Northeast

There is growing evidence that headwater stream ecosystems are especially vulnerable to changing climate and land use, but managers are challenged by the need to address these threats at a landscape scale, often through coordination with multiple management agencies and landowners. This project sought to provide an example of cooperative landscape decision-making by addressing the...

This study set out to answer the question: “What data and modeling frameworks are needed to provide scientists reliable, climate-informed, water temperature estimates for freshwater ecosystems that can assist watershed management decision making?” To accomplish this, the study gathered existing stream temperature data, identified data gaps, deployed stream temperature monitoring devices...

The Northeast United States and Atlantic Canada share many of the same types of forests, wetlands, and natural communities, and from a wildlife perspective the region is one contiguous forest. However, resources are classified and mapped differently on the two sides of the border, creating challenges for habitat evaluation, species modeling, and predicting the effects of climate change...

In 2010, 39 percent of the U.S.population lived near the coast. This population is expected to increase by 8 percent from 2010 to 2020. Coastal regions are also home to species and habitats that provide critical services to humans, such as wetlands that buffer coasts from storms. Therefore, sea-level rise and the associated changes in coastlines challenge both human communities and...

A number of large-scale mapping projects have been completed in the U.S., and several cover all or some parts of the footprint of the Northeast Climate Science Center (NE CSC). These include maps by the Southeast GAP Analysis (SEGAP) program, the national LANDFIRE program, NatureServe, and The Nature Conservancy. These mapping projects represent a major step forward in describing the...

Climate change is expected to alter stream temperature and flow regimes over the coming decades, and in turn influence distributions of aquatic species in those freshwater ecosystems. To better anticipate these changes, there is a need to compile both short- and long-term stream temperature data for managers to gain an understanding of baseline conditions, historic trends, and future...

The purpose of the project was to conduct an extensive search for completed and ongoing research that deals with climate change and agriculture in the context of water quality, for the Eastern Tallgrass Prairie and Big Rivers Landscape Conservation Cooperative (LCC) and the Upper Midwest and Great Lakes LCC. The search to acquire this information was two-fold. One portion of the search...

This project addressed regional climate change effects on aquatic food webs in the Great Lakes. We sought insights by examining Lake Erie as a representative system with a high level of anthropogenic impacts, strong nutrient gradients, seasonal hypoxia, and spatial overlap of cold- and cool-water fish guilds. In Lake Erie and in large embayments throughout the Great Lakes basin, this...

The number of fish collected in routine monitoring surveys often varies from year to year, from lake to lake, and from location to location within a lake. Although some variability in fish catches is expected across factors such as location and season, we know less about how large-scale disturbances like climate change will influence population variability. The Laurentian Great Lakes in...