SEARCH · Geology Reports

Results for “Climate”

Search indexed USGS publications on groundwater, aquifers, geologic maps, mineral resources and earthquakes. Explore source records by subject and place.

SourceResearch connectionFrom yearThrough year

Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.

At least 703 records · Page 39Linked to original sources

USGS2013

Present weather and climate: evolving conditions

This chapter assesses weather and climate variability and trends in the Southwest, using observed climate and paleoclimate records. It analyzes the last 100 years of climate variability in comparison to the last 1,000 years, and links the important features of evolving climate conditions to river flow variability in four of the region’s major drainage basins. The chapter closes with an assessment of the monitoring and scientific research needed to increase confidence in understanding when climate episodes, events, and phenomena are attributable to human-caused climate change.

Book chapter↗

USGS2007

Monitoring alpine plants for climate change: The North American GLORIA Project

Alpine Environments Globally, alpine environments are hotspots of biodiversity, often harboring higher diversity of plant species than corresponding areas at lower elevations. These regions are also likely to experience more severe and rapid change in climate than lowlands under conditions of anthropogenic warming (Theurillat & Guisan 2001; Halloy & Mark 2003; Pickering & Armstrong 2003). Such climatic effects are already being documented by instrumental monitoring in the few places in western North America where long-term climate stations are available at high elevations. New sites are being planned (see GCOS article, pg 15). Climate Change is augmenting concern for alpine vegetation because available habitat diminishes at increasingly higher elevations. This creates an “elevational squeeze,” whereby the geometry of mountain peaks means that escape routes to cooler environments uphill are dead ends for migrating alpine species. While monitoring and modeling efforts have begun to elucidate climate of alpine environments in North America, very little is known about corresponding responses of alpine plant species to changing climate. Indeed, for many mountain regions in the West, little information exists even about alpine plant distribution and abundance.

Mountain Views↗

USGS2018

Historical and projected climate in the northern Rockies Region

Climate influences the ecosystem services we obtain from forest and rangelands. Climate is described by the long-term characteristics of precipitation, temperature, wind, snowfall, and other measures of weather that occur over a long period in a particular place, and is typically expressed as long-term average conditions. Resource management practices are implemented day-to-day in response to weather conditions; resource management strategies and plans are developed using our understanding of climate. With the need to consider climate change in planning and management, an understanding of how climate may change in the future in a resource management planning area is valuable. In this chapter, we present the current understanding of potential changes in climate for the Forest Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture (USFS) Northern Region and the Greater Yellowstone Area (GYA), hereafter called the Northern Rockies region.

Idaho, Montana, Wyoming↗

USGS2016

Considerations for building climate-based species distribution models

Climate plays an important role in the distribution of species. A given species may adjust to new conditions in-place, move to new areas with suitable climates, or go extinct. Scientists and conservation practitioners use mathematical models to predict the effects of future climate change on wildlife and plan for a biodiverse future. This 8-page fact sheet written by David N. Bucklin, Mathieu Basille, Stephanie S. Romañach, Laura A. Brandt, Frank J. Mazzotti, and James I. Watling and published by the Department of Wildlife Ecology and Conservation explains how, with a better understanding of species distribution models, we can predict how species may respond to climate change. The models alone cannot tell us how a certain species will actually respond to changes in climate, but they can inform conservation planning that aims to allow species to both adapt in place and (for those that are able to) move to newly suitable areas. Such planning will likely minimize loss of biodiversity due to climate change.

Report↗

USGS2017

Vulnerabilities to climate change of Massachusetts animal species of greatest conservation need

Over the last decade, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts has addressed the potential and actual impacts of climate change on state flora and fauna. The state’s involvement began in 2007 when, led by the Division of Fisheries and Wildlife (DFW) and assisted by Manomet Center for Con-servation Research, it carried out one of the first habitat vulnerability assessments in North America (Manomet, 2010). The new methods and processes that resulted were later applied to vulnerability assessments in North America and elsewhere. In 2011, the state assisted the North-eastern Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies (NEAFWA) in organizing and leading a pio-neering three-year, thirteen-state research effort to evaluate the vulnerabilities of fish and wild-life habitats to climate change in the northeast, from Maine south to West Virginia (NEAFWA, 2012). This focus on climate change vulnerabilities led to three important early realizations: (1) simply categorizing and scoring vulnerabilities might not lead to better conservation outcomes. It was vital to also understand why some resources were more or less vulnerable to climate change in order to identify potential intervention points on which conservation actions and strategies could be based. (2) simply producing research results was not enough; these results had to be cast as specific conservation actions. Moreover (3), these actions needed to be communicated in a useful form to conservation “actors”, such as state agencies, land trusts, land managers, etc. These real-izations led to the next step on the Commonwealth’s journey to effective conservation in an age of climate change - the Massachusetts Wildlife Climate Action Tool (CAT).

