-
Climate Effects and Adaption in Forests
-
Dr. Christopher J. Fettig, Dr. Maria K. Janowiak, and Dr. Jessica E. Halofsky discuss how climate change driven increases in temperature and variation in precipitation are impacting U.S. forests and the wide range of ecosystem services they provide, sharing opportunities to proactively address risks to forests, and providing concrete examples of adaptation strategies and tactics that can be leveraged by the federal government and private landowners.
Located in
News and Webinars
/
Webinars
-
Agenda - March 11, 2015 Workshop
-
Urban Woodlands Conservation and Management Workshop. Organized and facilitated by the National Park Service to identify and create opportunities for greater collaboration among urban woodland researchers and managers working to restore and manage urban woodland ecosystems.
To view the goals and objectives of the workshop, please open the workshop agenda.
Located in
Cultural Resources
/
Urban Conservation
/
Urban Woodlands Conservation and Restoration
-
Adaptive management of biological systems: A review
-
Adaptive Management (AM) is widely considered to be the best available approach for managing biolog- ical systems in the presence of uncertainty. But AM has arguably only rarely succeeded in improving bio- diversity outcomes. There is therefore an urgent need for reflection regarding how practitioners might overcome key problems hindering greater implementation of AM. In this paper, we present the first structured review of the AM literature that relates to biodiversity and ecosystem management, with the aim of quantifying how rare AM projects actually are. We also investigated whether AM practitioners in terrestrial and aquatic systems described the same problems; the degree of consistency in how the term ‘adaptive management’ was applied; the extent to which AM projects were sustained over time; and whether articles describing AM projects were more highly cited than comparable non-AM articles. We found that despite the large number of articles identified through the ISI web of knowledge (n = 1336), only 61 articles (<5%) explicitly claimed to enact AM. These 61 articles cumulatively described 54 separate projects, but only 13 projects were supported by published monitoring data. The extent to which these 13 projects applied key aspects of the AM philosophy – such as referring to an underlying conceptual model, enacting ongoing monitoring, and comparing alternative management actions – varied enormously. Further, most AM projects were of short duration; terrestrial studies discussed biodiversity conservation significantly more frequently than aquatic studies; and empirical studies were no more highly cited than qualitative articles. Our review highlights that excessive use of the term ‘adaptive man- agement’ is rife in the peer-reviewed literature. However, a small but increasing number of projects have been able to effectively apply AM to complex problems. We suggest that attempts to apply AM may be improved by: (1) Better collaboration between scientists and representatives from resource-extracting industries. (2) Better communication of the risks of not doing AM. (3) Ensuring AM projects ‘‘pass the test of management relevance’’.
Located in
Resources
/
Climate Science Documents
-
Drought in the United States: Causes and Issues for Congress
-
Drought is a natural hazard with often significant societal, economic, and environmental consequences. Public policy issues related to drought range from how to identify and measure drought to how best to prepare for, mitigate, and respond to drought impacts, and who should bear associated costs. Severe drought in 2011 and 2012 fueled congressional interest in near-term issues, such as current (and recently expired) federal programs and their funding, and long-term issues, such as drought forecasting and various federal drought relief and mitigation actions. Continuing drought conditions throughout the country contribute to ongoing interest in federal drought policies and responses.
As of April 2013, drought has persisted across approximately two-thirds of the United States and is threatening agricultural production and other sectors. More than 1,180 counties so far have been designated as disaster areas for the 2013 crop season, including 286 counties contiguous to primary drought counties. In comparison, in August 2012, more than 1,400 counties in 33 states had been designated as disaster counties by the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture. Most attention in the 112th Congress focused on the extension of expired disaster assistance programs in separate versions of a 2012 farm bill. Attention in the 113th Congress again is expected to focus on farm bill legislation; however, other bills addressing different aspects of drought policy and response have also been introduced. (For information regarding drought disaster assistance for agricultural producers, see CRS Report RS21212, Agricultural Disaster Assistance. For information on the 2012 bill, see CRS Report R42552, The 2012 Farm Bill: A Comparison of Senate-Passed S. 3240 and the House Agriculture Committee’s H.R. 6083 with Current Law.)
Although agricultural losses typically dominate drought impacts, federal drought activities are not limited to agriculture. For example, the 2012 drought raised congressional interest in whether and to what extent other federal agencies have and are using authorities to address drought. Similarly, the President in August 2012 convened the White House Rural Council to assess executive branch agencies’ responses to the ongoing drought. The Administration shortly thereafter announced several new administrative actions to address the drought.
