Observing phenology is a fun activity for adults and children alike.

Nature’s Notebook  invites citizens to get outside this spring, and join their neighbors in observing plant and animal life events in your backyard.

Gardeners, farmers, birders, hikers, anglers, joggers or all-around nature enthusiasts are already recording the recurring events they see in the lives of the plants and animals around them,  such as when cherry trees or lilacs blossom, when robins build their nests, when salmon swim upstream to spawn, or when leaves turn color in the fall.

Each entry in Nature’s Notebook represents important scientific information about an actual event in a plant or animal’s life.  And when amassed together, these observations are making it possible for scientists to better understand how species are responding to climate change and to develop more informed tools for responding to climate change.

This spring, we hope citizen-scientists will help us out in one (or several!) of Nature’s Notebook new campaigns: Cloned Lilacs and Dogwoods; Maples, Oaks, and Poplars; PopClock; New England Leaf-Out Project; the Juniper Pollen Project; and the Common Lilacs and Native Flowering Dogwood Project. Visit the campaigns pages to learn about which species are of interest for your area.

But if these campaigns don’t interest you, there are many other types of species Nature’s Notebook welcomes observations for – including plants, birds, mammals, insects, fish, reptiles and amphibians.

Spring Springing Earlier?

Scientists recently used data collected by observers in Nature’s Notebook to determine that the “green-wave” of spring – or the flush of growth on trees and other plants across the nation – has already shifted – and will shift more dramatically in the future – as the climate changes.  The study (published in Geophysical Research Letters) showed how the green-wave, which now takes about 75 days to travel from Miami to Maine, may take as few as 59 days by the end of the century!  Thus, spring will arrive more quickly, and forest areas may become more similar to one another along the Eastern Seaboard.

And, in fact, warm spring temperatures in both 2010 and 2012 in the eastern half of the country resulted in record early activity of plant and animals – 2-3 weeks early in some places and for some species; the data for spring 2013 – which officially starts today – are rolling in, but they suggest early activity among some plants and animals this year as well.

Citizen-scientists monitor the different life events of certain animals and plants, including the bluebell flower pictured here.

Jake Weltzin, an ecologist with USGS and the executive director of the USA National Phenology Network, which manages the Nature’s Notebook observing program, noted that although an earlier spring brings early birds and beautiful flowers and glorious days at the shore, it also brings us earlier-arriving allergies and pests like ticks and mosquitoes. And while a longer growing season can result in increased yields for some crops, it is risky because of the higher likelihood of plant damage due to late frosts or later onset of drought. For example, in spring 2012, fruit and vegetable crops in portions of the Midwest were damaged from a very early spring followed by frosts.

Phenology, the Study of Nature’s Calendar

The study of when recurring seasonal life stages of plants and animals occur is called phenology, and people have tracked phenology for centuries for the most practical of reasons: when to hunt and fish, when to plant and harvest crops, and when to move livestock or animal herds.

Tracking phenology is just as critical today for the same reasons and for new ones too.  Not only are the data in Nature’s Notebook helping researchers understand how plants and animals are responding to climate change, but also how those responses are affecting people and ecological systems. This information is already being used in ways that benefit society, including developing more accurate indicators of spring, forecasting the onset of allergy season or the chances of western wildfires, managing wildlife and invasive plants, and helping in habitat-restoration efforts.

Arizona saquaro will be one of the species looked at by USA-NPN volunteers.

Is Climate Change Knocking Nature Out of Sync?

Changes in phenology are among the most sensitive biological indicators of local, regional and global change. Just as in the United States, many springtime events around the world are occurring earlier — and fall events happening later — than in the past. These changes are happening quickly for some species and more slowly, or not at all, for others, altering relationships and processes that may have been essentially stable for thousands of years.

Some wildlife – like caribou and butterflies and hummingbirds – are becoming mismatched from their plant food resources, which are responding differently.  Migrations for some birds are changing too, as they can now overwinter instead of moving south for the winter, or as they fly north, adjusting their pace to keep up with an advancing front of spring flowering.

Phenology, Pollinators, and Food

Working farms and ranches need phenology information too:  pollination by native insects contributes more than $3 billion in agricultural crops each year. Climate-driven changes in the phenology of crops and native insects could change the effectiveness of insect pollination for better or for worse, and certainly complicates management decisions.  However, because little is known about how pollinator phenology is changing, it is difficult to accurately assess how crops will be affected and how farmers might best adapt. By collecting observations of insect phenology and crop phenology together, the USA-NPN is contributing to our understanding of the changes taking place and helping to ensure the viability of crops across the country.

