Climate Adaptation Science Centers
Publications
Browse a selection of publications from CASC-funded projects below or use our Project Explorer to explore a more comprehensive list of our science projects, publications, and data.
Regional CASC Annual Reports
On an annual basis, each CASC produces a report documenting the activities of the host university and consortium institutions. Click "Learn More" to see past reports.
Learn MoreCASC Network Annual Reports
The CASC Network develops a comprehensive annual report document each year, highlighting particularly successful and interesting activities from across the network that have occurred over the past year. Click "Learn More" to read past reports.
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Research priorities for migratory birds under climate change—A qualitative value of information assessment
The mission of the U.S. Geological Survey National Climate Adaptation Science Center is to provide actionable, management-relevant research on climate change effects on ecosystems and wildlife to U.S. Department of the Interior bureaus. Providing this kind of useful scientific information requires understanding how natural-resource managers make...
Rubenstein, Madeleine A.; Rushing, Clark S.; Lyons, James E.; Runge, Michael C.
A Bayesian Dirichlet process community occupancy model to estimate community structure and species similarity
Community occupancy models estimate species‐specific parameters while sharing information across species by treating parameters as sampled from a common distribution. When communities consist of discrete groups, shrinkage of estimates towards the community mean can mask differences among groups. Infinite mixture models using a Dirichlet process (...
Sollmann, Rahel; Eaton, Mitchell; Link, William; Mulundo, Paul; Ayebare, Samuel; Prinsloo, Sarah; Plumptre, Andrew J.; Johnson, D.S. COVID-19 pandemic impacts on global inland fisheries
The COVID-19 pandemic has led to environmental recovery in some ecosystems from a global “anthropause,” yet such evidence for natural resources with extraction or production value (e.g., fisheries) is limited. This brief report provides a data-driven global snapshot of expert-perceived impacts of COVID-19 on inland fisheries. We distributed an...
Stokes, Gretchen L.; Lynch, Abigail; Lowe, Benjamin S.; Funge-Smith, Simon; Valbo-Jorgensen, John; Smidt, Samuel J. Visually communicating future climate in a web environment
While there is growing demand for use of climate model projections to understand the potential impacts of future climate on resources, there is a lack of effective visuals that convey the range of possible climates across spatial scales and with uncertainties that potential users need to inform their impact assessments and studies. We use...
Davis, Corey; Aldridge, Heather D; Boyles, Ryan; McNeal, Karen; Mauldin, Lindsay C.; Atkins, Rachel M. What are the effects of climate variability and change on ungulate life-histories, population dynamics, and migration in western North America? A systematic map protocol
Climate is an important driver of ungulate life-histories, population dynamics, and migratory behaviors, and can affect the growth, development, fecundity, dispersal, and demographic trends of populations. Changes in temperature and precipitation, and resulting shifts in plant phenology, winter severity, drought and wildfire conditions, invasive...
Malpeli, Kate; Weiskopf, Sarah R.; Thompson, Laura; Amanda R. Hardy Persist in place or shift in space? Evaluating the adaptive capacity of species to climate change
Assessing the vulnerability of species to climate change serves as the basis for climate‐adaptation planning and climate‐smart conservation, and typically involves an evaluation of exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity (AC). AC is a species’ ability to cope with or adjust to changing climatic conditions, and is the least understood and most...
Thurman, Lindsey L.; Stein, Bruce; Beever, Erik A.; Foden, Wendy; Geange, Sonya; Green, Nancy; Gross, John E.; Lawrence, David J; LeDee, Olivia Erin; Olden, Julian D.; Thompson, Laura; Young, Bruce Building adaptive capacity in a coastal region experiencing global change
Coastal ecosystems in the eastern U.S. have been severely altered by human development, and climate change and other stressors are now further degrading the capacity of those ecological and social systems to remain resilient in the face of such disturbances. We sought to identify potential ways in which local conservation interests in the...
