Organization and Operations

The NC CASC supports scientific needs across the States of North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Colorado, Wyoming, and Montana (fig. 2; also referred to as the “North Central region”) and works closely with the National Climate Adaptation Science Center (CASC) and regional CASC network to address multiregional issues. The NC CASC is a joint enterprise involving the USGS and the University of Colorado (CU) Boulder as primary partners and includes a consortium of five additional academic and nongovernmental partners: Conservation Science Partners, Great Plains Tribal Water Alliance, South Dakota State University, the University of Montana, and Wildlife Conservation Society.

The NC CASC is jointly managed by a USGS regional administrator and a university director and includes Federal- and university-supported programs and scientific staff and students. The multiyear cooperative agreement between USGS and the university host is periodically recompeted (in other words, up for renewal) through a competitive request for proposals process (https://www.usgs.gov/programs/climate-adaptation-science-centers/casc-host-recompetition). In 2018, CU Boulder was selected to serve as the NC CASC host until 2024, along with the named consortium members. Input on priorities and the usefulness of the NC CASC’s science is provided by an Advisory Committee composed of State, Federal, and Tribal Government representatives (https://nccasc.colorado.edu/partners/stakeholder-advisory-committee).

The NC CASC hosts two Tribal Climate Resilience Liaisons, funded by the Bureau of Indian Affairs Branch of Tribal Climate Resilience (https://www.bia.gov/bia/ots/tcr) and employed by the Great Plains Tribal Water Alliance (http://www.tribalwateralliance.org/). The Tribal Climate Resilience Liaisons have a lead role at the NC CASC for communicating with Tribes, identifying challenges and needs, and ensuring strong working relations. The liaisons foster dialogue with Tribal partners and work collaboratively to identify appropriate roles, products, and services that can benefit Tribal communities. Work conducted by the liaisons is guided by a regional Tribal Engagement Strategy (NC CASC, 2023), and inclusion of Indigenous knowledge must respect and protect data sovereignty.

The NC CASC is uniquely placed at the intersection of scientists and managers working to support resilient ecosystems. The NC CASC vision for the future is that natural and cultural resource managers use actionable and open data, tools, and innovative science and information to make climate-informed decisions that support resilient ecosystems.

Partners Served by the North Central Climate Adaptation Science Center

The diverse landscape of the North Central region includes a variety of ecosystems and wildlife affected by climate change that range from the alpine ecosystems of the Rocky Mountains to the grasslands of the Great Plains. The NC CASC provides climate science and adaptation information to support climate-informed natural and cultural resource management planning and decision making primarily by bureaus of the U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI), State fish and wildlife agencies, and Tribal nations (fig. 3). Although these entities form the core users and beneficiaries, the NC CASC uses an “all lands and waters” approach that focuses on fish and wildlife, their habitats, and the benefits people receive from them. The NC CASC also recognizes that other entities are often important partners in specific places; for example, there can be opportunities for coordinated resource planning and management where U.S. Department of Agriculture and DOI lands are adjacent to one another.

The NC CASC collaborates with and seeks input from other academic and public science partners, conservation organizations, and not-for-profit groups in the region, such as grazing associations. Information developed by the NC CASC can also be useful to private landowners, municipalities, and other local entities. Although these partners may not have direct public land and resource management responsibilities, they do have important contributions to make toward framing problems and identifying solutions. The NC CASC collaborates with individuals and organizations, specializing in outreach and extension, to ensure information is accessible to these partners and integrated with other relevant guidance. The NC CASC strives to incorporate people and communities in all activities so that they are fully considered in resource decision making.

The NC CASC builds partnerships with and follows the climate adaptation leadership of Tribal nations in the region. Federally recognized Tribes are sovereign governments with substantial legal and traditional resource management roles. Tribal nations are often challenged by intense competing priorities, resource limitations, and legal constraints. The DOI has a major role in relations between the U.S. Government and Tribal nations, and the work of the NC CASC supports that fiduciary role. The NC CASC seeks to foster a continuing dialogue with Tribal nations and inter-Tribal organizations in the region to identify resource challenges that may benefit from climate-related science, capacity building, convening, and similar activities. The NC CASC recognizes that each Tribe has unique challenges and needs that are dependent on their individual historical and contemporary circumstances. The NC CASC strives to integrate consideration of Tribal needs into each priority and objective in a culturally appropriate way and to respect, uphold, and protect Tribal sovereignty.

Approach to Actionable Science

The primary objective of the NC CASC is to produce science that is directly usable in making resource management plans and decisions; that is, the science is actionable. Actionable science is described as providing “data, analyses, projections, or tools that can support decisions regarding the management of the risks and impacts of climate change” (Advisory Committee on Climate Change and Natural Resource Science and Meridian Institute, 2015, p. 13). The NC CASC does not make, recommend, or endorse specific decisions, policies, or actions. Rather, the NC CASC seeks to proactively and intentionally engage with stakeholders to identify and satisfy information needs. These needs are often related to high-priority resource management decisions or actions that may be impacted by climate variability and change. This engagement covers a continuum of possible interactions with stakeholders, spanning from communication of results to coproduction of science, whereby stakeholders are an integral part of the science team (for more information, refer to the following USGS-produced short video regarding stakeholder engagement for actionable science: https://youtu.be/5_OW0kAJIzk).