Where You Come In

In three simple steps, you can become a citizen scientist: 1. Join Nature’s Notebook, 2. Choose the location and species you’ll observe, and 3. Start observing!

By joining the program, you ultimately empower your hobby to benefit scientific discovery.

USA-National Phenology Network citizen-scientist Lucille Tower records the one millionth observation on maple vine in the large nature database.

What Changes Are Happening Where I Live?

Want to know more about observed changes in plant and animal phenology in your region over the last century? Explore the USA-NPN’s recent series of regional information sheets:

• Alaska and the Arctic
• Great Plains
• Hawai’i and the Pacific Islands
• Midwest
• Northeast
• Pacific Northwest
• Southeast
• Southwest

More about the USA-NPN

The USA National Phenology Network is a partnership among governmental and nongovernmental science and resource management agencies and organizations, the academic community and the public.  There are more ways to get involved – partner your organization with the Network, let us know about legacy phenology data sets or even share a dataset you may have already collected, or help us rescue historical bird migration datasets.  For more information visit USA-NPN or contact Jake Weltzin at jweltzin@usgs.gov.

Listen to a Spanish-language podcast about USA-NPN.

The world’s longest-running Earth-observing satellite program — Landsat — turns 40.

The world’s longest-running Earth-observing satellite program — Landsat — is 40 years old.

NASA — working in cooperation with the U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) and its science agency, the USGS — launched the first Landsat satellite on July 23, 1972. The resulting 40-year archive of Earth observations from the Landsat fleet forms an impartial, comprehensive, and easily accessed register of human and natural changes on the land.

Remote-sensing satellites, such as the Landsat series, help scientists to observe the world beyond the power of human sight, to monitor changes, and to detect critical trends in the conditions of natural resources. Data supplied by Landsat supports the improvement of human and environmental health, energy and water management, urban planning, disaster recovery, and crop monitoring.

Through 40 years of continuous coverage, the Landsat series of Earth observation satellites has become a fundamental global reference for scientific issues related to land use and natural resources. Landsat is valued all over the world as the gold standard of land observation. No other satellite program, in our nation or in any other country, comes close to having the historical length and breadth, the continuity and the coverage, of the Landsat archive.

A Versatile Perspective

Landsat satellites can give us a view as broad as 12,000 square miles per scene while characterizing land cover in units the size of a baseball diamond. In one instant look from over 400 miles in space, a single Landsat scene can record the condition of hundreds of thousands of acres of grassland, agricultural crops, or forests.

A comparison of the images illustrates the significant growth in the greater D.C. area. Major urban development can be seen the surrounding communities of Rockville, Greenbelt, and Suitland, Maryland. The expanded Woodrow Wilson Bridge, connecting Springfield, Virginia, with Oxon Hill, Maryland, is evident. The record of surface change is used by urban planners and local officials to evaluate the rate and direction of growth in the area.

Landsat images from space are not just pictures. They contain many layers of data collected at different points along the visible and invisible light spectrum. Consequently, Landsat images can show where vegetation is thriving and where it is stressed, where droughts are occurring, where wildland fire is a danger, and where erosion has altered coastlines or river courses.

Landsat images reveal subtle, gradual changes, such as Wyoming rangelands greening up after a drought, as well as massive landscape changes that occur in rapidly growing urban areas. Landsat can also provide inexpensive assessments of sudden natural or human-induced disasters, such as the number of acres charred by a forest fire or the extent of tsunami inundation.

Impartial information freely available

The Department of the Interior’s policy of releasing the full Landsat archive at no cost allows everyone to have access to this important resource, allowing researchers in the private sector and at universities to generate even more data applications — applications that serve commercial endeavors in agriculture and forestry, that enable land managers in and out of government to work more efficiently, and that define and tackle critical environmental issues.

Landsat and innovation

Landsat has sparked innovation in Earth systems research and in commercial applications of the data from its inception in the mid-1960s.  Since 2008, when Landsat images were made available free of charge, there has been a remarkable burst of innovative science applications of the data.

