Science Tools for Managers

The Northwest Climate Conference (formerly called the Pacific Northwest Climate Science Conference) is the premier climate science event for the region, providing a forum for researchers and practitioners to share scientific results and discuss challenges and solutions related to the impacts of climate change on people, natural resources, and infrastructure in the Northwest. Conference participant

The goals of this project were to: (1) produce a state-of-the-art assessment and synthesis of climate change projections, impacts, vulnerabilities, adaptive capacity, and prospects for mitigation and adaptation actions in the Southwest in support of the regional contribution to the National Climate Assessment; (2) develop an inventory of federal partners and stakeholders involved with climate adap

The purpose of this project was to (1) provide an internally-­consistent set of downscaled projections across the western U.S., (2) include information about projection uncertainty, and (3) assess projected changes of hydrologic extremes. These objectives were designed to address decision support needs for climate adaptation and resource management actions. Specifically, understanding of uncertain

Federal land managers need an adaptive management framework to accommodate changing conditions and that allows them to effectively link the appropriate science to natural resource management decision-making across jurisdictional boundaries. FRAME-SIMPPLLE is a collaborative modeling process designed to accomplish this goal by coupling the adaptive capabilities of the SIMPPLLE modeling system with

The Southeastern U.S. spans broad ranges of physiographic settings and contains a wide variety of aquatic systems that provide habitat for hundreds of endemic aquatic species that pose interesting challenges and opportunities for managers of aquatic resources, particularly in the face of climate change. For example, the Southeast contains the southernmost populations of the eastern brook trout and

Conservation and natural resource managers require information about potential future climate changes for the areas they manage, in terms that are relevant for the specific biotic and environmental resources likely to be affected by climate change. We produced a suite of data sets that provide managers with climate and climate-derived data and a visualization approach that allows managers to map w

To develop effective adaptive management plans, conservation and natural resource managers need to know how climate change will affect the species and ecosystems they manage. This project provides managers with information about potential climate change effects on species and managed areas in the Pacific Northwest. We evaluated projected changes in climate, vegetation, and species distributions th

This project brought together a team of researchers from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and universities to develop a comprehensive web-based dataset of high-resolution (or ‘downscaled’) climate change projections, to enable scientists and decision-makers to better assess climate related ecosystem impacts. Currently, scientists and resource managers often find it difficult to use downscaled cli

This project produced long simulations (multi-decadal to multi-century in scale) of past, present, and future regional climate at a grid spacing of 50 kilometers (km) over North America and at a grid spacing of 15 km over western and eastern North America. These model runs were the first attempt to achieve coordinated, high-resolution downscaling with such wide geographic and temporal coverage. Th

In semi-arid regions, riparian and wetland ecosystems function as important migratory and breeding habitats and add significantly to local and regional biodiversity; however, these ecosystems are increasingly threatened by climate change and the potential synergistic effects of increasing demand for water and invasion by exotic species. As a continuation of our inaugural USGS National Climate Chan

The San Francisco Bay estuary contains the largest remaining expanse of tidal salt marshes in the western U.S. These marshes are home to a variety of federal and state protected species, such as the California clapper rail, California black rail, and the salt marsh harvest mouse. The estuary is also located on the Pacific Flyway, and is an important site for migrating and wintering birds. As clima