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Abstract (from http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/WCAS-D-15-0042.1): Drought is a natural part of the historical climate variability in the northern Rocky Mountains and high plains region of the United States. However, recent drought impacts and climate change projections have increased the need for a systematized way to document and understand drought in a manner that is meaningful to public land and resource managers. The purpose of this exploratory study was to characterize the ways in which some federal and tribal natural resource managers experienced and dealt with drought on lands managed by the U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) and tribes in two case site examples (northwest Colorado and southwest...
The Wind River Indian Reservation (WRIR) in west-central Wyoming is home to the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho tribes, who reside near and depend on water from the streams that feed into Wind River. In recent years, however, the region has experienced frequent severe droughts, which have affected tribal livelihoods and cultural activities. Scientists with the North Central Climate Adaptation Science Center (NCCASC) at Colorado State University, the National Drought Mitigation Center (NDMC) at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and several other university and agency partners in the region worked in close partnership with tribal water managers to assess how drought affects the reservation, which included...
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The threat of droughts and their associated impacts on the landscape and human communities has long been recognized in the United States, especially in high risk areas such as the South Central region. There is ample literature on the effects of long-term climate change and short-term climate variability on the occurrence of droughts. However, it is unclear whether this information meets the needs of relevant stakeholders and actually contributes to reducing the vulnerability or increasing the resilience of communities to droughts. For example, are the methods used to characterize the severity of drought – known as drought indices – effective tools for predicting the actual damage felt by communities? As droughts...
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The Wind River Indian Reservation in west-central Wyoming is home to the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho tribes, who reside near and depend on water from the streams that feed into the Wind River. In recent years, however, the region has experienced frequent severe droughts, which have impacted tribal livelihoods and cultural activities. Scientists with the North Central Climate Science Center at Colorado State University, the National Drought Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and several other university and agency partners are working closely with tribal water managers to assess how drought affects the reservation, integrating social, ecological, and hydro-climatological sciences...
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The Hawai‘i Drought Knowledge Exchange project has been successfully piloting three sets of formal collaborative knowledge exchanges between researchers and managers to co-produce customized, site specific drought data products to meet the needs of their partners. Through these pilots, knowledge co-production has demonstrated how active collaboration between researchers and managers in the design and production of data products can lead to more useful and accessible applications for drought planning and management. Resource managers have strongly embraced the need for better and more timely information on climate change, variability and drought, as these stressors exert a large and costly impact on resources...
The threat of droughts and their associated impacts on the landscape and human communities have long been recognized in the United States, especially in high risk areas such as the south-central region. However, little is known on whether existing drought indices can predict the damages and how different human communities respond and adapt to the hazard. This project examines whether existing drought indices can predict the occurrence of drought events and their actual damages, how the adaptive capacity (i.e., resilience) varies across space, and what public outreach and engagement effort would be most effective for mitigation of risk and impacts. The study region includes all 503 counties in Arkansas, Louisiana,...
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Drought is one of the biggest threats facing our forests today. In the western U.S., severe drought and rising temperatures have caused increased tree mortality and complete forest diebacks. Forests are changing rapidly, and while land managers are working to develop long-term climate change adaptation plans, they require tools that can enhance forest resistance to drought now. To address this immediate need, researchers are examining whether a common forest management tool, prescribed fire, can be implemented to help forests better survive drought. Prescribed fire is commonly used in the western U.S. to remove potential wildfire fuel, such as small trees and shrubs. It is also thought that this act of selectively...
Utah just came out of a multi-year drought (2012-2016) which stressed the state’s water resources and challenged water resource management, but the million-dollar questions remain: 1. When will the next big drought come? and 2. how long will it last? Building on our previous WaterSMART project that studied the decadal variability in Utah’s hydroclimate using tree-ring records, this project will develop a long-term (2-5-year) prediction that will inform management of the likelihood of the next prolonged drought. Based upon Utah’s unique wet-dry climate cycles, the Project Team will characterize drought in the Wasatch Range by combining the tools that are currently in development. Project activities include the application...
There are a variety of metrics that are used to monitor drought conditions, including soil moisture and drought indices. This study examines the relationship between in situ soil moisture, NLDAS-2 soil moisture, and four drought indices: the standardized precipitation index, the standardized precipitation evapotranspiration index, the crop moisture index, and the Palmer Z index. We evaluate how well drought indices and the modeled soil moisture represent the intensity, variability, and persistence of the observed soil moisture in the southern Great Plains. We also apply the drought indices to evaluate land–atmosphere interactions and compare the results with soil moisture. The results show that the SPI, SPEI, and...
Categories: Publication; Types: Citation
Drought is an inescapable reality in many regions, including much of the western United States. With climate change, droughts are predicted to intensify and occur more frequently, making the imperative for drought management even greater. Many diverse actors – including private landowners, business owners, scientists, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and managers and policymakers within tribal, local, state, and federal government agencies – play multiple, often overlapping roles in preparing for and responding to drought. Managing water is, of course, one of the most important roles that humans play in both mitigating and responding to droughts; but, focusing only on “water managers” or “water management”...
Categories: Publication; Types: Citation
Frequent and persistent droughts exacerbate the problems caused by the inherent scarcity of water in the semiarid to arid parts of the southwestern United States. The occurrence of drought is driven by climatic variability, which for years before about the beginning of the 20th century in the Southwest must be inferred from proxy records. As part of a multidisciplinary study of the potential hydrologic impact of severe sustained drought on the Colorado River, the physical basis and limitations of tree rings as indicators of severe sustained drought are reviewed, and tree-ring data are analyzed to delineate a “worst-case� drought scenario for the Upper Colorado River Basin (UCRB). Runs analysis of a 121-site...