For example, Landsat data played a central role in an award-winning type of mapping that tracks water use. Using Landsat imagery supplied by USGS in combination with ground-based water data, the Idaho Department of Water Resources and the University of Idaho developed a novel method to create water-use maps that are accurate to the scale of individual fields. Water-use maps help save taxpayer money by increasing the accuracy and effectiveness of public decisions involving water — for instance, in monitoring compliance with legal water rights. In 2009, the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University cited Idaho’s original design for these maps as an outstanding innovation in American government.

The National Land Cover Database (NLCD 2006) produced by USGS and the federal interagency Multi‑Resolution Land Characteristics Consortium (MRLC) from Landsat imagery is a massive database that describes the surface condition of each 30-meter cell of land in the conterminous U.S. One such cell is approximately the area of a baseball diamond. The range and accuracy of the database enables land managers, urban planners, agricultural experts, and scientists with many different interests (for instance, climate change or invasive species) to identify critical characteristics of the land for a wide variety of investigations.

In the beginning

By the mid-1960s, some civilian geologists, geographers, and agronomists were familiar with imaging potential of classified Earth-observing satellites and had also studied the surprisingly detailed land-surface photos taken by early astronauts using hand-held cameras.

In 1966, with NASA still heavily committed to the Apollo Program in preparation for what would be a 1969 moon landing, the USGS convinced Interior Secretary Stewart Udall to hold a press conference announcing Interior’s new Project EROS, the acronym for Earth Resources Observation Satellites, and, furthermore, that Interior’s first satellite would launch in 1969!

In a statement that echoes true to this day, Udall said, “…the time is now right and urgent to apply space technology towards the solution of many pressing natural resources problems being compounded by population and industrial growth.” This bold announcement succeeded as a catalyst for what eventually became the world’s first civilian land-imaging satellite, developed by NASA and launched on July 23, 1972.

Six years earlier, Udall had said the satellite would be “…just the beginning of a great decade in land and resource analysis for a burgeoning population.”  Today we celebrate not one but four great decades in Earth science from space.

USGS created the “Earth as Art” series to provide a unique avenue of insight about the geography of selected Landsat scenes that have an artistic resonance. This image is titled “Malaspina Glacier.” The tongue of the Malaspina Glacier, the largest glacier in Alaska, fills most of this image. The Malaspina lies west of Yakutat Bay and covers 1,500 sq mi (3,880 sq km).

On the horizon

NASA is preparing to launch the next Landsat satellite, the Landsat Data Continuity Mission (LDCM), on February 11, 2013, from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. LDCM will be the most technologically advanced satellite in the Landsat series. LDCM sensors take advantage of evolutionary advances in detector and sensor technologies to improve performance and increase reliability. Once it successfully achieves orbit, LDCM will join the Landsat 5 and Landsat 7 satellites as Landsat 8 to continue the Landsat data record.

Join the celebration

NASA and USGS held a news conference,  July 23, to highlight the accomplishments of the Landsat program at the Newseum in Washington, DC.

NASA Television and the NASA website provided live briefing coverage and will maintain archived video of the event. Visit NASA TV or NASA Goddard Multimedia.

For information about “Landsat at 40” anniversary features:

• 10 most significant images from the Landsat record;
• U.S. regions selected for the “My American Landscape” contest;
• announcement of the top five Landsat “Earth As Art” images,visit NASA Landsat.

For details about the Landsat program, including current operations and situational updates, visit USGS Landsat.

A car approaches a dust storm near Winslow, Arizona, in April 2011. In drought years, low vegetation cover and disturbance to soil surfaces leads to more dust storms.

Dust storms that rolled across the Arizona desert July 21-22, 2012, effectively blinded motorists, knocked out electricity for thousands of people and grounded airline flights.

The weekend storms, 50 miles wide and up to 10,000 feet high, were followed by additional storm warnings into the following week. Like the storms that passed through Phoenix in July and October 2011, they carried large quantities of airborne particulates and caused considerable property damage and potential harm to human health.

But what is causing these storms?

USGS and partner research shows that there are many causes of dust storms. Two contributing factors are low vegetation cover and disturbance to soil surfaces.

Vegetation contributes to ecological integrity. The presence of plants reduces soil erosion and dust storms, because it keeps the soil intact, reduces wind momentum, and traps moving soil particles (See Figure 1). In spaces between the plants, many undisturbed desert soils are naturally armored by hardened physical and biological crusts.