While numerous federal programs address different aspects of drought, no comprehensive national drought policy exists. A 2000 National Drought Policy Commission noted the patchwork nature of drought programs, and that despite a major federal role in responding to drought, no single federal agency leads or coordinates drought programs—instead, the federal role is more of “crisis management.” Congress may opt to revisit the commission’s recommendations. Congress also may consider proposals to manage drought impacts, such as authorizing new assistance to develop or augment water supplies for localities, industries, and agriculture—or providing funding for such activities where authorities already exist. Congress also may address how the two major federal water management agencies, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Bureau of Reclamation, plan for and respond to drought.
This report describes the physical causes of drought, drought history in the United States, and policy challenges related to drought. It also provides examples of recurrent regional drought conditions. For information on federal agricultural disaster assistance and related legislation, see the CRS reports noted above.
Located in
Resources
/
Climate Science Documents
-
DOES WOOD SLOW DOWN “SLUDGE DRAGONS?” THE INTERACTION BETWEEN RIPARIAN ZONES AND DEBRIS FLOWS IN MOUNTAIN LANDSCAPES
-
Conservation measures for aquatic species throughout the Pacific Northwest rely heavily on maintaining forested riparian zones. A key rationale for this strategy is that the presence of standing and downed trees next to streams will provide a continuous source of wood, which is an important structural component of aquatic habitat. Yet little is known about the interactions between wood and debris flows, which are an important way that wood enters streams.Researchers from the PNW Research Station and Oregon State University created a physics-based simulation of debris flow dynamics in a headwater basin within the Oregon Coast Range. They found that the presence of wood funda- mentally changes the behavior of debris flows by reducing the momentum and distance that they travel. Because debris flow deposits are primary storage sites for sediment within headwater catchments, a shift toward shorter flows means that more sediment is stored higher up in watersheds. In addition, they found that zones with high densities of wood and sediment are relatively fixed in space and do not migrate downstream. This suggests that management strategies could specifically target achieving habitat objectives within these high accumulation zones, and there may be multiple management pathways for achieving these objectives.
Located in
Resources
/
Climate Science Documents
-
Extreme Weather Events in Europe: preparing for climate change adaptation
-
This study arises from the concern that changes in weather patterns will be one of the principal effects of climate change and with these will come extreme weather. This is of considerable consequence in Europe as it impacts on the vulnerability of communities across the continent and exposes them to environmental risks.
It is now widely recognised that failures in international efforts to agree on the action necessary to limit global climate change mean that adaptation to its consequences is necessary and unavoidable (Solomon et al., 2007). The changes anticipated in the occurrence and character of extreme weather events are, in many cases, the dominant factor in designing adaptation measures. Policy communities within the EU have begun to consider appropriate responses to these changes and an EU adaptation strategy is under active development and implementation. There are also sectoral EU initiatives, for example on water shortages and heat waves, and, at a regional level, on planning for floods and storms. The basic and unavoidable challenge for decision makers is to find workable and cost-effective solutions when faced with increased probabilities of very costly adverse impacts. Information about the nature and scale of these changes is essential to guide decisions on appropriate solutions. Agenda-setting for climate change and adaptation has to take place in a social or/and political setting. Scientific information about temporal changes in the probability distributions of extreme weather events over Europe, the main focus of this report, is important for informing the social and political processes that it is hoped will lead to adequate climate-change adaptation measures in Europe.
This report is focused on providing a working-level assessment of the current state of the quantitative understanding of relevant extreme weather phenomena and their impacts.
Located in
Resources
/
Climate Science Documents
-
Climate change and disruptions to global fire activity
-
Future disruptions to fire activity will threaten ecosystems and human well-being throughout the world, yet there are few fire projections at global scales and almost none from a broad range of global climate models (GCMs). Here we integrate global fire datasets and environmental covariates to build spatial statistical models of fire probability at a 0.58 resolution and examine environmental controls on fire activity. Fire models are driven by climate norms from 16 GCMs (A2 emissions scenario) to assess the magnitude and direction of change over two time periods, 2010–2039 and 2070–2099. From the ensemble results, we identify areas of consensus for increases or decreases in fire activity, as well as areas where GCMs disagree. Although certain biomes are sensitive to constraints on biomass productivity and others to atmospheric conditions promoting combustion, substantial and rapid shifts are projected for future fire activity across vast portions of the globe. In the near term, the most consistent increases in fire activity occur in biomes with already somewhat warm climates; decreases are less pronounced and concentrated primarily in a few tropical and subtropical biomes. However, models do not agree on the direction of near- term changes across more than 50% of terrestrial lands, highlighting major uncertainties in the next few decades. By the end of the century, the magnitude and the agreement in direction of change are projected to increase substantially. Most far-term model agreement on increasing fire probabilities (;62%) occurs at mid- to high-latitudes, while agreement on decreasing probabilities (;20%) is mainly in the tropics. Although our global models demonstrate that long-term environmental norms are very successful at capturing chronic fire probability patterns, future work is necessary to assess how much more explanatory power would be added through interannual variation in climate variables. This study provides a first examination of global disruptions to fire activity using an empirically based statistical framework and a multi-model ensemble of GCM projections, an important step toward assessing fire-related vulnerabilities to humans and the ecosystems upon which they depend.