Report↗

USGS2019

Early career climate communications and networking

The Department of the Interior and the U.S. Geological Survey have made it a priority to train the next generation of scientists and resource managers. The Climate Adaptation Science Centers (CSC) and consortium institutions are working to contribute to this initiative by supporting and building a network of students across the U.S. interested in the climate sciences and climate adaptation. The purpose of this project was to support the development of a national early career communication platform to facilitate and increase information sharing and networking across the CASCs and consortium institutions. This was accomplished by working with the Early Career Climate Forum (ECCF), a CASC-supported science network dedicated to improving research practice through communication and collaboration. Project goals included the redesign and expansion of a pilot website that was originally developed by early career scientists in attendance of the 2012 Northwest Climate Science Bootcamp as well as adding services such as a regular blog, email list-serve, database of members, training modules for CASC retreats and bootcamps, all directed towards the advancement of early career scientists in the field of climate change science and adaptation.

Conference Paper↗

USGS2019

Report from the Ice and Climate Evolution Science Analysis group (ICE-SAG)

This document is the final report of the Ice and Climate Evolution Science Analysis Group (ICESAG) that was formed by the Mars Exploration Program Analysis Group (MEPAG) as part of its preparations for the upcoming NASA Planetary Science Decadal Survey for 2023 through 2032 (see §1). Through telecons, one face-to-face meeting, and discussions with experts in relevant topics, ICE-SAG has identified high-priority science questions and key measurements that are needed to address them as well as the 2018 MEPAG Goals and the 2013-2022 NASA Planetary Science Decadal Survey goals [V&V, 2011] pertaining to ice1 and climate. Obtaining these measurements would yield dramatic improvements in our understanding of the climate history of Mars, which is critical to investigations of Martian geologic history and habitability and will also inform the potential of buried water ices as in situ resources for future human missions. In many ways, the Martian climate system serves as a laboratory for a broader understanding of planetary climate systems including the Earth’s, which is substantially more complex due to a denser atmosphere, a more active planetary interior, and interactions with oceans and abundant life, while operating under much more subtle orbital forcing. Thus, advancements in Martian climate science will have far-reaching impacts that extend to studies of the Earth and other planetary bodies.

Report↗

USGS2020

North Carolina State climate report

Our scientific understanding of the climate system strongly supports the conclusion that North Carolina’s climate has changed in recent decades and the expectation that large changes—much larger than at any time in the state’s history—will occur if current trends in greenhouse gas concentrations continue. Even under a scenario where emissions peak around 2050 and decline thereafter, North Carolina will experience substantial changes in climate. The projected changes with the highest level of scientific confidence include increases in temperature, increases in summer absolute humidity, increases in sea level, and increases in extreme precipitation. It is also likely that there will be increases in the intensity of the strongest hurricanes. A full appreciation for past and future changes in North Carolina’s climate requires a global perspective. Earth’s climate has warmed substantially since the late 19th century, with most of that warming occurring in the last 50 years. This warming trend is clear from global temperature records and many other indicators, including rising global sea levels and rapid decreases in arctic sea ice cover. Scientists have very high confidence that this warming is largely due to human activities that have significantly increased atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases. Exhaustive research has examined other potential causes of this warming, and the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations is the only plausible cause that is consistent with the observed data and the physics that governs the climate system.

North Carolina↗

USGS2019

Final Report for Phase 1 - USGS-NE CSC and USFS-NRS Cooperative Research on Climate-Vulnerable Habitats and Species in the Northeast

The US Forest Service (USFS) and Northeast Climate (Adaptation) Science Center (NE CASC) came together to focus research and management cooperation on the topic of the impacts of climate change on forested ecosystems. This work had 3 primary components: 1) modeling headwater stream refugia; 2) investigating resilience and resistance strategies for New England forests; and 3) studying the impact of climate change on forest mammal communities. USFS and NE CASC organizations have complimentary expertise to share in order to improve natural resource management in the critical montane and headwater habitats in the region, and worked together to use this expertise in advancing science and science support for natural resource adaptation to a changing climate. This work resulted in increased understanding of the direct, indirect, and interactive responses of at-risk coldwater, montane and northern species to a changing climate; 2) the development of approaches and strategies for adaptation, including identification of potential climate refugia; and 3) interactive platforms for data, models and forecasts to communicate these and related results to the conservation and management community.

Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Ke↗

USGS2020

Mapping climate change resistant vernal pools in the northeastern U.S.

Vernal pools are seasonal wetlands that provide important breeding habitat for a variety of amphibian species. As future climate projections indicate warmer growing seasons and earlier seasonal increases in evapotranspiration, some managers of vernal pools have expressed concern that pools may dry earlier in the season, potentially interfering with completion of amphibian life cycles. In this context, a subset of pools might function as hydrologic refugia by providing wetland habitat later into the year under relatively dry conditions, thus supporting species persistence even as summer conditions become warmer and droughts more frequent. This study used approximately 3,000 field observations of inundation from 450 pools in the northeastern United States—located from West Virginia to Maine—to train machine-learning models for predicting the likelihood of pool inundation. Inputs to these models included pool size, day of the year, climate conditions, short-term weather patterns, and attributes of the landscapes in which pools were embedded. Predictions of pool wetness were generated on a daily time step from late April through late July using three short-term weather scenarios (dry, wet, and average) under historical climate conditions and four sets of downscaled climate projections (2050s and 2080s under Representative Concentration Pathways 4.5 and 8.5). The modeling and inundation prediction process was replicated using four inundation thresholds on wetted area and depth. Model outputs can enable users to examine the inundation thresholds, time points, weather scenarios, and future climate projections most relevant to their management needs. Together with long-term monitoring of individual pools at the site scale, this regional-scale study can support amphibian conservation by helping to identify subsets of pools that may be most likely to function as hydrologic refugia from changing climate conditions.

Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachuse↗

USGS2020

Ecology of urban climates: The need for landscape biophysics in cities

In this chapter we will review and evaluate the climatic and ecological parallels between urbanization and climate change, with an emphasis on temperature and its effects on terrestrial ectotherms, a group of organisms thought to be particularly sensitive to climate change. We will summarize patterns of urban warming and how they relate to global climate change projections, then discuss the potential strengths and limitations of urban climates as a source of insight into biotic responses to climate change and highlight future research directions. Future work will benefit from explicit consideration of the mechanisms by which urbanization and urban warming drive ectotherms’ body temperatures and activity periods. Urban ecosystems may provide a valuable first approximation of the dramatic effects of warming on certain terrestrial systems, and continued advances in urban thermal biology will promote a mechanistic understanding of how organisms use, respond to, and adapt to the unique thermal landscapes of cities.

Book chapter↗

USGS2022

BIA branch of tribal climate resilience regional assessment report

The Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) Branch of Tribal Climate Resilience (TCR) was established in 2011 to enable Tribal and BIA Office of Trust Services Programs to incorporate climate considerations into their programs' planning and decision-making. The TCR’s purpose is to fulfill trust responsibility to Federally recognized Tribal Nations by supporting and building Tribal capacity for climate resilience efforts through both technical and financial assistance. That financial assistance includes the TCR Annual Awards Program in which over 700 awards have been distributed totaling more than $74 million as of September 24th, 2021. The TCR has funded over 250 adaptation plans and vulnerability and risk assessments over the last 11 years. Tribes can leverage TCR programs to further support their existing operations, program planning, project design, as well as incorporate Indigenous and Traditional Knowledges into their management and protection of Trust resources and Tribal economies. Due to the availability of TCR awards and other funding, many Tribes now have climate adaptation plans. Thus, both TCR and Tribes are at a new stage compared to a decade ago and have new needs related to implementation of climate adaptation and resiliency projects. This assessment aims to evaluate the effectiveness of TCR’s Annual Awards Program and technical assistance and incorporate direct Tribal input to meet Tribal needs and priorities. To provide more effective assistance to Tribal communities moving forward; BIA staff, in partnership with staff from the United States Geological Survey (USGS), interviewed 16 Tribal employees to gather their feedback on their approaches to climate adaptation as well as their experiences with TCR services. This report aims to summarize guidance from participating Tribes to inform future changes to BIA TCR.

