The Northern Great Plains (NGP) region plays a very important role in providing water and land resources and other critical ecosystem services to support rural livelihoods. Semi-arid conditions and the tight coupling of livelihood enterprises with ecosystem services increases sensitivity to climate change. The changing climate and social-economic situations across the NGP have further challenged current management practices. Recent climate stresses has indicated that changing seasonality and extreme events (e.g., droughts, floods, ice storms) are impacting ecosystem services and increasing vulnerability to rural livelihoods. In particular, the emergence of rapid on-set of drought has been problematic to resource managers and operators [...]