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In Arctic and sub-Arctic regions, snow plays a crucial role in atmospheric and hydrologic systems and has a major influence on the health and function of regional ecosystems. Warming temperatures may have a significant impact on snow and may therefore affect the entire water cycle of the region. A decrease in precipitation in the form of snow, or “snow drought”, can manifest in several ways including changes to total snowfall amounts, snow accumulation, and the timing/length of the snow season. Understanding these changes is then critical for understanding and predicting a variety of climate impacts to wildlife and ecosystems. However, little research has been conducted to date to understand how this change may...
Abstract (from http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1365-2664.12847/full): Climate models predict increasing drought intensity and frequency for many regions, which may have negative consequences for tree recruitment, growth and mortality, as well as forest ecosystem services. Furthermore, practical strategies for minimizing vulnerability to drought are limited. Tree population density, a metric of tree abundance in a given area, is a primary driver of competitive intensity among trees, which influences tree growth and mortality. Manipulating tree population density may be a mechanism for moderating drought-induced stress and growth reductions, although the relationship between tree population density and...
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Drought is a common consequence of climate variability in the south-central U.S., but they are expected to occur more often and become more intense with climate change. Natural resource managers can improve their planning efforts with advance warnings of impending drought. Using input from resource managers in the Chickasaw Nation, this research team previously created models that forecast droughts up to 18 months in advance with information about their expected timing and intensity. Developed for all climate divisions in Louisiana, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas, these drought models rely on input from predictor variables associated with global weather patterns like El Niño and La Niña. However, it is unclear...
The future of dry forests around the world is uncertain given predictions that rising temperatures and enhanced aridity will increase drought-induced tree mortality. Using forest management and ecological restoration to reduce density and competition for water offers one of the few pathways that forests managers can potentially minimize drought-induced tree mortality. Competition for water during drought leads to elevated tree mortality in dense stands, although the influence of density on heat-induced stress and the durations of hot or dry conditions that most impact mortality remain unclear. Understanding how competition interacts with hot-drought stress is essential to recognize how, where and how much reducing...
Categories: Publication; Types: Citation
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Some areas of the U.S. Affiliated Pacific Islands (USAPI) are experiencing a decline in precipitation and streamflow and an increase in the number of severe droughts. These changes can have wide-reaching implications, affecting the water supply, native vegetation and wildlife, wildfire patterns, and the spread of invasive species. As ecosystems become altered by invasive species and as particularly hotter, more variable climates emerge, it is critical that scientists produce locally relevant, timely, and actionable science products for managers to prepare for and cope with the impacts of drought. Simultaneously, it is important that managers are able to both access this information and shape the types of data products...
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The USGS National Climate Change and Wildlife Science Center (NCCWSC) is currently engaged in an Ecological Drought initiative, focused on understanding the impacts of drought on natural ecosystems across the country. This project was designed to support the Ecological Drought initiative by creating a USGS EcoDrought Actionable Science Working Group. The goal of this working group was to identify science needs for drought-related decisions and to provide natural resource managers with practical strategies for adapting to and planning for drought. The working group engaged social scientists to garner advice on relevant social science research questions and data needs, as well as to identify any regulatory, institutional,...
Summary of the impacts of drought on agriculture in the US Affiliated Pacific Islands (USAPI).
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These data were compiled in order to represent long-term (multi-decadal) forest growth across eight different experimental forests in the United States, each with replicated levels of density treatments, as well as an important drought index correlated to growth. Forests around the world are experiencing severe droughts and elevated competitive intensity due to increased tree density. These data can be utilized to not only examine differences in within-stand competition, as well the trends and impact of drought in different forests across a broad climatic gradient, but also the influence of interactions between drought and competition on forest growth. Growth is measured as a treatment level, annual basal area increment...
Categories: Data; Tags: Argonne Experimental Forest, Arizona, Bartlett Experimental Forest, Birch Lake Experiment, Black Hills Experimental Forest, All tags...


map background search result map search result map Community Resilience to Drought Hazard: An Analysis of Drought Exposure, Impacts, and Adaptation in the South Central U.S. The Wind River Indian Reservation’s Vulnerability to the Impacts of Drought and the Development of Decision Tools to Support Drought Preparedness Fighting Drought with Fire: A Comparison of Burned and Unburned Forests in Drought-Impacted Areas of the Southwest Eco-drought Actionable Science Working Group Snow Drought: Recognizing and Understanding its Impacts in Alaska Long-term Experimental Forest Growth and Drought Data Climate Change, Variability, and Drought in the U.S.-Affiliated Pacific Islands – Working with Managers to Mitigate the Impacts of Drought and Wildfire Scaling up the Hawai‘i Drought Knowledge Exchange: Expanding Stakeholder Reach and Capacity to Address Climate Change, Variability, and Drought Improving Predictive Drought Models with Sensitivity Analysis The Wind River Indian Reservation’s Vulnerability to the Impacts of Drought and the Development of Decision Tools to Support Drought Preparedness Improving Predictive Drought Models with Sensitivity Analysis Scaling up the Hawai‘i Drought Knowledge Exchange: Expanding Stakeholder Reach and Capacity to Address Climate Change, Variability, and Drought Community Resilience to Drought Hazard: An Analysis of Drought Exposure, Impacts, and Adaptation in the South Central U.S. Fighting Drought with Fire: A Comparison of Burned and Unburned Forests in Drought-Impacted Areas of the Southwest Climate Change, Variability, and Drought in the U.S.-Affiliated Pacific Islands – Working with Managers to Mitigate the Impacts of Drought and Wildfire Long-term Experimental Forest Growth and Drought Data Snow Drought: Recognizing and Understanding its Impacts in Alaska Eco-drought Actionable Science Working Group