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Publications

Since its inception in 2008, CASC-funded research projects have generated over 2,000 publications in academic journals across the sciences, including articles in high-impact journals such as Science and Nature. Browse a selection of publications from CASC-funded projects below. For a complete list of our scientific projects, publications, and data, explore our Project Explorer database.

Filter Total Items: 489

Taming wildfires in the context of climate change: The case of the United States

This report provides a global assessment and outlook on wildfire risk in the context of climate change. It discusses the drivers behind the growing incidence of extreme wildfires and the attribution effect of climate change. It outlines the environmental, social and economic impacts of wildfires by illustrating the losses and costs observed during recent extreme wildfire events. Building on this,
Authors
Emily Ann Orzechowski, Shawn Carter

People need freshwater biodiversity: Nine reasons freshwater biodiversity is important for humans

Freshwater biodiversity, from fish to frogs and microbes to macrophytes, provides a vast array of services to people. These services are under a growing threat as human-related pressure threatens freshwater biodiversity on multiple fronts. Here, Abigail Lynch and colleagues discuss nine fundamental ecosystem services that freshwater biodiversity provide to people. Given the importance of freshwate
Authors
Abigail Lynch, Karen J. Murchie, Steven J. Cooke

User engagement testing with a pilot decision support tool aimed to support species managers

Species status assessments (SSAs) are required for endangered species by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and focus on the resiliency, redundancy, and representation of endangered species. SSAs must include climate information, because climate is a factor that will impact species in the future. To aid in the inclusion of climate information, a decision support system (DSS) entitled Climate Analy
Authors
Haven J. Cashwell, Karen S. McNeal, Kathie Dello, Ryan Boyles, Corey Davis

People need freshwater biodiversity

Freshwater biodiversity, from fish to frogs and microbes to macrophytes, provides a vast array of services to people. Mounting concerns focus on the accelerating pace of biodiversity loss and declining ecological function within freshwater ecosystems that continue to threaten these natural benefits. Here, we catalog nine fundamental ecosystem services that the biotic components of indigenous fresh
Authors
Abigail Lynch, Steven J. Cooke, Angela H. Arthington, Claudio Baigun, Lisa Bossenbroek, Chris Dickens, Ian Harrison, Ismael Kimirei, Simone D. Langhans, Karen J. Murchie, Julian Olden, Steve J. Ormerod, Margaret Owuor, Rajeev Raghavan, Michael J. Samways, Rafaela Schinegger, Subodh Sharma, Ram-Devi Tachamo-Shah, David Tickner, Denis Tweddle, Nathan Young, Sonja C. Jähnig

Potential effects of climate change on Emydoidea blandingii (Blanding’s turtle)

Emydoidea blandingii (Holbrook, 1838; Blanding’s turtles) are a species of medium-sized, long-lived, semiaquatic, freshwater turtles with a wide distribution across the northern and eastern United States and southern Canada. They have an annual activity cycle consisting of late autumn and winter overwintering and spring emergence, spring movement and foraging, spring and summer nesting, and summer
Authors
Marta P. Lyons, Catherine A. Nikiel, Olivia E. LeDee, Ryan Boyles

Bringing the Nature Futures Framework to life: Creating a set of illustrative narratives of nature futures

To halt further destruction of the biosphere, most people and societies around the globe need to transform their relationships with nature. The internationally agreed vision under the Convention of Biological Diversity—Living in harmony with nature—is that “By 2050, biodiversity is valued, conserved, restored and wisely used, maintaining ecosystem services, sustaining a healthy planet and deliveri
Authors
América P. Durán, Jan J. Kuiper, A.P.D. Aguiar, W.W. Cheung, M.C. Diaw, G. Halouani, S. Hashimoto, M.A. Gasalla, G.D. Peterson, M.A. Schoolenberg, R. Abbasov, L.A. Acosta, D. Armenteras, F. Davila, M.A. Denboba, P.A. Harrison, K.A. Harhash, S. Karlsson-Viinkhuyzen, H. Kim, C. Lundquist, Brian W. Miller, S. Okayasu, R. Pichs-Madruga, J. Sathyapalan, A.K. Saysel, D. Yuan, L.M. Pereira

