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Climate Adaptation Science Centers

From wildfires to sea-level rise, climate change creates evolving challenges for ecosystems across the Nation. The USGS National and Regional Climate Adaptation Science Centers (CASCs) is a partnership-driven program that teams scientists with natural and cultural resource managers and local communities to help fish, wildlife, water, land, and people adapt to a changing climate.

News

Balancing on Dangerous Terrain: How Avalanches Affect Mountain Goat Populations

Balancing on Dangerous Terrain: How Avalanches Affect Mountain Goat Populations

Multi-Year, Multi-Partner Collaboration Results in Landmark Report to Support Biodiversity Conservation Efforts in the Northeast

Multi-Year, Multi-Partner Collaboration Results in Landmark Report to Support Biodiversity Conservation Efforts in the Northeast

Heather Kerkering wins Pinnacle Award for Federal Employee of the Year

Heather Kerkering wins Pinnacle Award for Federal Employee of the Year

Publications

Biodiversity loss reduces global terrestrial carbon storage

Natural ecosystems store large amounts of carbon globally, as organisms absorb carbon from the atmosphere to build large, long-lasting, or slow-decaying structures such as tree bark or root systems. An ecosystem’s carbon sequestration potential is tightly linked to its biological diversity. Yet when considering future projections, many carbon sequestration models fail to account for the role biodi
Authors
Sarah R. Weiskopf, Forest Isbell, Maria Isabel Arce-Plata, Moreno Di Marco, Mike Harfoot, Justin A. Johnson, Susannah B. Lerman, Brian W. Miller, Toni Lyn Morelli, Akira S. Mori, Ensheng Weng, Simon Ferrier

Existing evidence on the effects of climate variability and climate change on ungulates in North America: A systematic map

BackgroundClimate is an important driver of ungulate life-histories, population dynamics, and migratory behaviors. Climate conditions can directly impact ungulates via changes in the costs of thermoregulation and locomotion, or indirectly, via changes in habitat and forage availability, predation, and species interactions. Many studies have documented the effects of climate variability and climate
Authors
Kate Malpeli, Sarah C. Endyke, Sarah R. Weiskopf, Laura Thompson, Ciara G. Johnson, Katherine Anne Kurth, Maxfield A. Carlin

The decision maker’s lament: If I only had some science!

Environmental decision makers lament instances in which the lack of actionable science limits confident decision-making. Their reaction when the needed scientific information is of poor quality, uninformative, unintelligible, or altogether absent is often to criticize scientists, their work, or science in general. The considerations offered here encourage decision makers to explore alternative app
Authors
Gustavo A. Bisbal