Technical Support for Partners

The Interior Southwest (Arizona, Nevada, and Utah) is home to a vast and diverse geography consisting of deep canyons, great expanses of desert, mountain ranges, and forests, as well as diverse human communities. The majority of the land in these states is held by state, federal and tribal entities; and environmental changes pose challenges to the management of these public and tribal...

The Missouri River system is the life-blood of the American Midwest, providing critical water resources that drive the region’s agriculture, industry, hydroelectric power generation, and ecosystems. The basin has a long history of development and diversion of water resources, meaning that streamflow records that reflect natural, unmanaged flows over the past century have been rare. As a...

Grasslands are plant communities that have few or no trees, or have open canopies that allow for the development of a grassy groundcover. Grasslands in the southeastern U.S. support rare plant and animal species and in some cases qualify as global or regional hotspots of biodiversity. Yet the Southeast’s grasslands have been reduced by approximately 90% since European settlement, as the...

The Climate Science Support Platform is a network of NC CASC scientists and partners that provides climate science support to the NC CASC community of scientists and stakeholders through collaborative research and integration of diverse science expertise. In an effort to increase understanding of climate science and to identify stakeholders’ climate science needs, the Climate Science...

Climate change threatens many wildlife species across the Pacific Northwest. As the climate continues to change, wildlife managers are faced with the ever-increasing challenge of allocating scarce resources to conserve at-risk species, and require more information to prioritize sites for conservation. However, climate change will affect species differently in different places. In fact...

The North American Prairie Pothole Region (PPR) is an expansive region that covers parts of five Midwestern states and three Canadian provinces. This region contains millions of wetlands in which waterfowl breed and from which 50-80% of the continent's migratory ducks originate each year. Previous modeling efforts indicated that climate change would result in a shift of suitable...

Plants and animals undergo certain recurring life-cycle events, such as springtime flowering or migrations between summer and winter habitats, that are often strongly controlled by changes in environmental conditions, including climate. Because species interact, shifts in one species’ phenology can have cascading effects throughout entire food webs and ecosystems. Recent advances have...

Recent Warming This is an initiative to document and understand the science of recent climate warming in the region and implications for natural resources management. SW CASC researchers from Colorado State University, Scripps Institution of Oceanography at University of California-San Diego, and University of Arizona, and their partners, are identifying the extent to which temperature...

Low-lying public lands along the northern Gulf of America coast are vulnerable to sea-level rise. Coastal planners and resource managers in the region have requested customized information that can be used to concisely communicate local sea-level rise scenarios and identify potential impacts to the missions of management agencies. In this project, researchers will work with partners to...

Fisheries in the glacial lakes region of the upper Midwest are culturally, economically, and recreationally beneficial. Walleye, for instance, represent an important subsistence food source for some Wisconsin tribal nations and are also popular among recreational anglers. However, predicted ecological changes to these aquatic communities, such as an increase in invasive fish species, a...

Drought is a complex environmental hazard that impacts both ecological and social systems. Accounting for the role of human attitudes, institutions, and societal values in drought planning is important to help identify how various drought durations and severity may differentially affect social resilience to adequately respond to and manage drought impacts. While there have been...

The pine rockland ecosystem is found only in south Florida and the Bahamas and provides important habitat for numerous rare and endemic plants and animals. These include 18 species that are already federally listed as threatened or endangered and four other species petitioned for listing that are scheduled for development of Species Status Assessments (SSAs). Today, south Florida’s pine...