Quantifying uncertainty in coastal salinity regime for biological application using quantile regression

Salinity regimes in coastal ecosystems are highly dynamic and driven by complex geomorphic and hydrological processes. Estuarine biota are generally adapted to salinity fluctuation, but are vulnerable to salinity extremes. Characterizing coastal salinity regime for ecological studies therefore requires representing extremes of salinity ranges at time scales relevant to ecology (e.g., daily, monthl
Authors
Simeon Yurek, Micheal S Allen, Mitchell Eaton, David Chagaris, Nathan Reaver, Julien Martin, Peter C Frederick, Mark Dehaven

Synthesis of climate and ecological science to support grassland management priorities in the North Central Region

Grasslands in the Great Plains are of ecological, economic, and cultural importance in the United States. In response to a need to understand how climate change and variability will impact grassland ecosystems and their management in the 21st century, the U.S. Geological Survey North Central Climate Adaptation Science Center led a synthesis of peer-reviewed climate and ecology literature relevant
Authors
Christine D. Miller Hesed, Heather M. Yocum, Imtiaz Rangwala, Amy Symstad, Jeff M. Martin, Kevin Ellison, David J. A. Wood, Marissa Ahlering, Katherine J. Chase, Shelley Crausbay, Ana D. Davidson, Julie L. Elliott, Jim Giocomo, David Hoover, Toni Klemm, David A. Lightfoot, Owen P. McKenna, Brian W. Miller, Danika Mosher, R. Chelsea Nagy, Jesse B. Nippert, Jeremy Pittman, Lauren M. Porensky, Jilmarie Stephens, Alexander V. Zale

Grassland management priorities for the North Central Region

Executive SummaryUnderstanding how climate change and variability will impact grassland ecosystems is crucial for successful grassland management in the 21st century. In 2020, the U.S. Geological Survey North Central Climate Adaptation Science Center (USGS NC CASC) began a project to establish a baseline of information to best serve grassland managers (that is, those who develop grassland manageme

Climate change and the global redistribution of biodiversity: Substantial variation in empirical support for expected range shifts

BackgroundAmong the most widely predicted climate change-related impacts to biodiversity are geographic range shifts, whereby species shift their spatial distribution to track their climate niches. A series of commonly articulated hypotheses have emerged in the scientific literature suggesting species are expected to shift their distributions to higher latitudes, greater elevations, and deeper dep
Authors
Madeleine A. Rubenstein, Sarah R. Weiskopf, Romain Bertrand, Shawn Carter, Lise Comte, Mitchell Eaton, Ciara G. Johnson, Jonathan Lenoir, Abigail Lynch, Brian W. Miller, Toni Lyn Morelli, Mari Angel Rodriguez, Adam Terando, Laura Thompson

A simplified method for value of information using constructed scales

The value of information is a central concept in decision analysis, used to quantify how much the expected outcome of a decision would be improved if epistemic uncertainty could be resolved prior to committing to a course of action. One of the challenges, however, in quantitative analysis of the value of information is that the calculations are demanding, especially in requiring predictions of out
Authors
Michael C. Runge, Clark S. Rushing, James E. Lyons, Madeleine A. Rubenstein

A research agenda for the science of actionable knowledge: Drawing from a review of the most misguided to the most enlightened claims in the science-policy interface literature

Linking science with action affords a prime opportunity to leverage greater societal impact from research and increase the use of evidence in decision-making. Success in these areas depends critically upon processes of producing and mobilizing knowledge, as well as supporting and making decisions. For decades, scholars have idealized and described these social processes in different ways, resultin
Authors
Kripa Jagannathan, Geniffer Emmanuel, James Arnott, Katharine Mach, Aparna Bamzai-Dodson, Kristen Goodrich, Ryan Meyer, Mark Neff, Dana Sjostrom, Kristin Timm, Esther Turnhout, Gabrielle Wong-Parodi, Angela Bednarek, Alison Meadow, Art Dewulf, Christine J. Kirchhoff, Richard C. Moss, Leah Nichols, Eliza Oldach, Maria Carmen Lemos, Nicole Klenk