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At least 955 records · Page 53Linked to original sources
USGS2023

Characterizing historic streamflow to support drought planning in the upper Missouri River basin

This project combined tree-ring based paleo and modern climate and hydrologic research aimed at understanding the primary influences on drought risk and water reliability in basins critical for western U.S. water resources. New paleohydrologic datasets and analyses were developed and applied to contextualize future streamflow projections and address specific water management questions. These questions centered around optimizing future water management protocols for numerous objectives ranging from improving agricultural water allocation during drought while maintaining instream flows for aquatic ecosystem health, to the testing of operations across large river systems with complex infrastructure critical for downstream flood control, navigation, and hydropower generation. USGS scientists worked closely with the Bureau of Reclamation to estimate both past and future drought risk at key management locations throughout the Missouri basin, the Milk and St. Mary River system, and across the major managed river systems in the western United States. These efforts provided a roadmap for future water management strategies under changing climate and water supply conditions, which are detailed in Reclamation’s newly completed Missouri Headwaters Basin Study, the 2021 SECURE Water Act Report, and the forthcoming update of the St. Mary and Milk Rivers Basin Study. Among the major scientific findings to emerge was a new understanding of the long-term (1200-year) history of drought variability for the Missouri River, which highlighted the unusual severity of the early 2000s drought across the Rocky Mountain headwaters and adjacent high plains. By combining the extended drought record with extensive modern and paleoclimate records, we document how warming exacerbates severities of naturally occurring droughts, with recent decades defined by “hot” droughts and the 2000s (2001-2010) drought ranking as the most severe event in 1200 years. Increasingly severe drought events such as this strain already over-allocated water resources that multiple sectors of society depend heavily upon.

upper Missouri River basin↗
USGS2023

Feasibility of implementing a long-term plan to monitor the Arctic Basin polar bear subpopulation

The Arctic Basin (AB) polar bear subpopulation is the least studied of the 19 global polar bear subpopulations. The Polar Bear Specialist Group (PBSG) recognizes the AB subpopulation as a regional grouping intended to include bears that do not belong to any of the remaining subpopulations that have data to support boundary delineations. Very little is currently known about the AB subpopulation including information on its size, genetic uniqueness, or movement patterns, most likely due to its remote range, and uncertainty about whether the AB subpopulation represents a true subpopulation. We provide an overview on the minimum requirements needed to monitor the AB subpopulation; challenges for establishing and implementing a monitoring program; feasibility of different monitoring techniques; alternative sources of inference; and general suggestions for moving forward.

Report↗
USGS2024

Learning from the past and planning for the future: Experience-driven insight into managing for ecosystem transformations induced by drought and wildfire

Drought and wildfire pose enormous threats to the integrity of natural resources that land managers are charged with protecting. Recent observations and modeling forecasts indicate that these stressors will likely produce catastrophic ecosystem transformations, or abrupt changes in the condition of plants, wildlife, and their habitats, in regions across the country in coming decades. In this project, researchers will bring together land managers who have experienced various degrees of ecosystem transformation (from not yet experiencing any changes to seeing large changes across the lands they manage) to share their perspectives on how to mitigate large-scale changes in land condition. The team will conduct surveys and structured interviews and invite participants to an in-person field trip and workshop. Encouraging land managers to share perspectives across diverse ecosystems with different degrees of drought and wildfire stress will produce new insight into how to better prevent and prepare for ecosystem changes. New knowledge generated from this project will be widely shared with land managers throughout the western U.S. to improve climate adaptation decision making processes.

Final Report↗