Landscapes

The California Coast has hundreds of tree groves where dual management practices aim to reduce the risk of fire and to conserve habitat for overwintering monarch butterflies. As the climate changes, longer high-intensity droughts can increase mortality and/or limb loss in grove trees which causes an accumulation of fire-prone fuels. Moreover, these trees provide the critical habitat for

Coastal wetland loss is a serious concern along the northern Gulf of America, especially in Texas and Louisiana where rates of wetland loss and relative sea-level rise are among the highest in the world, extreme storms are becoming more frequent, and flooding events are intensifying. Because coastal wetlands of the northern Gulf Coast provide numerous ecosystem services, including...

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) manages the largest area of public lands in the United States. Decision-making on BLM lands is complex because managers have to balance diverse, sometimes conflicting, resources, uses, and values. Land managers are more likely to achieve long-term land management goals and balance multiple desired uses and values across public landscapes when their...

Cherokee Peoples have had a sustained presence in the southern Appalachians over the past 12,000 years, with a peak population of about 250,000 people inhabiting approximately 32 million hectares across Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky, West Virginia, Virginia, and the Carolinas. Early contact with European settlers caused drastic population declines and land loss, due to disease...

Wildfire, drought, and insects are reshaping forests in the Western United States in a manner that is being exacerbated by warming temperatures. Disturbance events such as these can significantly alter the amount of land that is covered by forest in an area or region. Consequently, changes in forest cover from disturbance can impact water runoff conditions leading to dangerous flooding...

The nursery industry grows, markets, and sells plants for ecological restoration as well as urban and suburban landscaping. The Northeast U.S. is a patchwork of small, mostly private land holdings, where the choices of nursery professionals influence the composition of current and future ecosystems. Unfortunately, the nursery industry focuses predominantly on non-native plants. This...

Vegetation transformations after wildfires are a growing issue for forest and shrubland managers in the Inland Pacific Northwest. Severe fires combined with persistent drought and invasive species can slow or prevent the recovery of burned forests and shrublands to their pre-fire states, resulting in ecological, economic, and cultural losses. Forests may be converted to shrub fields or...

Steep, mountainous watersheds, dramatic climate gradients, and tight links between the land and sea are common features of both the Pacific Islands and Southeast Alaska. In these "ridge-to-reef" and “icefield-to-ocean" ecosystems, environmental changes that occur at higher elevations have downstream impacts on the waters below. Today, these two ecosystems are undergoing changes in...

The Greater Yellowstone Area (GYA) is an iconic landscape with national parks, iconic species like grizzly bears and elk, and over 11,500 square miles of forest. While fires are a natural part of the GYA, climate change and land management legacies are increasing the frequency and size of severe fires. Climate change interacts with these fires to shift conifer forests to non-forested...

High elevation red spruce forests are among the most iconic and visited natural communities in the High Alleghenies of the Central Appalachian Mountains. These ecosystems provide many services such as clean water and carbon sequestration, as well as habitat for species of high conservation concern, i.e., the eastern brook trout, the northern goshawk, and the northern flying squirrel...

Over the last half-century, grassland bird populations have declined far more than any other bird group in North America. This is because native grasslands were largely replaced with croplands, and many remaining prairies are degraded. Land managers and conservation organizations are racing to preserve and restore these ecosystems to stem further loss of grassland birds. Given limited...

Project Overview Climate change threatens keystone plant communities and insects that make up the base of functional food webs, but restoration practitioners struggle to factor climate considerations into restoration projects for a number of practical reasons. Researchers supported by this National CASC project will create a trait-based plant vulnerability assessment to guide restoration