Climate & Fire & Adaptation

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Forests and water yield: A synthesis of disturbance effects on streamflow and snowpack in western coniferous forests

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In coniferous western forests, recent widespread tree mortality provided opportunities to test the long-held theory that forest cover loss increases water yield. We reviewed 78 studies of hydrologic response to standing-replacing (severe wildfire, harvest) or nonstand-replacing (drought, insects, low-severity wildfire) disturbances, and reassessed the question: Does water yield or snowpack increase after forest disturbance? Collective results indicate that postdisturbance streamflow and snowpack may increase, not change, or even decrease, and illuminate factors that may help improve predictability of hydrologic response to disturbance. Contrary to the expectation that tree mortality reduces evapotranspiration, making more water available as runoff, postdisturbance evapotranspiration sometimes increased—particularly following nonstand-replacing disturbance—
because of (a) increased evaporation resulting from higher subcanopy radiation, and (b) increased transpiration resulting from rapid postdisturbance growth. Postdisturbance hydrologic response depends on vegetation structure, climate, and topography, and new hypotheses continue to be formulated and tested in this rapidly evolving discipline.

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Society for Range Management- 2020 Virtual Annual Meeting

Conference website.

The Annual SRM meeting will be virtual. The meeting theme is “Rangelands – New Frontiers” and we hope to highlight many new ideas and endeavors occurring on rangelands across the globe. Call for sessions is now open.

Imagine the great opportunities this digital alternative will offer to gather people from everywhere who love rangelands to learn about stewardship of these amazing landscapes. The 2021 Annual Meeting will include the familiar oral presentations, posters, symposia, workshops, and campfire conversations that are a part of traditional SRM meetings. The 2021 Event will also include exceptional plenary sessions, interactive committee meetings, SRM awards and business sessions, plus opportunities to engage with colleagues and fellow SRM members. As we enter this new frontier, start thinking about how to show others what you and your organization are doing on the ground.

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Validating climate-change refugia: Emperical bottom-up approaches to support management

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Efforts to conserve biodiversity increasingly focus on identifying climate- change refugia – areas relatively buffered from contem-porary climate change over time that enable species persistence. Identification of refugia typically includes modeling the distribu-tion of a species’ current habitat and then extrapolating that distribution given projected changes in temperature and precipita-tion, or by mapping topographic features that buffer species from regional climate extremes. However, the function of those hypothesized refugia must be validated (or challenged) with independent data not used in the initial identification of the refugia. Although doing so would facilitate the incorporation of climate- change refugia into conservation and management decision mak-ing, a synthesis of validation methods is currently lacking. We reviewed the literature and defined four methods to test refugia predictions. We propose that such bottom- up approaches can lead to improved protected- area designations and on- the- ground management actions to reduce influences from non- climate stressors within potential refugia.

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Disturbance refugia within mosaics of forest fire, drought, and insect outbreaks

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Disturbance refugia – locations that experience less severe or frequent disturbances than the surrounding landscape – provide a framework to highlight not only where and why these biological legacies persist as adjacent areas change but also the value of those legacies in sustaining biodiversity. Recent studies of disturbance refugia in forest ecosystems have focused primarily on fire, with a growing recognition of important applications to land management. Given the wide range of disturbance processes in forests, developing a broader understanding of disturbance refugia is important for scientists and land managers, particularly in the con-text of anthropogenic climate change. We illustrate the framework of disturbance refugia through the individual and interactive effects of three prominent forest disturbance agents: fire, drought, and insect outbreaks. We provide examples of disturbance ref-ugia and related applications to natural resource management in western North America, demonstrate methods for characterizing refugia, identify research priorities, and discuss why a more comprehensive definition of disturbance refugia is relevant to conser-vation globally

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Finding common ground: Agreement on increasing wildfire risk crosses political lines

