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The Great Plains Grassland Summit: Challenges and Opportunities from North to South was held April 10-11, 2018 in Denver, Colorado to provide syntheses of information about key grassland topics of interest in the Great Plains; networking and learning channels for managers, researchers, and stakeholders; and working sessions for sharing ideas about challenges and future research and management opportunities. The summit was convened to better understand stressors and resource demands throughout the Great Plains and how to manage them, and to discuss methods for improved collaboration among natural resource managers, scientists, and stakeholders. Over 200 stakeholders, who collectively were affiliated with all of the...
Categories: Publication; Types: Citation
America’s remaining grassland in the Prairie Pothole Region (PPR) is at risk of being lost to crop production. When crop prices are high, like the historically high corn prices that the U.S. experienced between 2008 and 2014, the risk of grassland conversion is even higher. Changing climate will add uncertainties to any efforts toward conservation of grassland in the PPR. Grassland conversion to cropland in the region would imperil nesting waterfowl among other species and further impair water quality in the Mississippi watershed. In this project, we sought to contribute to the understanding of land conversion in the PPR with the aim to better target the use of public and private funds allocated toward incentivizing...
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...
Abstract (from http://econpapers.repec.org/paper/agsaaea16/235895.htm): We evaluate the regional-level agricultural impacts of climate change in the Northern Great Plains. We first estimate a non-linear yield-weather relationship for all major commodities in the area: corn, soybeans, spring wheat and alfalfa. We separately identify benevolent and harmful temperature thresholds for each commodity, and control for severe-to-extreme dry/wet conditions in our yield models. Analyzing all major commodities in a region extends the existing literature beyond just one crop, most typically corn yields. Alfalfa is particularly interesting since it is a legume-crop that is substitutable with grasses as animal feed and rotated...
Abstract (from IOP Science): Global agriculture is challenged to increase soil carbon sequestration and reduce greenhouse gas emissions while providing products for an increasing population. Growing crop production could be achieved through higher yield per hectare (i.e. intensive farming) or more hectares (extensive farming), which however, have different ecological and environmental consequences. Multiple lines of evidence indicate that expanding cropland for additional production may lead to loss of vegetation and soil carbon, and threaten the survival of wildlife. New concerns about the impacts of extensive farming have been raised for the US Corn Belt, one of the world's most productive regions, as cropland...
Fossil fuel and agriculture have increased atmospheric concentrations of the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide and methane, which have caused global air temperature to increase by almost 1- degree Celsius. In the absence of climate mitigation, over the next century human-driven climate change is expected to increase temperatures from pre-industrial levels by more than 2-degrees. Understanding the consequences of climate change on ecosystems and the services they provide are critical for guiding land management activities that aim to improve resiliency and to prevent species losses. Here we evaluated how sagebrush ecosystems in the Western United States respond to climate change by using multiple climate projections...
Conversion of grassland to cropland in the US Prairie Pothole Region is of longstanding concern. The region's grasslands are carbon (C) sinks and provide important breeding grounds for many migratory bird species. Crop production requires more input use, potentially increasing pollution in the greater Mississippi watershed. Previous analyses of land conversion in the Prairie Pothole Region generally invoke neoclassical economic models and typically use secondary data to assess conversion decisions. To more deeply investigate farmers' land use choices, we use data from focus group meetings to learn about their conversion decisions, conversion costs, and motives. Farmers mentioned profit-related factors frequently...
Categories: Publication; Types: Citation
This paper examines the impact of production network economies on designing cost-effective conservation targeting strategies. We first develop a theoretical model to study the decision to convert land from an extensive (or biodiversity-friendly) use to an intensive use (e.g., crop agriculture) in the presence of network economies in land use returns. The model supports the possibility of multiple land use equilibria due to network economies and identifies policy outcomes that increase welfare. Bandwagon effects can occur whereby spatial production spillovers from lands under intensive use can prompt further conversions on proximate lands under extensive use. Conversely, conservation sites can be placed strategically...
Categories: Publication; Types: Citation
Abstract (from DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln): Native American peoples of the Northern and Central Plains have long endured harsh climate conditions, such as floods and droughts, and they possess valuable traditional knowledges that have enhanced their resilience to these extreme events. However, in recent times, limited capacity to adapt to a rapidly changing climate combined with a lack of resources have increased tribes’ vulnerability to climate extremes and their associated impacts. In response, a number of projects have been developed to assist tribes with their self-identified climate- and drought-related needs, particularly in the context of on-reservation decision-making. In this case study,...
Abstract (from ScienceDirect): Dryland ecosystems play an important role in determining how precipitation anomalies affect terrestrial carbon fluxes at regional to global scales. Thus, to understand how climate change may affect the global carbon cycle, we must also be able to understand and model its effects on dryland vegetation. Dynamic Global Vegetation Models (DGVMs) are an important tool for modeling ecosystem dynamics, but they often struggle to reproduce seasonal patterns of plant productivity. Because the phenological niche of many plant species is linked to both total productivity and competitive interactions with other plants, errors in how process-based models represent phenology hinder our ability to...
An increase in land conversion from grassland to cropland in the United States has attracted attention in recent years. According to Claassen et al. (2011a), grassland to cropland conversion is concentrated in the Northern Plains, including Kansas, Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota, which encompasses only 18% of U.S. rangeland but accounted for 57 percent of U.S. rangeland to cropland conversion during the study period of 1997 to 2007. Focusing on land cover data in the Western Corn Belt, Wright and Wimberly (2013) also pointed out that grassland conversion was mostly concentrated in the Dakotas, east of the Missouri River and between 2006 and 2011.
This study investigates optimal grassland easement acquisition strategies with a focus on the roles of environmental benefit additionality and spatial spillover effect of grassland conversion. Numerical analysis shows that the optimal solution under a targeting strategy that does not consider any spatial spillover effect may secure less environmental benefit additionality than does a heuristic algorithm that considers spatial spillover. Moreover, heuristic algorithms that consider either conversion probability or spatial spillover can generally achieve more than 97% of environmental benefit additionality obtained under the optimal solution of a targeting strategy that considers both additionality and spatial spillover.
Categories: Publication; Types: Citation
Establishing connections among natural landscapes is the most frequently recommended strategy for adapting management of natural resources in response to climate change. The U.S. Northern Rockies still support a full suite of native wildlife, and survival of these populations depends on connected landscapes. Connected landscapes support current migration and dispersal as well as future shifts in species ranges that will be necessary for species to adapt to our changing climate. Working in partnership with state and federal resource managers and private land trusts, we sought to: understand how future climate change may alter habitat composition of landscapes expected to serve as important connections for wildlife,...
Abstract (from http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ecs2.1590/full): Ecohydrological responses to climate change will exhibit spatial variability and understanding the spatial pattern of ecological impacts is critical from a land management perspective. To quantify climate change impacts on spatial patterns of ecohydrology across shrub steppe ecosystems in North America, we asked the following question: How will climate change impacts on ecohydrology differ in magnitude and variability across climatic gradients, among three big sagebrush ecosystems (SB-Shrubland, SB-Steppe, SB-Montane), and among Sage-grouse Management Zones? We explored these potential changes for mid-century for RCP8.5 using a process-based...