economically important salmon in Alaska. As a collaborative effort with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, the Alaska Department of Natural Resources, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, this project aims to answer three questions: How does melting affect the freshwater habitat of Pacific salmon? How will changes to aquatic flows...
thumbnail
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. Changing fire patterns pose numerous natural resource management challenges and 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...
thumbnail
Drought events have cost the U.S. nearly $245 billion since 1980, with costs ranging from $2 to $44 billion in any given year. However, these socio-economic losses are not the only impacts of drought. Ecosystems, fish, wildlife, and plants also suffer, and these types of drought impacts are becoming more commonplace. Further, ecosystems that recover from drought are now doing so under different climate conditions than they have experienced in the past few centuries. As temperature and precipitation patterns change, “transformational drought”, or drought events that can permanently and irreversibly alter ecosystems – such as forests converting to grasslands – are a growing threat. This type of drought has cascading...
thumbnail
Fish and wildlife provide many important ecosystem and cultural services that support people, communities, and economies across the nation. Many observed changes in the global climate are already impacting the nation’s valuable natural resources. These impacts are expected to increase with continued changes in the climate system, putting our nation’s fish and wildlife at risk. State fish and wildlife agencies are at the forefront of addressing these risks but would greatly benefit from leveraging the expertise and resources of the Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies and federal partners. This project will identify and meet specific needs of the nation’s state fish and wildlife agencies as they address...
thumbnail
As droughts become more frequent, there is a growing need to understand how drought impacts streamflow permanence. Intermittent streams, or streams that go dry at some point during the year, are found in all ecoregions and represent over half of the global stream network length. As stream intermittence increases, there will be implications for both aquatic and terrestrial wildlife communities, land management, and water rights holders. A core challenge to understanding how drought will impact streams is the fact that hydrologic models are often better at representing periods of high flow rather than low flow. Gaining a better understanding of the processes that lead to stream drying, and how these processes are...
thumbnail
Plants and animals undergo certain life cycle events every year, such as breeding or flowering. Known as phenology, these events are very sensitive to changes in climate. Changes in plant phenology can have cascading effects that impact the herbivore species that depend on the affected plants for food, such as elk, moose, and deer. Therefore, characterizing long term vegetation cycles can provide critical insight into how the behavior and health of a number of species may be altered due to climate change. This project sought to identify how drought conditions influence vegetation phenology, in order to better understand the potential effects on herbivores. Specifically, researchers examined (1) if drought causes...
thumbnail
Salmonids (a family of fish that includes salmon, trout, and char) are a keystone species for both aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems, and can be an early warning indicator of ecosystem health. Salmonids also have strong societal values and contribute enormously to regional economies and Native American cultures. Today, many native salmonid populations are small, highly fragmented, and isolated from genetic exchange, thereby increasing their vulnerability to disturbances due to their limited ability to adapt through migration. Rising global air temperatures are altering the characteristics of aquatic ecosystems worldwide, including freshwater in the United States. Understanding the vulnerability of aquatic species...
thumbnail
Native to the southwestern U.S. and northwestern Mexico, the desert bighorn sheep is known for its ability to adapt to harsh, arid environments. However, this does not mean the species is immune to the effects of drought. In fact, the fragmented and isolated distribution of the desert mountain ranges that they inhabit means that they can’t follow distant rain storms without traversing broad valleys at significant risk to mortality. This study examined the effects of a 2002 drought on desert bighorn sheep in the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge in southwestern Arizona. Specifically, researchers explored how the drought may have affected habitat selection, behavior, and diet of the sheep. For example, when...
thumbnail
In semi-arid regions, riparian and wetland ecosystems function as important migratory and breeding habitats and add significantly to local and regional biodiversity; however, these ecosystems are increasingly threatened by climate change and the potential synergistic effects of increasing demand for water and invasion by exotic species. As a continuation of our inaugural USGS National Climate Change and Wildlife Science Center (NCCWSC) project, this study examined the effects of climate and land use change on bird populations and their riparian and wetland habitats in the western US. Scientists at the USGS, academic institutions, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) examined the linkages between climate, hydrology,...
thumbnail
Migratory birds play a crucial role in many ecosystems (e.g. as pollinators and insect regulators) and are also valued by many bird watchers throughout the country and world. Effective conservation of migratory birds depends on a clear understanding of how environmental factors affect key demographic rates (e.g., survival and reproduction). This informational need is especially pressing in the context of climate change. Climate change is expected to affect migratory bird habitat and populations in multiple ways, and a mechanistic understanding of how demographic rates are related to climate variables will help land and resource managers to better anticipate and manage these changes. The Institute for Bird Populations...
