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Person

Carolyn A Enquist


Climate Adaptation Science Centers

Email: cenquist@usgs.gov
Office Phone: 520-260-7761
ORCID: 0000-0001-6677-7064

Location
UA - ENRB - AZWSC
520 N. Park Ave
Tucson , AZ 85719
US

Supervisor: Douglas Beard
Over the past four decades, annual area burned has increased significantly in California and across the western USA. This trend reflects a confluence of intersecting factors that affect wildfire regimes. It is correlated with increasing temperatures and atmospheric vapour pressure deficit. Anthropogenic climate change is the driver behind much of this change, in addition to influencing other climate-related factors, such as compression of the winter wet season. These climatic trends and associated increases in fire activity are projected to continue into the future. Additionally, factors related to the suppression of the Indigenous use of fire, aggressive fire suppression and, in some cases, changes in logging practices...
Categories: Publication; Types: Citation
Key Messages: 1. Ecosystem functions and the services they provide to people can support climate adaptation efforts. 2. A systems perspective that includes ecosystem services could contribute to the CASC research agenda in three interrelated ways: they can directly benefit current CASC stakeholder goals, they can provide co-benefits to CASC stakeholders, and they allow for full-benefit accounting of the impacts of choices made by natural resource managers. 3. Some existing CASC research aligns well with an ecosystem services framing and could be enhanced by understanding how the components fit into a broader multi-objective context. Notable bright spots for research in these dimensions concern coastal resilience...
Categories: Publication; Types: Citation
Abstract (from One Earth): Novel forms of drought are emerging globally, due to climate change, shifting teleconnection patterns, expanding human water use, and a history of human influence on the environment that increases the probability of transformational ecological impacts. These costly ecological impacts cascade to human communities, and understanding this changing drought landscape is one of today’s grand challenges. By using a modified horizon-scanning approach that integrated scientists, managers, and decision-makers, we identified the emerging issues in ecological drought that represent key challenges to timely and effective responses. Here we review the themes that most urgently need attention, including...
Categories: Publication; Types: Citation
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Abstract Background Forest and nonforest ecosystems of the western United States are experiencing major transformations in response to land-use change, climate warming, and their interactive effects with wildland fire. Some ecosystems are transitioning to persistent alternative types, hereafter called “vegetation type conversion” (VTC). VTC is one of the most pressing management issues in the southwestern US, yet current strategies to intervene and address change often use trial-and-error approaches devised after the fact. To better understand how to manage VTC, we gathered managers, scientists, and practitioners from across the southwestern US to collect their experiences with VTC challenges, management responses,...
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Building Knowledge Exchange Networks to Support Climate Adaptation in the Interior Southwest
The Interior Southwest (Arizona, Nevada, and Utah) is home to a vast and diverse geography consisting of deep canyons, great expanses of desert, mountain ranges, and forests, as well as diverse human communities. The majority of the land in these states is held by state, federal and tribal entities; and environmental changes pose challenges to the management of these public and tribal lands across the region. Assessing and addressing the information needs of federal, state, and tribal resource managers is a critical part of helping these decision-makers manage risk and adapt to these changes. Identification and evaluation of existing barriers and opportunities for knowledge exchange between scientists and managers...
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