Water

As the impacts of climate change amplify, understanding the consequences for wetlands will be critical for their sustainable management and conservation, particularly in arid regions such as the Columbia Plateau. The depressional wetlands in this region (wetlands located in topographic depressions where water can accumulate) are an important source of surface water during the summer...

Climate change poses a variety of threats to biodiversity. Most efforts to assess the likely impacts of climate change on biodiversity try to rank species based on their vulnerability under changed environmental conditions. These efforts have generally not considered the ability of organisms to adjust their phenotype to the changing environment. Organisms can do this by one of two ways...

National Wildlife Refuges (NWRs) along the East Coast of the United States protect habitat for a host of wildlife species, while also offering storm surge protection, improving water quality, supporting nurseries for commercially important fish and shellfish, and providing recreation opportunities for coastal communities. Yet in the last century, coastal ecosystems in the eastern U.S...

Climate and land use change will strongly affect tropical island ecosystems and trust species (like migratory birds and threatened and endangered species). The risks of significant negative impacts are likely to be higher in these island systems than in many temperate regions of the world because of the limited size of their land masses, high numbers of species that only exist in...

On Hawai‘i’s mountains, cloud droplets, propelled by strong winds, are deposited on plants, where they accumulate and drip to the ground, adding water over and above that supplied by rainfall. Prior studies show that the amount of intercepted cloud water is substantial, and variable from place to place. Estimates of the spatial patterns of cloud water interception (CWI), the fog-related...

Inland fishes provide important ecosystem services to communities worldwide and are especially vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Fish respond to climate change in diverse and nuanced ways, which creates challenges for practitioners of fish conservation, climate change adaptation, and management. Although climate change is known to affect fish globally, a comprehensive online...

Better understanding of the overall fishery production in river systems around the world may influence general development policies and practices for aquatic systems and sustainable maintenance of an important protein source (particularly for poorer countries where fish are relatively readily available to the local human population). With this study, researchers worked to fill this...

The Gulf of Alaska is one of the most productive marine ecosystems on Earth, supporting salmon fisheries that alone provide large economic benefits to Southeast Alaska. The region also has a vibrant and growing tourism industry. Glaciers are central to many of the area’s natural processes and economic activities, but the rates of glacier loss in Alaska are among the highest on Earth...

Across the Southern Great Plains, increasing temperatures are expected to alter the hydrological functioning of the region by contributing to severe droughts, more intense rainfall events, and more severe flooding episodes. These changes could adversely affect human and ecological communities. The ability to better predict future changes in precipitation and the response of hydrologic...

Understanding how to manage scarce water during drought is one of the great challenges we face as a society, particularly for communities in the Rio Grande Basin. Severe drought coupled with human development have profoundly impacted the quantity and quality of water in the basin. Running through Colorado, New Mexico, Texas, and Mexico, the Rio Grande is a multi-national resource that is...

Beaches and marshes provide critical habitat for many species of concern, including the piping plover, a shorebird which is endangered in parts of its range and threatened in others. These coastal environments also support tourism and recreation, and provide important services such as protecting infrastructure from wave inundation. Extreme storms and sea-level rise can alter these...

The Salt and Verde river basins in northeastern Arizona are a vital source of fresh water for the greater Phoenix metropolitan area and for two Native American tribes who rely on the basins’ natural resources for their livelihoods. The region depends on winter rain and snow to replenish the river basins’ water supply. Atmospheric rivers – long, narrow channels in the atmosphere that...