Low vegetation cover can especially be a problem in drought years in abandoned agricultural fields, which are generally dominated by annual plants. This means that the consequences of dust storms, including motor vehicle crashes, are high in a drought year and low in years with more precipitation (See Figure 2).

Figure 1: The presence of plants reduces soil erosion and dust storms because it keeps the soil intact, reduces wind momentum, and traps moving soil particles. Intact soil surfaces, which may include soil crusts, can also reduce the risk of dust storms.

Similarly, in places where land-use activities destroy or reduce soil crusts and weaken soil stability, experts know to assume higher dust storm activity than in places where soils are left undisturbed.

Future climate scenarios predict that drought conditions will worsen, and therefore more dust storms are likely.

Nevertheless, site restoration and reduced disturbance can mitigate some of the factors that promote dust emission. The USGS and land managers are working together to better understand the causes and sources of dust storm activity in the southwestern United States.

Figure 2: The number of motor vehicle crashes caused by dust storms in Arizona has generally been lower when the annual precipitation has been higher. In a changing climate, climate scenarios predict more drought, which will likely mean more dust storms. But site restoration and reduced disturbance can mitigate some factors that promote dust emissions.

Drought conditions on the Arkansas River at Great Bend, Kansas on July 13, 2012. Photo by Nathan Sullivan, USGS.

Almost 80 percent of the contiguous United States is facing abnormally dry conditions right now. In fact, much of the lower half of the country is facing at least severe to extreme drought. To make matters worse, scientists are not expecting relief any time soon. In many of these areas, drought is predicted to continue to get worse.

Drought is the nation’s most costly natural disaster, far exceeding earthquakes, tornados, hurricanes and floods. FEMA has estimated that the annual average cost of drought in the United States ranges from $6 to $8 billion. (By comparison, the annual costs of flooding are in the $2 to $4 billion range.) Unlike flooding, drought does not come and go in a single episode. Rather, it often takes a long time for drought to begin to impact an area, and it can fester for months or even years.

Start with Science

In order to reduce the impacts of drought, governments and managers rely on objective and unbiased scientific information about trends in streamflow, precipitation, and other factors that contribute to drought, so that they can understand where drought is occurring, how long it is likely to impact an area, and where drought is likely to strike next.

Droughts can be subdivided into three types: meteorological, agricultural, and hydrologic drought. A meteorological drought begins with precipitation deficiency, high temperatures and winds, and low humidity. As soil moisture is reduced, plants and agriculture are stressed, leading to agricultural drought. When drought causes streamflow to be reduced, the result is a hydrologic drought.

You can view areas of low stream flow in real time at USGS WaterWatch. The map shows how current flows compare to what would be normal for a given time of year based on historical averages. Right now, almost the entire country is experiencing below normal conditions. The bright red coloring on the map indicates, for example, that flows in Georgia are especially low. While this map is an adequate real-time gauge for areas experiencing hydrologic drought, stream and river conditions are not the only drought indicator.

Drought conditions at Lake Hartwell, SC. Photo by Carol J. VanDyke, USGS (2011).

The national Drought Monitor is the official report detailing drought conditions, and this map paints a fuller picture of drought than just stream flow information. In addition to relying heavily on USGS streamgage data, this map also incorporates soil moisture, agricultural information, satellite data, and precipitation.

The map — a product of NOAA, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the National Drought Mitigation Center — is prepared in consultation with scientists from several agencies, including the USGS. It portrays a comprehensive geographic assessment of areas experiencing drought, as well as the severity of drought.  For example, when The Weather Channel reports on drought conditions in the country, they use the Drought Monitor map. This map also has economic significance, because it is used by many states as the basis for declaring a drought emergency and requesting federal funding.

In addition to the Drought Monitor, which tracks current and historic drought conditions, every month the National Weather Service produces a Drought Outlook, with bi-weekly updates based primarily on precipitation information. The latest report, released on July 5, indicates that drought is likely to develop, persist, or intensify across much of the Ohio and Tennessee Valleys, the Corn Belt region, the middle and lower Mississippi Valley, and much of the Great Plains.

How Does This Drought Compare to Past Droughts?

That’s a tough question, because the answer depends on a variety of factors: how you define drought, the specific parts of the country affected by drought, and the time of year.  However, the most extensive area of drought during the past century occurred in July 1934 during the dust bowl when 80 percent of the contiguous United States was in moderate to exceptional drought.  By comparison, the area in moderate to exceptional drought in June 2012 was 57 percent.  So the current drought, though severe, is not as extensive as that which occurred during the Dust Bowl era of the 1930s.