Regional Assessment Report↗

USGS2021

Food, culture and climate

The Social Sciences Coordinating Committee (SSCC) is one of multiple Interagency Groups that support the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP). USGCRP began as a Presidential initiative in 1989 and was mandated by Congress through the U.S. Global Change Research Act of 1990 “to assist the Nation and the world to understand, assess, predict, and respond to human-induced and natural processes of global change.” USGCRP is overseen by the Subcommittee on Global Change Research, composed of representatives from each of USGCRP’s 13 member agencies. The mission of the SSCC is to foster the integration of the methods, findings, and disciplinary perspectives of the social, behavioral, and economic sciences, along with interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary approaches that include these sciences, into USGCRP activities. The SSCC serves as a social science resource to other USGCRP interagency working groups, the Subcommittee on Global Change Research, and other USGCRP activities such as the National Climate Assessment. The SSCC’s Food, Culture, and Climate webinar series (held from September 14 to October 12, 2021) highlighted the ways in which social science research can elucidate the role of climate change in socio-cultural systems. It drew attention to the humanistic frameworks that underpin social scientific understanding of the ways individuals, households, and communities experience climate change. In particular, the seminars explored how the impacts of climate change are felt and understood by individuals and communities, how they interact with other stressors, and how they amplify existing inequities and vulnerabilities. This understanding is vital not only to the production of scientific knowledge, but also to the use of that knowledge in practice. This report provides a summary of the key takeaways from this webinar series. The webinar series organizers identified recurrent themes and salient points that emerged in conversations across the three events. Here, central issues of the discussions on the relationships among food, culture, and climate, as well as the role that social science plays in elucidating them, are synthesized and highlighted. Recordings of the webinar series are available online from USGCRP.

Webinar Series Report↗

USGS2024

The impact of future changes in climate on breeding waterfowl pairs in the US Prairie Pothole Region

Millions of small (< 10 ha) waterbodies embedded in grassland and agroecosystems in midcontinental North America provide breeding habitat to an estimated 50–80% of North America’s migratory ducks. Tens of millions of dollars are invested annually to conserve and enhance upland and wetland habitats for breeding ducks by prioritizing locations predicted to have high densities of breeding pairs under average precipitation conditions. An implicit assumption of this approach is that the distribution of breeding habitat remains relatively static. Climate change is an identified risk to this strategy. To assess this assumption and plan for potential forthcoming conditions, we estimated changes in potential breeding duck pairs under different climate scenarios by combining results of 1) a mechanistic hydrology model that simulates ecosystem processes for a subset of wetlands distributed across the U.S. Prairie Pothole Region (USPPR); 2) four downscaled climate model projections at mid- and late-century time horizons; and 3) U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service multi-decadal datasets and predictive breeding waterfowl pair statistical models. We conducted virtual and in-person informational sessions with partners to inform them on the best practices of using downscaled global circulation models and approaches for climate scenario planning. This close coordination led to a joint presentation at a monthly North Central Climate Adaptation Science Center seminar. We are also co-developing simulated wetland- waterfowl responses under different climate futures for wetlands. Information from these robust predictions of waterfowl habitat and settling patterns in this region provides land-management agencies insights in prioritizing current conservation actions given uncertainty. In addition, understanding how many breeding pairs the USPPR might support in coming decades will likely influence overall breeding population sizes and sustainable harvest objectives across North America.

Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dak↗

USGS1992

Lake ice records used to detect historical and future climatic changes

Historical ice records, such as freeze and breakup dates and the total duration of ice cover, can be used as a quantitative indicator of climatic change if long homogeneous records exist and if the records can be calibrated in terms of climatic changes. Lake Mendota, Wisconsin, has the longest uninterrupted ice records available for any lake in North America dating back to 1855. These records extend back prior to any reliable air temperature data in the midwestern region of the U.S. and demonstrate significant warming of approximately 1.5 °C in fall and early winter temperatures and 2.5 °C in winter and spring temperatures during the past 135 years. These changes are not completely monotonie, but rather appear as two shorter periods of climatic change in the longer record. The first change was between 1875 and 1890, when fall, winter, and spring air temperatures increased by approximately 1.5 °C. The second change, earlier ice breakup dates since 1979, was caused by a significant increase in winter and early spring air temperatures of approximately 1.3 °C. This change may be indicative of shifts in regional climatic patterns associated with global warming, possibly associated with the ‘Greenhouse Effect’. With the relationships between air temperature and freeze and break up dates, we can project how the ice cover of Lake Mendota should respond to future climatic changes. If warming occurs, the ice cover for Lake Mendota should decrease approximately 11 days per 1 °C increase. With a warming of 4 to 5 °C, years with no ice cover should occur in approximately 1 out of 15 to 30 years.

