South Central
South Central
Featured News
Data Spotlight: Downscaled Climate Projections to Inform Climate Research in the South-Central U.S. Region
Data Spotlight: Downscaled Climate Projections to Inform Climate Research in the South-Central U.S. Region
Featured Project
Developing a Decision Support Tool to Inform Louisiana’s Climate Change Adaptation Strategy
Developing a Decision Support Tool to Inform Louisiana’s Climate Change Adaptation Strategy
The South Central Climate Adaptation Science Center (SC CASC) provides decision-makers with the science, tools, and information they need to address the impacts of climate variability and change. They support multi-institutional and stakeholder-driven approaches to assessing the impacts of climate change, with a research focus on ecosystems, water, drought, wildfires, and climate projections.
South Central CASC
South Central CASC
Learn more about the South Central Climate Adaptation Science Center below.
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Climate Adaptation Technical Services (CATS)
CASC Climate Adaptation Technical Services (CATS) is a new, multi-year pilot effort to respond to management needs on climate adaptation. The program provides partners with tailored climate adaptation science, advice, and training to help them rapidly incorporate climate adaptation science into planning and decision making. Overview The CATS team seeks to learn, through iterative...
A New Tool for Monitoring Vegetation Water Use and Efficiency to Support Sustainable Agroecosystem Management
Oklahoma and Texas are facing significant future water shortages that threaten farming and ranching communities. Though conservation-based management practices are being implemented across the states, there are inadequate tools for monitoring vegetation water use efficiency in real time. Researchers supported by this South Central CASC project will develop a web-based tool using high...
Co-Creating Solutions with Tribal Nations for Drought Resilience and Cultural Agroecosystem Preservation
Native American agroecosystems, crucial to cultural identity, face threats from an increasing frequency and duration of severe droughts, which affect ancestral crop production and seed sustainability. Researchers supported by this South Central CASC project will collaborate with Indigenous horticulturalists to design and test whether wastewater gardens can help sustain crop seed...
Coastal Wetland Dynamics and Impacts on Hurricane Flood Risk along the Texas Gulf Coast in a Changing Climate
Wetlands along the Gulf Coast are crucial for reducing hurricane-induced flooding and as habitat for diverse wildlife, but are threatened by rising sea levels, climate change, and coastal development. Using remote sensing data, future climate data, and numerical models, researchers from this South Central CASC-supported project will collaborate with local expert groups to create data and...
Identifying Opportunities to Strengthen Climate Resilience in Flood-Prone Urban Communities in Harris County, Texas
Project Overview Flooding in urban centers caused by increasingly severe storms has led to massive economic, social, and ecological damage. Researchers supported by this South Central CASC project will examine flood vulnerability and mitigation efforts in Harris County, Texas, currently home to the highest concentration of federally funded relocation projects in the country. The...
Linking Research and Stakeholder Engagement for Effective Wetland Conservation in a Changing Climate
Climate change threatens many functions of wetlands and habitat connectivity for migratory shorebirds who use wetlands across the Southern Great Plains. Researchers supported by this South Central CASC project will survey stakeholders in the region, project climate impacts on wetland-dependent birds, and create tools for conservation planning (e.g., ranking wetland importance to...
Optimizing Invasive Plant Management in Grasslands with Remote Sensing and Climate Sciences
Tallgrass prairies in the U.S. Southern Great Plains are threatened by the aggressive invasive plant Lespedeza cuneata, and climate change is expected to affect its spread in complex ways. Researchers supported by this South Central CASC project will use remote sensing, climate science, and ecological modelling to detect the plant, identify climate factors driving its spread, and...
Water Management Decision Support in the Red River Basin
The combination of drought and increasing water demands are stressing water resources in the Red River Basin of Oklahoma and Texas. USGS-supported scientists have developed decision support tools to identify the most cost-effective water conservation alternatives across the Red River basin. The models help resource managers identify conservation strategies that maximize outcomes for Great Plains...
A Fresh Set of Tools: New Information for Managing Fisheries During Changes in River Discharge
The Bonnet Carré spillway (BCS) is a flood-control structure along the Lower Mississippi River designed to prevent flooding in the city of New Orleans by diverting excess water into the nearby Lake Pontchartrain estuary. Alarmingly, the BCS was opened as many times over the past decade (2011–2020) as it had been over the six prior decades combined (1951–2010), with devastating effects on...
An Action Plan for Cultural Resource Climate Adaptation Research and Funding
The Gulf of America coast of Louisiana and Texas faces threats from increasingly destructive extreme weather, heat, subsidence, and coastal erosion. Inland areas also face stronger storms, floods, and shifts in land development patterns. Increasing drought and extreme heat in Texas and New Mexico also exacerbate fires and floods. All of these regions are culturally rich, rapidly changing...
Coastal Indigenous Fisheries Assessment (CIFA) Using Archaeological and Ecological Perspectives
Many inland bodies of water in western Louisiana are receiving too much sediment and nutrient pollution from upstream which has caused declines in the health of many fisheries. These bodies of water include many traditional lake-based fisheries of the Chitimacha Tribe of Louisiana (CTL), and fisheries used by visitors, providing critical tourism and economic development dollars to the...
Creating the Next Generation of Climate Projections for the South-Central United States
The south-central U.S. has a unique and complex topography that results in a strong precipitation gradient from the arid west to the humid east. Stakeholders and partners of the South Central CASC require climate projections about how these conditions may change to provide critical information for impact assessments and climate adaptation planning efforts related to their unique needs...