Wildlife and Plants
Wildlife and Plants
Wildlife and plants face many threats from climate change, including increased competition from invasive species, loss of access to freshwater, and shifting air and water temperatures. The CASCs study how fish, wildlife, and plants are responding to climate change and how resource managers can promote species' adaptation and resilience in the face of shifting conditions. Browse our projects.
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Webinar: Fish Habitat and Climate Change: A Coarse Scale National Assessment with Finer Scale Assessment of Midwestern Streams and Lakes
View this webinar to learn more about the effects of climate change on fish habitats in the Midwest.
Webinar: Fish Habitat and Climate Change: Implications for the Desert Southwest, Midwestern Smallmouth Bass, and Eastern Brook Trout
View this webinar to learn more about how climate change affects fish distributions in the United States Southwest, East, and Midwest regions.
Webinar: Breaking Traditional Barriers to Model Climate Change and Land Use Impacts on Freshwater Mussels
Check out this webinar to learn more about anthropogenic reasons for the decline in freshwater mussels.
Webinar: Preliminary Results from “La Florida” - A Land of Flowers on a Latitude of Deserts
View this webinar to learn more about climate modeling techniques used by ecologists to predict the impacts of climate change on Floridian wildlife.
Assessing Climate Change Impacts on Pacific Lamprey and Pacific Eulachon
For thousands of years, Pacific lamprey and Pacific eulachon have been important traditional foods for Native American tribes of the Columbia River Basin and coastal areas of Oregon and Washington. These fish have large ranges – spending part of their lives in the ocean and part in freshwater streams – and they require specific environmental conditions to survive, migrate, and reproduce...
Assessing Science Needs and Conservation Decisions to Inform the Southeast Conservation Adaptation Strategy (SECAS)
A priority of the Southeast Climate Science Center (SECSC) is to support the planning and implementation of a Southeast Conservation Adaptation Strategy (SECAS). This project examined the decision making context, decision making process, and management planning associated with the restoration of open pine ecosystems in the Southeast. To better understand the planning practice associated...
Assessing the Vulnerability of Grassland Bird Populations to Climate Change
Prairie ecosystems and the grassland birds that rely on them for habitat may be particularly vulnerable to rapid changes in climate. Extensive portions of prairie have already been lost due to agriculture and urbanization, and as a result grassland birds have declined more than any other bird group in the last four decades. Now, climate change could exacerbate existing threats to these...
Building Collaboration in the Klamath Basin Through Tribal Youth Internships
The Klamath Basin in Oregon and California is home to a rich abundance of natural and cultural resources, many of which are vulnerable to present and future climate change. Climate change also threatens traditional ways of life for tribal communities, who have deep connections to the region. This project sought to increase the effectiveness of regional climate change adaptation and...
Capacity Building in the North-Central U.S.: Tribal Engagement, Climate Training, and PhenoCam Deployment
Climate change is poised to alter natural systems, the frequency of extreme weather, and human health and livelihoods. In order to effectively prepare for and respond to these challenges in the north-central region of the U.S., people must have the knowledge and tools to develop plans and adaptation strategies. The objective of this project was to build stakeholders’ capacity to respond...
Development of the Climate Registry for the Assessment of Vulnerability (CRAVe): A Searchable, Public Online Tool for Understanding Species and Habitat Vulnerability
The USGS National Climate Change and Wildlife Science Center (NCCWSC), as part of the work of the Interagency Land Management Adaptation Group (ILMAG), initiated a project in 2013 to develop plans for a searchable, public registry on climate change vulnerability assessments. Member agencies from the USGCRP Adaptation Science Work Group, the Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies (AFWA...
Establishing a Foundation for Understanding Climate Change Impacts on Coastal Wetland Ecosystems
Coastal wetlands are one of the most economically valuable ecosystems in the world. In the United States, the ecosystem services provided by wetlands are worth billions of dollars and include flood protection, erosion control, seafood, water quality enhancement, carbon storage, recreation, and wildlife habitat. Unfortunately, these ecosystems are also highly sensitive to changing climate
Establishing Climate Change Vulnerability Rankings for Hawaiian Native Plants
Hawaiʻi is considered a worldwide biodiversity hotspot, with nearly 90 percent of its native plants found nowhere else in the world. However, about half of these native plants are imperiled by threats including human development, non-native species, and climate change. Through this project, scientists modeled the relative vulnerability of over 1,000 native plant species to the effects of...