Resources

Trout Unlimited will extend its existing Adopt-a-Trout program to the Henrys Fork River, a tributary to the Green River in the Colorado River basin. The project will include work with the Wyoming Game and Fish Department and local schools to tag and monitor Colorado River Cutthroat trout movements to learn more about fish passage issues, areas of high entrainment, habitat use, and native and wild trout migratory patterns.

The Shivwits Band of the Paiute Indian Tribe of Utah (PITU) has recognized the need to

identify and assess the potential impacts of landscape-level stressors, such as climate change

and drought, on tribal and ancestral lands and resources, such as water resources and

culturally significant species and the habitats and ecosystems that support them. With

funding from the Southern Rockies Landscape Conservation Cooperative, the Shivwits hired

Barbara Dugelby1 of Round River Conservation Studies to conduct the assessment and

Three webinars presented by the Springs Stewardship Institute.

The main purpose of this project was illustrated in Figure 1 of the original proposal, which is copied here.  In that figure, the projection of water supply for the Colorado River in the 21st century is frequently portrayed as a ‘smeared future’, confused by large uncertainties in the output from the CMIP5 model ensembles (Colorado River Basin Water Supply and Demand Study released by the Bureau of Reclamation in January 2013).

Interactive maps of springs distribution and analysis of the Southern Rockies LCC.

This reports summarizes work and key findings to date from the Upper RIO Grande Basin SNOwfall Measurement and streamFLOW (RIO-SNO-FLOW) Forecasting Improvement Project conducted from Jan. 1, 2014 through Dec. 31, 2015. The project area was centered over the upper mainstem Rio Grande and Conejos River basins in southern Colorado. This report is organized into 7 chapters that detail the major elements of the project including; a Project Description, NOAA Gap-filling Radar, NASA Airborne Snow Observatory, In-Situ Ground Observations, Distributed Hydrologic Modeling, and Community Engagement.

This project had two primary goals: 1) To develop a process for integrating data from multiple sources to improve predictions of climate impacts for wildlife species; and 2) To provide data on climate and related hydrological change, fire behavior under future climates, and species’ distributions for use by researchers and resource managers.

Since the last report, we have remained focused on completing stages 1 and 2 of the project, continuing to conduct spatial analysis of habitat complexity at tributary junctions and developing decision support models to inform restoration outcomes on the Colorado River. Specifically, efforts have been dedicated to devising remote sensing methods for analysis of vegetation to investigate riparian habitat complexity at tributary junctions along the regulated Dolores and Colorado Rivers.

Habitat complexity in rivers is linked to physical processes that act at various spatial scales and requires dynamic hydrologic and geomorphic conditions. On regulated rivers in the western United States, tributaries may provide important resource inputs and serve as sources of dynamism on regulated systems, offering blueprints to guide restoration of habitat complexity in riparian areas. We investigated spatial patterns and extent of tributary influence on riparian habitat complexity along regulated reaches of the Colorado and Dolores Rivers in the western United States.

Riparian ecosystems are vital components of the semi-arid landscape because woody riparian plants provide resources that are absent in adjacent vegetation types. Historically, flood played a key role in shaping the composition and structure of riparian forests. In recent decades, however, the frequency and magnitude of floods has decreased and the timing of peak discharge has been altered. In addition, wildfire has increased in importance as an agent of disturbance along many streams.

Climate change predictions include warming and drying trends, which are expected to be particularly pronounced in the southwestern United States. In this region, grassland dynamics are tightly linked to available moisture, yet it has proven difficult to resolve what aspects of climate drive vegetation change.

Woody plant regeneration: post fire woody plant data in Excel.

The Improving Crop Coefficients for the Middle Rio Grande Project (ICCMRG Project) was completed by the New Mexico Office of the State Engineer (NMOSE) under a grant from the United States Bureau of Reclamation. The objective of the ICCMRG Project is to assess actual crop water use for the years 2011 and 2013 through remote sensing technologies that estimate the evapotranspiration (ET) of individual crops within the Middle Rio Grande (MRG).