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Wildfire is a growing threat in the western US, driven by high fuel loads, a warming climate, and rising human activity in the wildland urban interface. Diverse stakeholders must collaborate to mitigate risk and adapt to changing conditions. Communication strategies in collaborative efforts may be most effective if they align with local perspectives on wildfire and climate change. We investigate drivers of residents’ subjective perceptions regarding both issues in eastern Oregon using 2018 survey data, and examine objective evidence regarding local fuel loads, climate, and wildfire to identify trends and contextualize residents’ perceptions. We find that sociopolitical identity strongly predicts climate change beliefs, and that identity and climate beliefs predict both perceptions of recent past climate and likely future trends. Political influences on climate perceptions are strongest among people whose friends mostly belong to the same party. In contrast, perceptions about future wildfire risks are largely independent of climate-change beliefs, and of individual or peer-group politics. Most people accurately perceive the rising frequency of large wildfires, and expect this trend to continue. Decision makers have an opportunity to engage diverse stakeholders in developing policies to mitigate increasing wildfire risk without invoking climate change, which remains politically polarizing in some communities.

Webinar, video, audio icon

Aspen ecology and conservation: The changing landscape of a keystone system

Webinar recording.

This webinar presentation lays the groundwork for an in-depth symposium at the upcoming 2020 Natural Areas Conference that will address wildfire, herbivory, climate warming, development pressures, cross-boundary management, and regional monitoring of aspen in the Western United States.

Webinar, video, audio icon

FACE (Future Avoided Cost Explorer): User demo

Webinar recording.

This webinar walks through the newly launched Future Avoided Cost Explorer (FACE:Hazards) with a basic demonstration of the tool’s features and answer questions about exploring the study data. This resource, provided by the State of Colorado, aims to help decision-makers determine the economic risks of future hazards – including flood, drought, and wildfire – on select sectors of Colorado’s economy.

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Climate Engine – Cloud computing and visualization of climate and remote sensing data

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Climate Engine uses Google’s Earth Engine for on-demand processing of satellite and climate data via a web browser.

Features include:

  • On-demand value and anomaly mapping
  • Time series and statistical summaries
  • Downloadable results in GeoTIFF format, and time series results as .csv or .xlsx format
  • Share map or time series results with web URL links
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Long-term persistence of aspen in snowdrift-dependent ecosystems

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This study evaluated the potential for climate change and drought to reduce or eliminate isolated aspen communities in southwestern Idaho. We used a landscape simulation model integrated with inputs from an empirically derived biogeochemical model of growth, and a species distribution model of regeneration to forecast how changes in climate, declining snowpack, and competition with a conifer species is likely to affect aspen occupancy over the next 85-years. We found that simulated reductions in snowpack depth (and associated increases in climatic water deficit) caused a reduction in aspen persistence; aspen occupancy was reduced under all high emissions climate scenarios. Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii) occupancy also declined under all future climates. Aspen regeneration declined over the course of all simulations, with an ensemble ratio of mortality/establishment increasing over the course of both low and high emissions climate scenarios. Climate-induced mortality of aspen clones increased in frequency under all climate scenarios and, under the most severe emissions scenarios, contributed to a substantial decline of aspen cover. Our research suggests that snowbanks will become an important determinant of long-term persistence of aspen under changing climate in the region.

Webinar, video, audio icon

Southwest climate vulnerability

Webinar recording.

Description: Webinar discusses the vulnerability of southwestern landscapes to climate change. Climate change has created new challenges for resource managers with broad and often complex effects that make it difficult to accurately predict and design management options to minimize undesirable impacts.To address a gap in climate vulnerability assessments available for the Southwest, Friggens and Triepke developed a modeling study for all major upland ecosystem types at spatial and thematic scales applicable to local administrative units and landscapes.

Vulnerability was determined by comparing the pre-1990 climate with the 2090 forecasted climate for all lands in Arizona and New Mexico. Results suggest the majority of lands in Arizona and New Mexico are highly vulnerable to future climate impacts, but that vulnerability varies considerably by location and ecosystem type.

Presenters: Megan Friggens, RMRS ecologist and Jack Triepke, FS southwestern region

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