Science activities conducted by the NC CASC include original research and synthesis and translating existing scientific information into management-relevant formats. Facilitating effective use of science for management involves a broad suite of support activities, such as the following (fig. 4):

Climate Challenges of North Central Region Ecosystems

Changes in the climate system are resulting in changes to regional physical and biological processes such as hydrologic cycles, primary production, disease transmission, and migration patterns. Although people and ecosystems across the North Central region have adapted to past climate challenges, the magnitude, rate, and impacts of expected changes may exceed those previously experienced changes.

Precipitation across the North Central region has changed; precipitation has decreased in the western and southwestern parts of the region and increased in most of the northern and southern parts (Crimmins and others, 2023). These changes affect snowpack, streamflow, and water availability (such as in the Missouri River, one of the region’s primary freshwater arteries) and in downstream regions (such as the Rio Grande Basin; fig. 5). Precipitation is forecasted to remain highly variable in the future, and a shift toward more arid conditions is likely in the southwestern States in the North Central region (Crimmins and others, 2023).

Temperatures have increased throughout the North Central region and are expected to continue to rise (Crimmins and others, 2023). Hotter temperatures will have direct effects on regional drought and indirectly increase the likelihood of drought conditions across larger parts of the region. Changes in temperatures and precipitation have led to more intense disturbances and severe weather events, such as increases in flooding, incidence of large forest fires, and intensity of drought in some areas (Crimmins and others, 2023). This variability of the climate is predicted to increase with future climate change (Crimmins and others, 2023). These and related trends have and will continue to affect the landscape and ecosystems and have varying effects on people, fish and wildlife, crops, and other resources of human and ecological value. Climate-change impacts will vary across the ecosystems in the North Central region and may lead to unique management challenges and research opportunities.

Ascertaining Partner Needs

The NC CASC has taken on and will continue to perform activities intended to elicit information on the climate adaptation needs of partners in the region. These activities include the following:

Through these engagement activities, resource managers prioritized four regional ecosystems (refer to the “Science Priorities and Objectives” section) and identified important climate-related challenges to natural resource management. Similar management issues were identified across multiple ecosystems, leading to the development of six key management priorities (refer to the “Science Priorities and Objectives” section). The ecosystems are inherently linked, and the management issues are critically connected through the ecology of the ecosystems. Thus, resource managers expressed a need to focus on the mechanisms and interactions that support ecosystem function to accomplish management goals, even when addressing the needs of individual species.

Science Priorities and Objectives

Based on the priorities identified by management partners, the NC CASC intends to focus its science on the following six cross-cutting management issues across the next 5 years: habitat loss, connectivity, and transformation; water availability and drought; wildlife disease; invasives and encroachment; wildfire; and phenology (“the pattern of seasonal life-cycle events in plants and animals”; Crimmins and others, 2023). These management issues represent physical or structural properties, ecological processes, or disturbances that have the potential to transform the ecosystems and associated habitats of concern (fig. 6). Emphasis will likely be placed on science involving four priority ecosystems: freshwater and riparian, grasslands, Artemisia L. (sagebrush) steppe, and mountainous.

Freshwater and riparian ecosystems rely on water resources to support their diversity of flora and fauna and can include aquifers, ponds, lakes, rivers, drainage ways, streams (permanent and ephemeral), and the contiguous riparian landscapes shaped by these surface and subsurface hydrologic features. Grasslands are a varied ecosystem type dominated by grasses that also contain a diversity of nongrass plant species. Within the North Central region, grasslands include tall, short, and mixed grass prairies; grasslands have been severely reduced in geographic area and transformed because of agriculture, grazing, and changing fire regimes (the pattern of how, when, where, and why fires occur; Krebs and others, 2010). Sagebrush steppe includes areas dominated by sagebrush, other shrubs, and perennial grasses; these “seas of sagebrush” host a diversity of protected vertebrate species and form transition zones with grasslands. Mountainous ecosystems include alpine, subalpine, montane meadow, and forested ecosystems with high terrain diversity (for example, large changes in elevation, slope, and aspect) and, in the North Central region, encompass the Rocky Mountains and the lower elevation Black Hills. Figure 7 represents the presence of each ecosystem type across the North Central region.

The NC CASC anticipates particularly strong actionable science opportunities focused on the following management issues in specific priority ecosystems: ecological drought in freshwater and riparian systems, mountains, and sagebrush steppe; invasive, nonnative species in freshwater, riparian, and grasslands systems; fire in mountains, sagebrush steppe, and grasslands; and phenology in grasslands and sagebrush steppe (particularly shrublands). Research opportunities focused on wildlife disease and habitat loss, connectivity, and transformation are applicable to all priority ecosystems. Figure 8 illustrates the six management priorities and specific scientific objectives associated with each priority.