Folder
ROOT
_ScienceBase Catalog
__National and Regional Climate Adaptation Science Centers
___Northwest CASC
____FY 2015 Projects
_____Can We Conserve Wetlands Under a Changing Climate? Mapping Wetland Hydrology in the Columbia Plateau
______Approved Products
This story map explores the work being conducted in the project, Can We Conserve Wetlands Under a Changing Climate? Mapping Wetland Hydrology Across an Ecoregion and Developing Climate Adaptation Recommendations. Explore the story map to learn more about the work being done to understand how wetlands may change in the future.
The goal of the Wetlands in a Changing Climate project was to provide consistent, wall-to-wall data on wetland location, historical hydrologic dynamics, and projected climate change impacts on hydrologic dynamics. We worked with managers to determine what products would be most informative, and what approach would help them use these data products to develop recommendations for climate-smart conservation of wetlands across the Columbia Plateau.
Depressional wetlands in the Columbia Plateau are valuable habitats because they maintain surface water into or throughout the dry summers. The source of that moisture—surface runoff from surrounding areas, or groundwater in local aquifers—may determine if these wetlands are seasonal, permanent, or semi-permanent. Helping these wetlands continue to provide habitat and other services requires understanding how these flooding and drying patterns (their hydrology) have changed in the past, and how projected changes in climate might affect them. The goal of this project was to develop wall-to-wall maps of wetlands across the region, coupled with detailed 30-year hydrographs of historical (1984-2014) fluctuations in...