Key words: climatic constraints; ensemble model uncertainty; flammability; global climate models (GCM); GCM agreement; global fire probabilities; resources to burn; spatial statistical models; species distribution models.
Located in
Resources
/
Climate Science Documents
-
Divergent phenological response to hydroclimate variability in forested mountain watersheds
-
Mountain watersheds are primary sources of freshwater, carbon sequestration, and other ecosystem services. There is significant interest in the effects of climate change and variability on these processes over short to long time scales. Much of the impact of hydroclimate variability in forest ecosystems is manifested in vegetation dynamics in space and time. In steep terrain, leaf phenology responds to topoclimate in complex ways, and can produce specific and measurable shifts in landscape forest patterns. The onset of spring is usually delayed at a specific rate with increasing elevation (often called Hopkins’ Law; Hopkins, 1918), reflecting the dominant controls of temperature on greenup timing. Contrary with greenup, leaf senescence shows inconsistent trends along elevation gradients. Here, we present mechanisms and an explanation for this variability and its significance for ecosystem patterns and services in response to climate. We use moderate-resolution imaging spectro-radiometer (MODIS) Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) data to derive landscape-induced phenological patterns over topoclimate gradients in a humid temperate broadleaf forest in southern Appalachians. These phenological patterns are validated with different sets of field observations. Our data demonstrate that divergent behavior of leaf senescence with elevation is closely related to late growing season hydroclimate variability in temperature and water balance patterns. Specifically, a drier late growing season is associated with earlier leaf senescence at low elevation than at middle elevation. The effect of drought stress on vegetation senescence timing also leads to tighter coupling between growing season length and ecosystem water use estimated from observed precipitation and runoff generation. This study indicates increased late growing season drought may be leading to divergent ecosystem response between high and low elevation forests. Landscape-induced phenological patterns are easily observed over wide areas and may be used as a unique diagnos- tic for sources of ecosystem vulnerability and sensitivity to hydroclimate change.
Keywords: drought deciduousness, hydroclimate variability, landscape phenology, MODIS NDVI, topoclimate gradient
Located in
Resources
/
Climate Science Documents
-
Classification of Climate Change-Induced Stresses on Biological Diversity
-
Conservation actions need to account for and be adapted to address changes that will occur under global climate change. The identification of stresses on biological diversity (as defined in the Convention on Biological Diversity) is key in the process of adaptive conservation management. We considered any impact of climate change on biological diversity a stress because such an effect represents a change (negative or positive) in key ecological attributes of an ecosystem or parts of it. We applied a systemic approach and a hierarchical framework in a comprehensive classification of stresses to biological diversity that are caused directly by global climate change. Through analyses of 20 conservation sites in 7 countries and a review of the literature, we identified climate-change-induced stresses. We grouped the identified stresses according to 3 levels of biological diversity: stresses that affect individuals and populations, stresses that affect biological communities, and stresses that affect ecosystem structure and function. For each stress category, we differentiated 3 hierarchical levels of stress: stress class (thematic grouping with the coarsest resolution, 8); general stresses (thematic groups of specific stresses, 21); and specific stresses (most detailed definition of stresses, 90). We also compiled an overview of effects of climate change on ecosystem services using the categories of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment and 2 additional categories. Our classification may be used to identify key climate-change-related stresses to biological diversity and may assist in the development of appropriate conservation strategies. The classification is in list format, but it accounts for relations among climate-change-induced stresses.
Keywords: adaptation, conservation, strategies,adaptive management,climatechange,conservation planning, conservation targets, hierarchical framework, threats to biological diversity
Located in
Resources
/
Climate Science Documents
-
Declining annual streamflow distributions in the Pacific Northwest United States, 1948–2006
-
Much of the discussion on climate change and water in the western United States centers on decreased snowpack and earlier spring runoff. Although increasing variability in annual flows has been noted, the nature of those changes is largely unexplored. We tested for trends in the distribution of annual runoff using quantile regression at 43 gages in the Pacific Northwest. Seventy-two percent of the stations showed significant (a = 0.10) declines in the 25th percentile annual flow, with half of the stations exceeding a 29% decline and a maximum decline of 47% between 1948 and 2006. Fewer stations showed statistically significant declines in either median or mean annual flow, and only five had a significant change in the 75th percentile, demonstrating that increases in variance result primarily from a trend of increasing dryness in dry years. The asymmetric trends in streamflow distributions have implications for water management and ecology well beyond those of shifted timing alone, affect both rain and snow-dominated watersheds, and contribute to earlier timing trends in high- elevation watersheds.
Located in
Resources
/
Climate Science Documents