Johnson, Fred A.; Eaton, Mitchell J.; Mikels-Carrasco, Jessica; Case, David J. High‐resolution dynamically downscaled rainfall and temperature projections for ecological life zones within Puerto Rico and for the U.S. Virgin Islands
The weather research and forecasting (WRF) model and a combination of the regional spectral model (RSM) and the Japanese Meteorological Agency Non‐Hydrostatic Model (NHM) were used to dynamically downscale selected CMIP5 global climate models to provide 2‐km projections with hourly model output for Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Two 20‐...
Bowden, Jared H.; Terando, Adam; Misra, Vasu; Wootten, Adrienne; Bhardwaj, Amit; Boyles, Ryan; Gould, William A.; Collazo, Jaime; Spero, Tanya Climate-change refugia in boreal North America: What, where, and for how long?
TThe vast boreal biome plays an important role in the global carbon cycle but is experiencing particularly rapid climate warming, threatening the integrity of valued ecosystems and their component species. We developed a framework and taxonomy to identify climate‐change refugia potential in the North American boreal region, summarizing current...
Stralberg, Diana; Arseneault, Dominique; Baltzer, Jennifer; Barber, Quinn; Bayne, Erin; Boulanger, Yan; Brown, Carissa; Cooke, Hilary; Devito, Kevin; Edwards, Jason; Estevo, Cesar; Flynn, Nadele; Frelich, Lee; Hogg, E. H. (T.); Johnston, Mark; Logan, Travis; Matsuoka, Steven M.; Moore, Paul; Morelli, Toni Lyn; Morissette, Julienne; Nelson, Elizabeth; Nenzén, Hedvig; Nielsen, Scott; Parisien, Marc-André; Pedlar, John; Price, David; Schmiegelow, Fiona; Slattery, Stuart; Sonnentag, Oliver; Thompson, Daniel; Whitman, Ellen Report on the workshop ‘Next Steps in Developing Nature Futures’
The workshop ‘New Narratives for Nature: operationalizing the IPBES Nature Futures Scenarios’ was organised by the IPBES task force on scenarios and models and hosted by the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES), with support from the research team on “Predicting and Assessing Natural Capital and Ecosystem Services through an...
Schoolenberg, Machteld; Okayasu, Sana; Alkemade, Rob; Krijgsman, Amanda; Dutra de Aguiar, Ana Paula; Hashimoto, Shizuka; Lundquist, Carolyn J.; Pereira, Laura; Peterson, Garry; Armenteras, Dolors; Cheung, William W. L.; Diaw, Mariteuw Chimère; Durán, América Paz; Gasalla, Maria; Halouani, Ghassen; Harrisson, Paula; Karlsson-Vinkhuyzen, Sylvia; Kim, HyeJin; Kuiper, Jan J.; Miller, Brian W.; Takahashi, Yasuo; Pichs, Ramón Validating climate‐change refugia: Empirical bottom‐up approaches to support management actions
Efforts to conserve biodiversity increasingly focus on identifying climate‐change refugia – areas relatively buffered from contemporary climate change over time that enable species persistence. Identification of refugia typically includes modeling the distribution of a species’ current habitat and then extrapolating that distribution given...
Barrows, Cameron W.; Ramirez, Aaron R.; Sweet, Lynn C.; Morelli, Toni Lyn; Millar, Constance I.; Frakes, Neil; Rodgers, Jane; Mahalovich, Mary Frances Climate‐change refugia: Biodiversity in the slow lane
Climate‐change adaptation focuses on conducting and translating research to minimize the dire impacts of anthropogenic climate change, including threats to biodiversity and human welfare. One adaptation strategy is to focus conservation on climate‐change refugia (that is, areas relatively buffered from contemporary climate change over time that...
Morelli, Toni Lyn; Barrows, Cameron W.; Ramirez, Aaron R.; Cartwright, Jennifer M.; Ackerly, David D.; Eaves, Tatiana D.; Ebersole, Joseph L.; Krawchuk, Meg A.; Letcher, Benjamin; Mahalovich, Mary Frances; Meigs, Garrett; Michalak, Julia; Millar, Constance I.; Quinones, Rebecca M.; Stralberg, Diana; Thorne, James H.