National CASC
National CASC
Featured News
Creating a New Framework for Integrating the Role of Biodiversity Changes into Ecosystem Services
Creating a New Framework for Integrating the Role of Biodiversity Changes into Ecosystem Services
Featured Project
Building Capacity for Actionable and Interdisciplinary Science across the Climate Adaptation Science Center Network
Building Capacity for Actionable and Interdisciplinary Science across the Climate Adaptation Science Center Network
The National Climate Adaptation Science Center (NCASC) generates science and decision-making tools to help our nation respond to the effects of climate change on fish, wildlife, ecosystems, and communities by building relationships with resource managers and conservation practitioners to support effective climate adaptation planning across regional, national, and international scales.
National CASC
National CASC
Learn more about the National Climate Adaptation Science Center below.
Filter Total Items: 164
USGS-USFS Partnership to Help Managers Evaluate Conservation Strategies for Aquatic Ecosystems Based on Future Climate Projections
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...
A Visualization Approach for Projecting Future Climate Distributions in North America
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...
Assessing the Vulnerability of Species and Ecosystems to Projected Future Climate Change in the Pacific Northwest
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...
Can Camouflage Keep up with Climate Change? Connecting Climate Projections to Adaptation for the Snowshoe Hare
Snowshoe hares are the primary food source of the federally threatened Canada lynx. In western Montana for example, snowshoe hare make up 96% of lynx diet. In fact, hares are critical players in forest ecosystems because most carnivores prey on them. The main way that snowshoe hares escape predation is through camouflage. In response to changes in day length, snowshoe hares molt...
Development of the Geo Data Portal to Make Climate Projections and Scientific Data More Accessible to Users
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 Climate Change Modeling for the Conterminous United States (National Assessment)
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...
Forecasting Climate Change Induced Effects on Recreational and Commercial Fish Populations in the Great Lakes
Great Lakes fishery managers and stakeholders have little information regarding how climate change could affect the management and conservation of fish populations, including those of high recreational and commercial value. Scientists from the US Geological Survey (USGS) worked closely with state management agencies and the National Wildlife Federation to complete several objectives that...
Forecasting Climate Impacts on Wildlife of the Arid Southwest at Regional and Local Scales Using Downscaled Climate Models
Climate change has emerged as a key environmental concern of the 21st century and a major challenge for land and wildlife managers. Although scientists have made tremendous progress in predicting the impact of climate change on a regional and global scale, drilling down such projections to a locally applicable form has been difficult. A major project of the US Geological Survey's (USGS)...
Forecasting the Effects of Land-Use and Climate Change on Wildlife Communities and Habitats in the Lower Mississippi Valley
This project built on an existing regional conservation partnership to use the most recent downscaled climate model projections to forecast the likely impacts of climate change to species and ecosystems in the Lower Mississippi Valley (LMV). The objective of this work was to develop and test ecological and biological models to facilitate regional adaptive management of wildlife resources...
How will Florida’s Biodiversity Respond to Climate Change?
Florida is home to 50 endangered species, 23 National Wildlife Refuges, 9 national parks, and 119 state parks. Straddling both temperate and sub-tropical zones, the state is also unique in that it is a long and narrow peninsula, surrounded on three sides by warm water, creating a dynamic environment. The impacts of climate change, such as sea-level rise and severe storms, threaten the...
How will Mammals in the Alpine Zone of the Sierra Nevada Mountains Respond to Future Climate?
Our study addresses the general question of the degree to which wildlife species can adapt to, or possibly even modify, effects from climate change. We focused on five species of mammals in the alpine zone of the Sierra Nevada mountain range, including the federally endangered Sierra Nevada bighorn sheep and the American pika, a species recently proposed for listing due to the loss of...
Impacts of Climate Change and Melting Glaciers on Coastal Ecosystems in the Gulf of Alaska
As glaciers melt from climate change, their contents – namely, large quantities of freshwater, sediment, and nutrients – are slowly released into coastal ecosystems. This project addressed the impacts of melting glaciers on coastal ecosystems in the Copper River region of the Gulf of Alaska, which is home to several commercially important fisheries. Researchers examined how glacial...