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Piñon–juniper (PJ) woodlands are a dominant community type across the Intermountain West, comprising over a million acres and experiencing critical effects from increasing wildfire. Large PJ mortality and regeneration failure after catastrophic wildfire have elevated concerns about the long-term viability of PJ woodlands. Thinning is increasingly used to safeguard forests from fire and in an attempt to increase climate resilience. We have only a limited understanding of how fire and thinning will affect the structure and function of PJ ecosystems. Here, we examined vegetation structure, microclimate conditions, and PJ regeneration dynamics following ~20 years post-fire and thinning treatments. We found that burned...
Categories: Publication; Types: Citation
In-nii (American Bison) are returning to their Traditional Territories after being nearly wiped out of the Great Plains of North America and Canada. The in-nii are slowly returning to Native American tribes who have the resources to run reintroduction programs like that of the Amskapiipikini (Blackfeet). This in-nii reintroduction presented an opportunity to look at the effects of the return of in-nii to the Amskapiipikini, and what their influences might be on the soils, plants, and water resources of the Blackfeet Nation. This research project was conducted on the Blackfeet Buffalo (In-nii) Ranch and the adjacent RRJ Cattle Ranch, comparing the influence of in-nii and cattle on soil nutrient cycles and soil carbon...
Scenario planning has emerged as a widely used planning process for resource management in situations of consequential, irreducible uncertainty. Because it explicitly incorporates uncertainty, scenario planning is regularly employed in climate change adaptation. An early and essential step in developing scenarios is identifying “climate futures”—descriptions of the physical attributes of plausible future climates that could occur at a specific place and time. Divergent climate futures that describe the broadest possible range of plausible conditions support information needs of decision makers, including understanding the spectrum of potential resource responses to climate change, developing strategies robust to...
Categories: Publication; Types: Citation
The goals of this workshop series were to 1) identify areas of transformation due towildfire and grass invasion and 2) evaluate management practices that enhancecarbon storage, native biodiversity, and improve resilience, including tradeoffsamong priorities.
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Forested areas in the Western U.S. that are impacted by disturbances such as fire and drought have increased in recent decades. This trend is likely to continue, with the increase in frequency and extent of wildfire activity being especially concerning. Resource managers need reliable scientific information to better understand wildfire occurrence, which can vary substantially across landscapes and throughout time. However, few scientific models capture this variability, and projections of future potential changes in fire occurrence can include some uncertainty. This uncertainty can limit our ability to anticipate potential wildfire impacts on society and ecological systems. Another method to help managers prepare...
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Assessing the vulnerability of species to climate change is a key step in anticipating climate impacts on species. Vulnerability assessments characterize species’ future conservation needs and can guide current planning and management actions to support species persistence in the face of climate change. A full assessment of climate vulnerability involves characterizing three essential components: sensitivity, adaptive capacity, and exposure. Assessing sensitivity and adaptive capacity, as well as determining which aspects of exposure to assess all require detailed knowledge of species-specific traits and ecology. Such a detailed understanding is hard to come by, even for well-studied species, thus, developing vulnerability...
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Post-fire shifts in vegetation composition will have broad ecological impacts. However, information characterizing post-fire recovery patterns and their drivers are lacking over large spatial extents. In this analysis we used Landsat imagery collected when snow cover (SCS) was present, in combination with growing season (GS) imagery, to distinguish evergreen vegetation from deciduous vegetation. We sought to (1) characterize patterns in the rate of post-fire, dual season Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) across the region, (2) relate remotely sensed patterns to field-measured patterns of re-vegetation, and (3) identify seasonally-specific drivers of post-fire rates of NDVI recovery. Rates of post-fire...
This data release provides inputs needed to run the LANDIS-II landscape change model, NECN and Base Fire extensions for the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE), USA, and simulation results that underlie figures and analysis in the accompanying publication. We ran LANDIS-II simulations for 112 years, from 1988-2100, using interpolated weather station data for 1988-2015 and downscaled output from 5 general circulation models (GCMs) for 2016-2100. We also included a control future scenario with years drawn from interpolated weather station data from 1980-2015. Model inputs include raster maps (250 × 250 m grid cells) of climate regions and tables of monthly temperature and precipitation for each climate region. We...
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Trout are one of the most culturally, economically, and ecologically important groups of freshwater fishes in the Rocky Mountain region. However, human impacts and climate change are significantly altering freshwater ecosystems that support native trout species. Despite their broad importance, many of the region’s trout populations are threatened and some require immediate conservation efforts to reverse their decline. Although work is being done to understand and mitigate these changes, the ability to accurately assess vulnerability is currently limited due to a lack of data-driven approaches that incorporate uncertainty and adaptive capacity at scales relevant to effective management. USGS researchers will...
The impacts of climate change (CC) on natural and cultural resources are far-reaching and complex. A major challenge facing resource managers is not knowing the exact timing and nature of those impacts. To confront this problem, scientists, adaptation specialists, and resource managers have begun to use scenario planning (SP). This structured process identifies a small set of scenarios—descriptions of potential future conditions that encompass the range of critical uncertainties—and uses them to inform planning. We reflect on a series of five recent participatory CC SP projects at four US National Park Service units and derive guidelines for using CC SP to support natural and cultural resource conservation. Specifically,...
Categories: Publication; Types: Citation
The North Central Regional Invasive Species and Climate Change (NC RISCC) network includes >100 members working at the nexus of climate change and invasive species. In late 2021, the NC RISCC leadership team surveyed regional practitioners working on issues related to invasive species management to understand their priorities and practices. Survey participants represented a variety of entities, with the most representation from: county government, academia/universities, federal government, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and state government. They also represented all seven states in the NC region: CO, WY, MT, ND, SD, KS, and NE. Key findings include: Many practitioners in the NC RISCC network report having...
map background search result map search result map Landscape inputs and simulation output for the LANDIS-II model in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem Data release for tracking rates of post-fire conifer regeneration distinct from deciduous vegetation recovery across the western U.S. Assessing the Vulnerability of Native Trout in the Northern Rockies: Linking Science and Management for Climate Adaptation Drought and Disturbances as Drivers of Long-Term Ecological Transformation and Risk A Climate Vulnerability Assessment Framework for Data-Poor Species Landscape inputs and simulation output for the LANDIS-II model in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem Assessing the Vulnerability of Native Trout in the Northern Rockies: Linking Science and Management for Climate Adaptation Drought and Disturbances as Drivers of Long-Term Ecological Transformation and Risk A Climate Vulnerability Assessment Framework for Data-Poor Species Data release for tracking rates of post-fire conifer regeneration distinct from deciduous vegetation recovery across the western U.S.