In 2010, Colorado Front Range National Forests were awarded a Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration (CFLR) grant to facilitate the implementation of restoration treatments across 32,000 acres of ponderosa pine-dominated forests.  Collaborative, multi-party monitoring of the impacts of restoration was a required component of the grant; however, the budget for this work was limited, and initial monitoring plans for the Arapaho-Roosevelt National Forest (AR) and the Pike-San Isabel National Forest (PSI) did not include a strong emphasis on key components of the ecosystem such as wildlife

Climate change is projected to have an enormous effect on water resources in the western US, with cascading effects on river-dependent organisms. Recent studies show that increasing drought will lead to reduced water in many rivers in the southwestern US. For example, streamflow in the warm season has declined over the last century in the western US and is projected to continue decreasing over the next 100 years.

Ongoing and increasing energy development in the west will cause an associated increase in the amount of disturbed land, in turn leading to greater potential for natural resource and wildlife conflicts. Throughout the southwest, renewable energy technologies are being explored, tested, and new facilities are being planned and developed. The existing electric transmission infrastructure will need to be expanded and improved in order to effectively distribute the electricity generated by new renewable power facilities that will be distributing power to consumers across the western states.

The SRLCC provided funds to the states of Arizona, Colorado and New Mexico to support development of the states’ Crucial Habitat Assessment Tools (CHATs) which provide a decision support system to better incorporate wildlife values, sensitive animals and plants, and important ecosystem features into land use decision-making to reduce conflicts and surprises.

Short-term ecological consequences of collaborative restoration treatments in ponderosa pine forests of Colorado

The Gunnison Climate Working Group is piloting a on-the-ground climate adaptation project to build
resilience of riparian areas/wet meadows – priority brood-rearing habitat -- to help the Gunnison Sagegrouse
and other wildlife species adapt to climate change in the Gunnison Basin. Riparian areas have
been impacted by head cuts, erosion, and lowered water tables. These impacts will likely increase with
increased drought and erosion from intense rainstorms, decreasing food and chick survival. After

Our actions today to build ecosystem resilience to climate change will help us protect the Gunnison Basin’s natural resources—clean air and wildlife habitat, and the livelihoods they provide in the future for people. The Gunnison Climate Working Group, a group of public and private partners formed in 2010, is looking to understand the threats posed by climate change, identify strategies to reduce adverse impacts, and promote coordinated implementation of these strategies.

Climate projection data were downloaded from the Climatewizard application for the coastal region for the Gulf of Mexico. Climate projection data represent the monthly, seasonal, and yearly mean for the time period of 2000-2050 for the following variables: AET:PET ratio, Moisture deficit, Moisture surplus, PET, Precipitation, Temperature, Rainfall Anomaly, and Standard Precipitation Index. In addition, models representing change in the average mean from period of (1961-1990) is available for each of the variables.

Attempts to stabilize the shore can greatly influence rates of shoreline change. Beach nourishment in particular will bias rates of observed shoreline change toward accretion or stability, even though the natural beach, in the absence of nourishment, would be eroding. Trembanis and Pilkey (1998) prepared a summary of identifiable beach nourishment projects in the Gulf Coast region that had been conducted before 1996. Those records were used to identify shoreline segments that had been influenced by beach nourishment.

The Protected Areas Database of the United States (PAD-US) is a geodatabase, managed by USGS GAP, that illustrates and describes public land ownership, management and other conservation lands, including voluntarily provided privately protected areas. The State, Regional and LCC geodatabases contain two feature classes. The PADUS1_3_FeeEasement feature class and the national MPA feature class. Legitimate and other protected area overlaps exist in the full inventory, with Easements loaded on top of Fee.

Rates of long-term and short-term shoreline change were generated in a GIS with the Digital Shoreline Analysis System (DSAS) version 2.0, an ArcView extension developed by the USGS in cooperation with TPMC Environmental Services. The extension is designed to efficiently lead a user through the major steps of shoreline change analysis.