Joint Project Descriptions

Ponderosa pine expands into mixed-grass prairie at Wind Cave National Park, South Dakota

Monitoring environmental conditions in sage grouse habitat in Charles Russell National Wildlife Refuge in northern Montana.
Conceptual model of sage-grouse demographics in relation to climate change.

Greater Sage-Grouse face many dilemmas across the West. The most obvious, and severe, is habitat destruction such as native sagebrush and grasslands being converted to wheat and barley production. Some problems are indirect such as the incursion of oil wells into prime wintering habitat. Still others are hypothesized such as the effect of climate change on weather during the summertime when chicks are hatching. Multiple, interrelated causes determine Sage-Grouse numbers and the locations they use across the landscape. Our research team, led by the USGS Northern Rocky Mountain Science Center, conceived this project based on the priorities of the Great Northern and the Plains and Prairie Pothole Landscape Conservation Cooperatives. We are focused on (1)providing workshops to foster our collaboration and interpretation of climate information, (2)developing a sage-steppe habitat map, and (3)suggesting recommendations for a joint adaptive management framework.We are developing a collaboration among federal land managers, state wildlife biologists, and scientists, the latter especially from the U.S. Geological Survey, NOAA, and the NCCSC university consortium, including the Montana Institute on Ecosystems at Montana State University. The purpose of the partnership is to build a long term framework for implementing adaptive management; at its most basic level, this is conducting management as an experiment and using conceptual models for evaluation. However, it is neither simple nor easy to implement, and doing so for landscape conservation of grouse is no exception. A missing ingredient has been a science-based map of sage steppe habitats. This is to be constructed by the Montana Natural Heritage Program and the University of Montana using satellite imagery to be intensively field validated in a pilot effort centered on Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge, in Northern Montana. Climate affects both the demographics of grouse and the condition and long-term viability of their habitats. The landscape in which we will be focusing has relatively healthy populations of Greater Sage-Grouse, and it is hypothesized to be one epicenter from which big sagebrush might expand under a changing climate in the Great Plains and Intermountain West. We will examine what might be limiting grouse numbers, investigating components of weather patterns in relation to projected climate change and recent downscaled data. This will consider precipitation and temperature, as well as derived variables such as evapotranspiration and soil moisture. Our team’s climatologists will not only deliver pertinent data, but also translate that information in the context of grouse management. Our climate information, habitat layers, and Sage-Grouse demographic efforts must be relevant to the land management agencies. So, we are working with both human dimension scientists and ecological modelers to assess what on-the-ground actions and decisions are key to Sage-Grouse managers. This will include how managers perceive activities such as fire control, cheatgrass invasion, and cattle grazing affect grouse and their habitats. This component relates closely to conceptualizing the adaptive management framework.

Exposed sandbars and cottonwood and willow stands on the South Platte River, Fort Lupton, Colorado, July 2009.  Photo by Laura Perry.

Throughout western North America, native forests along rivers (riparian forests) are dominated by cottonwood and willow trees. These forests provide critical habitat for diverse birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians and insects, and provide food and shade for fish and other instream aquatic animals. Our research is aimed at predicting effects of climate change on cottonwood and willow seedling establishment in western riparian forests.Cottonwood and willow seedling establishment along rivers is tightly coupled to the timing of peak streamflows. Currently, cottonwoods and willows tend to release their seeds during or just after spring peak streamflows, which increases the chance that the short-lived seeds will settle on bare, moist soil created by flooding and exposed by flood recession, and high enough above the river channel to avoid ice and flood damage. Warming associated with climate change, however, is leading to both earlier spring peak streamflows and earlier seed dispersal. Therefore, with changing climate, cottonwood and willow seed dispersal could occur substantially earlier or later than spring peak streamflows, potentially reducing seedling establishment and in turn reducing riparian wildlife habitat quality.Our research objective is to predict changes in the relative timing of cottonwood and willow seed dispersal and spring peak streamflows, and effects on seedling establishment, under projected climate change scenarios. We will link climate-driven models of seed dispersal timing, streamflow hydrology, and seedling establishment. Although cottonwood and willow regeneration is important for riparian wildlife habitat across western North America, we are focusing on the upper South Platte River Basin as a case study area. Our results will help land managers to anticipate future changes in riparian wildlife habitat quality, and potentially to respond by actively revegetating high-priority riparian areas or by working with water management agencies to schedule dam releases that favor cottonwood and willow establishment.

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Climate scientists often develop models to predict how climate may change in an effort to inform other models that predict how these changes may impact conservation targets. However, these models are not often translated into information that is accessible and useful for land managers and conservation decision-makers.  Climate scientists need better information about what climate information is desired by decision-makers so that their outputs will more effectively meet decision-maker information needs; and conversely, decision-makers need better information about how a changingclimate may affect their management alternatives and conservation objectives.  Land managers within the Plains and Prairie Potholes Landscape Conservation Cooperative (PPP-LCC) must make complex decisions that impact multiple conservation objectives in the face of considerable uncertainty.  Thus, members of the PPP-LCC need decision-relevant information about how climate will change and how these changes will affect their conservation objectives, management alternatives, and consequences of their management actions.  These needs can be met by the North Central Climate Science Center (NC CSC) and the NOAA Climate Prediction and Projection Pilot Platform (NCPP).
The objectives of this project are to (1) build connections between the PPP-LCC, the NC CSC, and the NCPP to facilitate a link between the end users and the producers of climate information, as well as to identify gaps between available and desired information, and (2) develop an understandable and transportable framework that will enable the PPP-LCC to prioritize their climate science needs and articulate those needs to the NC CSC and the NCPP. This project will use a decision analysis process to bring together members of the PPP-LCC and climate experts from the NC CSC and the NCPP to develop an integrated conceptual model of the interactions between climate change, land use change, and conservation and adaptation in the Plains and Prairie Potholes (PPR) region of the PPP-LCC. Quantifying aspects of this conceptual model will allow estimation of the value of climate information, thus enabling the PPP-LCC to prioritize their climate science needs.  By relating climate uncertainties to the prevailing land use and socioeconomic issues in the region, the value of information analysis will produce a framework that will enable climate scientists to (1) guide the PPP-LCC toward currently available climate information and present this information in a way that will be useful to decision makers within the LCC, and (2) design future research to address remaining key uncertainties affecting conservation decisions in the region.