Additionally, as a nation we prepare better for today’s droughts, by using reservoirs more strategically and by putting other mechanisms in place to mitigate the impacts of drought. Most states have a plan to ensure there is enough water available when signs point to dry futures. For example, Virginia’s plan allows managers to issue emergency permits for water or even bring in water from elsewhere depending on drought severity. Other plans guide states in preparing for and proactively lessening drought. For example, Nebraska has a plan that includes incentives for water conservation, steps for awareness campaigns, protection of stream flows, and assessments of the most vulnerable areas.

While the Souris River is in the throes of record high flooding in Minot, N.D., O.C. Fisher Lake near San Angelo, Texas has been experiencing the exact opposite for a number of years now – a ground-cracking drought. These locations have more than their extreme water conditions in common. Though about 1,000 miles apart, these places are situated north and south of each other just west of the 100th meridian of longitude. Photo by Travis Dowell, USGS, June 23, 2011.

You can find out about low water levels in real-time with USGS WaterAlert. This USGS service allows you to automatically receive a text or email from a USGS streamgage when waters go below a certain threshold that you choose. Sign up for WaterAlert online by selecting a state, checking the “surface water” box, and clicking on your streamgage of choice.

Will Droughts Get Worse with Climate Change?

Drought is a normal component of our climate. Because of the way weather patterns work, there is always precipitation somewhere in the atmosphere and a lack of precipitation somewhere else. Certain areas are more prone to drought, but drought can happen anywhere.

While scientists agree that climate change will cause temperatures to continue to rise, changes to precipitation patterns are less certain. At the time, extrapolating these loose precipitation predictions to drought impacts is nearly impossible. Scientists agree that it is still very difficult to make generalized statements about how climate change will impact drought.

USGS Drought Information in Your State

While drought is affecting multiple states across the country, here is a glimpse at a few local impacts.

Oklahoma experienced a year of extreme heat and drought last year, due to high temperatures and precipitation deficits. Although precipitation has returned to near normal so far this year, Oklahoma is still in the grip of a hydrological drought. The USGS Oklahoma Water Science Center is working on multiple projects that provide reliable, impartial, and timely information to resource managers, planners, and other customers about drought. These federally-funded activities in Oklahoma emphasize regional assessments of surface-water and groundwater conditions, how natural processes and human activities affect those conditions through time, development of new tools and techniques for understanding complex hydrologic systems, effects of drought, and planning for drought.

The Colorado River runs dry on the U.S./Mexico border 2 miles below the Morelos Dam. Photo by Pete McBride, USGS, Jan 13, 2009

In Arkansas, streamflows across the state are about 10 – 50 percent of normal streamflow expected during this time of year. Some streams are exhibiting less than one percent of the normal streamflow expected. USGS scientists in Arkansas are studying the effects of climate on water levels, and have determined that long-term continuous monitoring is important to evaluating the effects of climate variability.

Western Texas continues to experience extreme drought, though winter and spring rains provided modest relief to the 2011 drought.   Although central Texas has gotten some recent rains, reservoirs are still well below capacity in many areas. Even with recent flooding in the Houston area , about 90% of the wells measured in the Gulf Coast Aquifer during the winter of 2011-12 showed water level declines. Additionally, statewide reservoir storage in 2011 was the lowest on record since 1978.

In Colorado streamflow in early July was below normal at more than 80 percent of the USGS long-term monitoring stations.  Record low flows were recorded at 23 of 127 long term monitoring stations. Severe hydrologic drought is primarily occurring in the upper Colorado River Basin, the upper Arkansas Basin, and parts of southwestern Colorado. The Rio Grande and South Platte Basins are experiencing moderate hydrologic drought while flows in the lower Arkansas Basin remain below normal.

In Kansas, USGS scientists are measuring the lowest flows since the 1950s for the Arkansas River, as well as several other rivers across the state. The North Fork of the Ninnescah River is running low enough that the creek temperature have hit 103 degrees.

USGS International Drought Science: Famine Early Warning Systems Network

The ability to grow crops in drought conditions is of high concern for many populations of the developing world. The Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET), which is an activity of the U.S. Agency for International Development and its office Food for Peace, identifies populations with the most food insecurity, examining critical situations in which food aid will be needed. FEWS NET research was used to provide early warning of drought and the potential for the outbreak of famine conditions in Ethiopia and Kenya and Somalia in 2011. Another successful forecast was made in the spring of 2012 that helped motivate effective humanitarian responses in Kenya and Ethiopia.

