Efforts to model and predict long-term variations in climate, based on scientific understanding of climatological processes, have grown rapidly in their sophistication to the point that models can be used to develop reasonable expectations of regional climate change.

The National Cohesive Wildland Fire Management Strategy, initiated in 2009 and finalized in 2014, provides a national vision for wildland fire management. This highly collaborative effort establishes three overarching goals, and describes stakeholder-driven processes for achieving them: (1) resilient landscapes; (2) fire-adapted communities; and (3) safe and effective wildfire response. The scientific rigor of this program was ensured with the establishment of the National Science and Analysis Team (NSAT).

Regional Climate Centers (RCC) Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI: drought index). Recent 10-year climatology for drought in all months, 1950-1999.

Total Basal Area (BA) for all tree species is in square feet per acre.

To monitor the potential hazards posed by invasive pathogens, the U.S. Forest Service's Forest Health Technology Enterprise Team (FHTET) created a national database designed to assess the potential hazards on tree mortality and identify forest ecosystems at risk of invasive or pathogenic threats.

Systematic conservation planning is well suited to address the many large-scale biodiversity conservation challenges facing the Appalachian region. However, broad, well-connected landscapes will be required to sustain many of the natural resources important to this area into the future. If these landscapes are to be resilient to impending change, it will likely require an orchestrated and collaborative effort reaching across jurisdictional and political boundaries.

Regional Climate Centers (RCC) Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI: drought index). Recent 10-year climatology for drought in summer months, 2005-2014.

Systematic conservation planning is well suited to address the many large-scale biodiversity conservation challenges facing the Appalachian region. However, broad, well-connected landscapes will be required to sustain many of the natural resources important to this area into the future. If these landscapes are to be resilient to impending change, it will likely require an orchestrated and collaborative effort reaching across jurisdictional and political boundaries.

Regional Climate Centers (RCC) Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI: drought index). Recent 10-year climatology for drought in summer months, 2005-2014.

Systematic conservation planning is well suited to address the many large-scale biodiversity conservation challenges facing the Appalachian region. However, broad, well-connected landscapes will be required to sustain many of the natural resources important to this area into the future. If these landscapes are to be resilient to impending change, it will likely require an orchestrated and collaborative effort reaching across jurisdictional and political boundaries.

The Landcover Mosaic map (LCM) can be used to answer the question: What is the mixture of agricultural/urban/natural landcover types surrounding a given land parcel?

Researchers at the U.S. Forest Service Southern Research Station have utilized the National Land Cover Database (NLCD) to calculate a suite of land cover and forest fragmentation metrics at landscape scales. These datasets yield rich spatial information about urbanization, its effects on forests, and how urban areas interface and mix with rural, agricultural, and forest landscapes.

WaSSI (Water Supply Stress Index) predicts how climate, land cover, and human population change may impact water availability and carbon sequestration at the watershed level (about the size of a county) across the lower 48 United States. WaSSI users can select and adjust temperature, precipitation, land cover, and water use factors to simulate change scenarios for any timeframe from 1961 through the year 2100.

The capacity of ecosystems to provide services such as carbon storage, clean water, and forest products is determined not only by variations in ecosystem properties across landscapes, but also by ecosystem dynamics over time. ForWarn is a system developed by the U.S. Forest Service to monitor vegetation change using satellite imagery for the continental United States. It provides near real-time change maps that are updated every eight days, and summaries of these data also provide long-term change maps from 2000 to the present.

Researchers at the U.S. Forest Service Southern Research Station have utilized the National Land Cover Database (NLCD) to calculate a suite of land cover and forest fragmentation metrics at landscape scales. These datasets yield rich spatial information about urbanization, its effects on forests, and how urban areas interface and mix with rural, agricultural, and forest landscapes.The Forest Area Density (FDEN) map (Landscape Forest Density) illustrates the proportion of the landscape around a given forest area that is also forested.

The capacity of ecosystems to provide services such as carbon storage, clean water, and forest products is determined not only by variations in ecosystem properties across landscapes, but also by ecosystem dynamics over time. ForWarn is a system developed by the U.S. Forest Service to monitor vegetation change using satellite imagery for the continental United States. It provides near real-time change maps that are updated every eight days, and summaries of these data also provide long-term change maps from 2000 to the present.

The National Cohesive Wildland Fire Management Strategy, initiated in 2009 and finalized in 2014, provides a national vision for wildland fire management. This highly collaborative effort establishes three overarching goals, and describes stakeholder-driven processes for achieving them: (1) resilient landscapes; (2) fire-adapted communities; and (3) safe and effective wildfire response. The scientific rigor of this program was ensured with the establishment of the National Science and Analysis Team (NSAT).

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) has estimated water use for the United States every 5 years since 1950. Estimates are provided for groundwater and surface-water sources, for fresh and saline water quality, and by sector or category of use. Estimates have been made at the State level since 1950, and at the county level since 1985. Water-use estimates by watershed were made from 1950 through 1995, first at the water-resources region level (HUC2), and later at the hydrologic cataloging unit level (HUC8).

Regional Climate Centers (RCC) Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI: drought index). Recent 10-year climatology for drought in all months, 2005-2014.

Developed by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), the LandCast 2050 High-Resolution Population Projection models future national-level human population densities. The models estimate the probability of a population being at a particular location, which measures where people will likely be in the future, not necessarily their places of residence.

This report represents a synthesis of 40 existing plans and strategies from our partner
organizations and others, input from the greater U.S. Caribbean conservation community, and
synthesis by the Caribbean Landscape Conservation Cooperative (CLCC) Science Plan Advisory
Team. The goals of the Science Strategy: Mission Alignment are to (1) identify shared
conservation objectives and (2) serve as a foundation for a broad science strategy which will
guide collaborative actions for natural and cultural resource conservation in light of global

This study quantitatively explores whether land cover changes have a substantive impact on simulated streamflow within the tropical island setting of Puerto Rico. The Precipitation Runoff Modeling System (PRMS) was used to compare streamflow simulations based on five static parameterizations of land cover with those based on dynamically varying parameters derived from four land cover scenes for the period 1953-2012. The PRMS simulations based on static land cover illustrated consistent differences in simulated streamflow across the island.

Presenters: Ben Walker & Pauline Drobney, USFWS, Prairie Reconstruction Initiative

The PRI Database is a powerful tool for improving our success at reconstructing prairies. Documentation of what occurred on a site is crucial to understanding and evaluating the outcome of that reconstruction. By analyzing the results of multiple reconstructions across multiple contexts, we can better understand which factors have the greatest impact on the effectiveness of prairie reconstruction techniques and management strategies.

Join us for the launch of the Collaborative Conservation and Adaptation Strategy Toolbox (CCAST), an online portal for access to case studies contributed by practitioners across the Mojave, Sonoran, and Chihuahuan deserts and the “Sky Islands” of the Madrean Archipelago.

On its southbound course from Colorado to the Gulf of Mexico, the Rio Grande provides water resources for more than 13 million people. The quantity of water flowing into the northern section of the river depends on how much snowpack from the Rocky Mountains melts into runoff, and on seasonal precipitation rates during and after the snowmelt season. This project combines historical data and climate model projections to assess and enhance seasonal prediction models relating winter snowpack to subsequent runoff in the upper Rio Grande.