thumbnail
Climate change, the spread of invasive species, and shifts in natural disturbance regimes such as wildfires and drought represent major challenges facing forest managers in the Adirondack region of New York, and across the northeastern US. Managers require a suite of potential adaptive management options that could be implemented depending on how conditions change. Although general adaptation strategies have been suggested for sustaining forests, it is unclear how effective these strategies would be for maintaining forests – and the wildlife that depend on forests – at local or regional levels. In addition, these strategies have not been developed into explicit decision-support tools that could guide regional conservation...
thumbnail
In ecosystems characterized by flowing water, such as rivers and streams, the dynamics of how the water moves - how deep it is, how fast it flows, how often it floods - have direct effects on the health, diversity, and sustainability of underlying communities. Yet increasingly, climate extremes like droughts and floods are disrupting fragile stream ecosystems by specifically changing their internal aquatic flows. Human infrastructure, such as irrigation and dams, further disrupt these dynamics. These changes in climate and land use are leading to teh fragmentation of aquatic habtiat, degraded water quality, altered sediment transport processes, variation in the timing and duration of floodplain inundation, shifts...
thumbnail
Fisheries managers in Midwestern lakes and reservoirs are tasked with balancing multiple management objectives to help maintain healthy fish populations across a landscape of diverse lakes. As part of this, managers monitor fish growth and survival. Growth rates in particular are indicators of population health, and directly influence the effectiveness of regulations designed to protect spawning fish or to promote trophy fishing opportunities. Growth, combined with reproduction and survival, also determines the amount of fish biomass available for harvest, known as population production. Changing water temperatures can influence growth and production of managed fish species in multiple complex ways, increasing the...
thumbnail
Tens of millions of migratory birds are dependent on wetland and riparian stopovers in arid and semiarid regions of North America. Global climate change would superimpose even greater stress on these ecosystems as indicated by climate change model predictions of higher temperatures and less precipitation in the southwestern United States. In partnership with the University of Arizona, the Nebraska Cooperative Research Unit, and the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, USGS scientists have investigated (1) how climate change may alter the spacing and quality of critical wetland stopover habitats; (2) the sensitivities of migrating songbirds to loss of riparian forests due to climate change and water-use patterns; (3)...
thumbnail
As the origin of three major basins that drain the Columbia, Missouri, and Saskatchewan rivers, Montana is the hydrologic apex for North America. The Northern Rocky Mountain region is home to some of the last remaining interconnected habitats for many native fishes, including the threatened bull trout and native westslope cutthroat trout. The Northern Rockies are also experiencing rapidly changing climate conditions, with temperatures rising at twice the global average. These changes are having a range of impacts on aquatic ecosystems, including warming stream temperatures and changing streamflow regimes. This region is also experiencing a rise in the expansion of alien invasive fish species, which further threaten...
thumbnail
Migratory birds are important for recreation and tourism, contributing to a vibrant birdwatching industry in Alaska. Every spring, hundreds of birds migrate to their summer breeding grounds in Alaska and northern Canada. Their arrival is timed with the height of the spring green-up of plants, which provide the food necessary for birds to reproduce and raise their young. However, over the last fifty years, warming temperatures in Alaska as a result of climate change have prompted an earlier transition from winter to spring. The purpose of this project was to examine whether there have been changes in the timing of spring green-up in recent years (1985-2009) and, if so, whether migratory birds are adapting their migration...
thumbnail
Scenario planning is one decision support method that can help natural resource managers incorporate information about uncertain future changes in climate into management decisions. To provide a proof of concept of the value of scenario planning in helping managers prepare for climate change, we conducted a pilot scenario planning effort aimed at helping state agencies in the northeastern United States develop climate-informed moose management goals and actions. To encourage participation by wildlife managers, we provided several opportunities for them to learn about scenario planning and examples of its application in natural resource management. We shared this information via guidance documents on incorporating...
thumbnail
Climate change is reshaping the abundance and distribution of sport fishes across the U.S., creating novel challenges for socially and economically important recreational fisheries. Existing fish and recreational fisheries data sets are invaluable given their broad geographic footprint and long-term data, but integration across datasets to inform management has been limited, leading to obstacles in collaborative research and management efforts. Agencies that manage recreational fisheries also conduct angler surveys to assess how anglers may affect fish populations, however they are rarely integrated with other datasets or with consideration of how climate change may affect the fish available to anglers. In this...