The Vegetation Drought Response Index (VegDRI) incorporates satellite observations of vegetation to monitor at a finer spatial detail than other commonly used drought indicators.

FEWS NET also helps target more than $1.5 billion of assistance to more than 40 countries each year. As an implementing partner of FEWS NET, the USGS contributes remote sensing data and analyses to monitor and warn of impending drought and potential food insecurity, as well as providing scientific studies for informing adaptation to climate change. The FEWS NET program currently works in Africa, Asia, Central America, and Haiti, with the hope of expanding to global coverage in the near future.

Links and Resources:

• USGS WaterWatch
• National Streamflow Information Program
• Cooperative Water Program
• National Drought Monitor
• NOAA Drought Outlook
• Droughts of the Past

For local details and impacts related to drought, please contact your State Climatologist or Regional Climate Center

Enjoying Father's Day at Kenai National Wildlife Refuge. Photo by Karen Laubenstein, USFWS.

More than 10,000 visitors to the country’s National Wildlife Refuge System say they are happy with their experiences on National Wildlife Refuges, according to just-published results from a survey by the U.S. Geological Survey. This is good news for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which manages the diverse network of refuges.

Some 90 percent of visitors to National Wildlife Refuges who were surveyed indicate they are satisfied with each of four key refuge offerings: services provided by employees or volunteers, recreational opportunities, refuge information and education, and the refuge’s job of conserving fish, wildlife and their habitats.

The Refuge System attracts nearly 45 million visitors annually. Of this total, 25 million people per year observe and photograph wildlife, more than 9 million hunt and fish, and more than 10 million participate in educational and interpretation programs. The System, considered the leading network of protected lands and waters in the world dedicated to the conservation of fish, wildlife, and the associated habitat, comprises 556 national wildlife refuges and 38 wetland management districts throughout the United States and its territories, encompassing a total of more than 150 million acres.

One of the goals of the Refuge System is “to foster understanding and instill appreciation of fish, wildlife, and plants, and their conservation.” Refuges do this by providing the public with accessible places to view, hunt or otherwise enjoy wildlife and the outdoors. Understanding the perceptions of visitors and the quality and character of their experiences on refuges is a critical element of managing these lands and meeting the goals of the Refuge System.

Surveying visitors at William L. Finley National Wildlife Refuge near Corvallis, Ore. Photo by George Gentry, FWS

To this end, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service worked with social science experts at the USGS to conduct a scientific, independent national survey of refuge visitors to better understand visitor needs and experiences. The information will help the Service manage visitation to the refuges and design programs and facilities that respond to visitor needs while conserving wildlife.

The survey was conducted during 2010 and 2011 at 53 refuges across the country by refuge personnel, volunteers and Refuge “Friends” group members using a standardized survey instrument. The results provide a summary of visitor and trip characteristics, visitor opinions about refuges and their offerings, and visitor opinions about alternative transportation and climate change. In addition to overall satisfaction with refuge services and experiences noted above, the survey results revealed that:

• More than half of visitors had been to multiple national wildlife refuges in the past year.
• More than half of visitors were non-local, living more than 50 miles from the refuge they visited.
• Non-local visitors stayed in the local community for an average of 4 days, and the refuge was the primary destination of the trip for many of them.
• During visitors’ most recent trip to the refuge, the three primary activities were wildlife observation, birdwatching and fishing.

The survey also asked visitors their opinions about climate change. Most visitors indicated they are personally concerned about the effects of climate change on fish, wildlife and habitats. Just over half of visitors agreed they take actions to alleviate those effects and feel they stay well-informed about the issue. Most visitors agreed that future generations will benefit if climate change effects on fish, wildlife and habitats are addressed. They also agreed that it’s important to consider the economic costs and benefits to local communities when addressing these effects, and that addressing these effects can improve quality of life.

Related links:

Access the national combined results report here: National Wildlife Refuge Visitor Survey Results: 2010/2011

Access the Individual refuge results here (all 53 files available): National Wildlife Refuge Visitor Survey 2010/2011: Individual Refuge Results

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service News Releases

For More Information, Contact: Natalie Sexton