Wisconsin↗

USGS2011

Hydrological effects of the increased CO 2 and climate change in the Upper Mississippi River Basin using a modified SWAT

Increased atmospheric CO 2 concentration and climate change may significantly impact the hydrological and meteorological processes of a watershed system. Quantifying and understanding hydrological responses to elevated ambient CO 2 and climate change is, therefore, critical for formulating adaptive strategies for an appropriate management of water resources. In this study, the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model was applied to assess the effects of increased CO 2 concentration and climate change in the Upper Mississippi River Basin (UMRB). The standard SWAT model was modified to represent more mechanistic vegetation type specific responses of stomatal conductance reduction and leaf area increase to elevated CO 2 based on physiological studies. For estimating the historical impacts of increased CO 2 in the recent past decades, the incremental (i.e., dynamic) rises of CO 2 concentration at a monthly time-scale were also introduced into the model. Our study results indicated that about 1–4% of the streamflow in the UMRB during 1986 through 2008 could be attributed to the elevated CO 2 concentration. In addition to evaluating a range of future climate sensitivity scenarios, the climate projections by four General Circulation Models (GCMs) under different greenhouse gas emission scenarios were used to predict the hydrological effects in the late twenty-first century (2071–2100). Our simulations demonstrated that the water yield would increase in spring and substantially decrease in summer, while soil moisture would rise in spring and decline in summer. Such an uneven distribution of water with higher variability compared to the baseline level (1961–1990) may cause an increased risk of both flooding and drought events in the basin.

Mississippi River Basin↗

USGS2012

Modeling transport of nutrients & sediment loads into Lake Tahoe under climate change

The outputs from two General Circulation Models (GCMs) with two emissions scenarios were downscaled and bias-corrected to develop regional climate change projections for the Tahoe Basin. For one model—the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory or GFDL model—the daily model results were used to drive a distributed hydrologic model. The watershed model used an energy balance approach for computing evapotranspiration and snowpack dynamics so that the processes remain a function of the climate change projections. For this study, all other aspects of the model (i.e. land use distribution, routing configuration, and parameterization) were held constant to isolate impacts of climate change projections. The results indicate that (1) precipitation falling as rain rather than snow will increase, starting at the current mean snowline, and moving towards higher elevations over time; (2) annual accumulated snowpack will be reduced; (3) snowpack accumulation will start later; and (4) snowmelt will start earlier in the year. Certain changes were masked (or counter-balanced) when summarized as basin-wide averages; however, spatial evaluation added notable resolution. While rainfall runoff increased at higher elevations, a drop in total precipitation volume decreased runoff and fine sediment load from the lower elevation meadow areas and also decreased baseflow and nitrogen loads basin-wide. This finding also highlights the important role that the meadow areas could play as high-flow buffers under climatic change. Because the watershed model accounts for elevation change and variable meteorological patterns, it provided a robust platform for evaluating the impacts of projected climate change on hydrology and water quality.

Nevada;California↗

USGS2013

Expert assessment of vulnerability of permafrost carbon to climate change

Approximately 1700 Pg of soil carbon (C) are stored in the northern circumpolar permafrost zone, more than twice as much C than in the atmosphere. The overall amount, rate, and form of C released to the atmosphere in a warmer world will influence the strength of the permafrost C feedback to climate change. We used a survey to quantify variability in the perception of the vulnerability of permafrost C to climate change. Experts were asked to provide quantitative estimates of permafrost change in response to four scenarios of warming. For the highest warming scenario (RCP 8.5), experts hypothesized that C release from permafrost zone soils could be 19–45 Pg C by 2040, 162–288 Pg C by 2100, and 381–616 Pg C by 2300 in CO 2 equivalent using 100-year CH 4 global warming potential (GWP). These values become 50 % larger using 20-year CH 4 GWP, with a third to a half of expected climate forcing coming from CH 4 even though CH 4 was only 2.3 % of the expected C release. Experts projected that two-thirds of this release could be avoided under the lowest warming scenario (RCP 2.6). These results highlight the potential risk from permafrost thaw and serve to frame a hypothesis about the magnitude of this feedback to climate change. However, the level of emissions proposed here are unlikely to overshadow the impact of fossil fuel burning, which will continue to be the main source of C emissions and climate forcing.

Climatic Change↗