thumbnail
Actionable science has evolved rapidly over the last decade, and the Climate Adaptation Science Center (CASC) network has established itself as a leader in the field. The practice of actionable science is generally described as user-focused, action-oriented science that addresses pressing real-world climate adaptation challenges. It is also sometimes referred to as usable science, translational ecology, and coproduction. Successfully carrying out actionable science projects requires a range of skills, mindsets, and techniques in addition to scientific knowledge. Those skills can include mutual learning with stakeholders, attention to social and political context, iterative creative problem-solving, and interdisciplinary...
map background search result map search result map Projected Impacts of Future Climate on Bird Conservation in Arid and Semi-Arid Regions Impacts of Climate-Driven Changes in Spring Green-Up on Migratory Birds in Alaska Understanding the Links Between Climate, Ecosystem Processes, Wetland Management, and Bird Communities in the Prairie Pothole Region of the Northern Great Plains Projected Climate and Land Use Change Impacts on Aquatic Habitats of the Lower Colorado River Basin (Regional Assessment) The Effects of Drought on Desert Bighorn Sheep The Past as a Prelude to the Future: Assessing Climate Effects on Native Trout in the U.S. The Effects of Drought on Vegetation Phenology and Wildlife Climate, the Boreal Forest, and Moose: A Pilot Project for Scenario Planning to Inform Land and Wildlife Management Climate Change Impacts to Migratory Birds: Development of a Climate-informed Integrated Population Model Future Forest Habitat Conditions in the Adirondack Region, NY Understanding Climate Impacts on Native and Invasive Fish for Conservation, Management, and Economic Goals in the Northern Rockies State of the Science Synthesis on Transformational Drought: Understanding Drought’s Potential to Transform Ecosystems Across the Country Quantifying the Impacts of Climate Change on Fish Growth and Production to Enable Sustainable Management of Diverse Inland Fisheries Future of Fire: Towards a National Synthesis of Wildland Fire Under a Changing Climate Building Capacity for Actionable and Interdisciplinary Science Across the Climate Adaptation Science Center Network Assessing State Fish and Wildlife Climate Adaptation Science Needs and Effectiveness Integrating Multiple Data Sets to Inform Climate Adaptation Strategies for Inland Fish and Recreational Fishing Future of Aquatic Flows: Towards a National Synthesis of Streamflow Regimes Under a Changing Climate Future of Aquatic Flows: Impacts of Cryospheric Change on Aquatic Flows and Freshwater Habitat Quality for Fish and Communities A Guide to Modeling Low Flows and Intermittent Streams in the Pacific Northwest Future Forest Habitat Conditions in the Adirondack Region, NY The Effects of Drought on Vegetation Phenology and Wildlife Climate, the Boreal Forest, and Moose: A Pilot Project for Scenario Planning to Inform Land and Wildlife Management Projected Climate and Land Use Change Impacts on Aquatic Habitats of the Lower Colorado River Basin (Regional Assessment) Projected Impacts of Future Climate on Bird Conservation in Arid and Semi-Arid Regions Understanding the Links Between Climate, Ecosystem Processes, Wetland Management, and Bird Communities in the Prairie Pothole Region of the Northern Great Plains A Guide to Modeling Low Flows and Intermittent Streams in the Pacific Northwest Quantifying the Impacts of Climate Change on Fish Growth and Production to Enable Sustainable Management of Diverse Inland Fisheries Understanding Climate Impacts on Native and Invasive Fish for Conservation, Management, and Economic Goals in the Northern Rockies Impacts of Climate-Driven Changes in Spring Green-Up on Migratory Birds in Alaska Future of Aquatic Flows: Impacts of Cryospheric Change on Aquatic Flows and Freshwater Habitat Quality for Fish and Communities The Past as a Prelude to the Future: Assessing Climate Effects on Native Trout in the U.S. Climate Change Impacts to Migratory Birds: Development of a Climate-informed Integrated Population Model State of the Science Synthesis on Transformational Drought: Understanding Drought’s Potential to Transform Ecosystems Across the Country Future of Fire: Towards a National Synthesis of Wildland Fire Under a Changing Climate Assessing State Fish and Wildlife Climate Adaptation Science Needs and Effectiveness Future of Aquatic Flows: Towards a National Synthesis of Streamflow Regimes Under a Changing Climate Building Capacity for Actionable and Interdisciplinary Science Across the Climate Adaptation Science Center Network Integrating Multiple Data Sets to Inform Climate Adaptation Strategies for Inland Fish and Recreational Fishing