Friday, September 24, 2010

Climate Change and Shorebird Habitat: A New Assessment Tool

Along the U.S. Atlantic coast, at risk from climate change are more than 100 nests of the Federally threatened Piping Plover at Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge [28](NWR) in Virginia; valuable acres of habitat for Red Knots at Monomoy NWR [29]in Massachusetts; and prime nesting habitat for American Oystercatchers at Edwin B. Forsythe NWR [30]in New Jersey. All three sites are members of the Western Hemisphere Shorebird Reserve Network (WHSRN). While managers know that these sites and species are vulnerable, until recently they haven’t had any systematic way of assessing or prioritizing habitats and strategies for climate-change adaptation actions.

Thanks to Manomet Center for Conservation Sciences’s new “Climate Change Vulnerability Assessment for Shorebird Habitat,” managers now have that capability. This innovative, Excel-based assessment and decision-making tool is the product of a partnership agreement between Manomet and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) Northeast Region’s Division of Refuges. This partnership enabled Refuge Biologist Dorie Stolley to work for Manomet for a year, funded by the generosity of individual Manomet donors concerned about the impacts of climate change on shorebirds.

Refuges comprise more than half of the 83 WHSRN sites to date, therefore partnering with USFWS was a natural choice. With input from refuge managers and biologists, Stolley successfully designed the tool and piloted it at the three coastal refuges mentioned above. Participants at each workshop included federal, state, non-profit, and academic partners, as well as local refuge volunteer groups.

For Kevin Holcomb, Wildlife Biologist for E.B. Forsythe NWR, the workshops serve a dual purpose: “While the workshops help to inform future management decisions, they also provide a forum and opportunity to initiate a great dialogue with our federal, state, and local partners. We’re lucky to have such great relationships, and it’s already paying dividends.”

Stolley explains that “the tool guides participants through a series of worksheets and exercises designed to assess the vulnerability of coastal shorebird habitats to climate change, using three categories: effects of sea-level rise; effects of other climate-change variables, like predicted changes in temperature and precipitation; and the effects of increased frequency and intensity of storms. Once this is measured, the assessment outlines explicit strategies and adaptation options, and evaluates each option’s chances for success.”

Charles Duncan, Director of Manomet’s Shorebird Recovery Project, was involved in the design of the vulnerability assessment and sees it as a crucial addition to the WHSRN Site Assessment Tool, upon which it was modeled. “We must understand climate change vulnerabilities and adaptation strategies. Only then can we safeguard the investments of governments, individuals, and organizations involved in our hemispheric network of shorebird sites.” The development of this tool is an important step toward conserving vulnerable coastal sites that are critical for breeding, migrating, and wintering shorebirds. In particular, it also gives refuges a tangible means for addressing climate change issues in their planning documents (as recently mandated by the Federal government), such as Comprehensive Conservation Plans.

Many thanks to those who participated in this collaborative project, particularly the staff at Chincoteague, E.B. Forsythe, and Monomoy NWRs; partners and volunteers of Forsythe NWR; Graham Giese of the Provincetown Center for Coastal Studies; and Courtney Schupp of Assateague Island National Seashore.

A video of Dorie Stolley presenting an overview of the Climate Change Vulnerability Assessment for Shorebird Habitat at the USFWS Northeast Regional Office can be viewed via the USFWS Video Archives [31](45 minutes, .wmv file; Note: there is a glitch between the 3- and 6-minute marker).

For more information, please contact Dorie Stolley (dorie_stolley@fws.gov [32]); Meredith Gutowski (mgutowski@manomet.org [33]), Conservation Specialist, Manomet Center for Conservation Sciences; or any of the three National Wildlife Refuge pilot sites.

Department of the Interior Announces Locations of Climate Science Centers for Southeast and Northwest Regions


North Carolina State Univ. for SE;
Oregon State, Univ. of Washington and Univ. of Idaho for NW

WASHINGTON, D.C.--Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar today announced the locations selected for the Department of the Interior’s Southeast and Northwest regional Climate Science Centers and the finalization of a cooperative agreement for the Alaska Climate Science Center, which opened on Sept. 1 in Anchorage.

North Carolina State University will host the Department of the Interior’s Southeast Climate Science Center.  A consortium of three universities--Oregon State University, University of Washington and the University of Idaho--will lead the Northwest Climate Science Center.

These are the second and third of eight planned regional Climate Science Centers—or CSCs--to be established by the Department. As previously announced, the first CSC, the Alaska CSC, is hosted by the University of Alaska-Fairbanks in Anchorage.

“With the eight planned Climate Science Centers, we are laying the foundation for our coordinated strategy to address current and future impacts of climate change on our land, water, wildlife, cultural heritage and tribal resources,” Secretary Salazar said. “It is one of the top priorities of the Department of the Interior to put science to work to help us deal with climate change.”

Secretary Salazar initiated the coordinated climate change strategy in September 2009, with Secretarial Order 3289. The order called for establishing not only regional CSCs but also a network of “Landscape Conservation Cooperatives” that engage federal agencies, local and state partners, and the public in crafting practical, landscape-level strategies for managing climate change impacts on natural resources.

 “These regional Climate Science Centers and their partnership networks will provide the science needed to understand which resources are most vulnerable to climate change and will work closely with natural and cultural resource managers faced with planning for those changes,” Deputy Secretary David J. Hayes said today. 

The Southeast and Northwest CSCs were selected through an open competition.  Climate science experts within the Department of Interior, U.S. Forest Service and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reviewed proposals from universities.

North Carolina State University brings major expertise in biology, climate change, and applied conservation and management to deal with the threat of rising sea levels and increased stress on freshwater resources in the Southeast.  The university has connections to farmers, resource managers, business people and citizens across the Southeast. It also brings an array of science and research partnerships, creating a region-wide expertise network.

The consortium of the University of Washington, Oregon State University, and the University of Idaho
provides expertise in climate science, ecology, impacts assessment, modeling, and advanced information technology.  This expertise will be needed to deal with critical issues in the Northwest, where changes in temperature, rain, and snowfall could have significant impacts on streams and the salmon they support as well as forests and agricultural lands.

In addition to today’s announcements, the Department will soon announce the host institutions for the North Central and Southwest Climate Science Centers.  Interior intends to invite proposals in the spring of 2011 to host the remaining regional centers in the Northeast, South Central region, and Pacific Islands.

The CSCs will serve as regional “hubs” of the National Climate Change and Wildlife Science Center, located at the headquarters of Interior’s U.S. Geological Survey.   USGS is taking the lead on establishing the CSCs and providing initial staffing.  Ultimately, funds and staff from multiple Interior bureaus will be pooled to support these centers and ensure collaborative sharing of research results and data. 

Once fully instituted, the Climate Science Centers will be a “seamless network” to access the best science available to help managers in the Interior Department, states, other federal agencies, and the private and nonprofit sectors.  The science agenda of each CSC will be identified through a partnership steering committee that includes Landscape Conservation Cooperatives and other federal, state, and local partners to ensure that the CSC’s work is meeting the priority needs of resource managers in each region. 

Within their respective regions, Landscape Conservation Cooperatives will focus on impacts that typically extend beyond the borders of any single national wildlife refuge, national park or Bureau of Land Management unit—such as the effects of climate change on wildlife migration patterns, wildfire risk, drought, or invasive species, to name a few. Twenty-one LCCs are planned through FY 2012, about half of which will be up and running by the end of 2010.

To learn more about the Department of the Interior’s climate change strategy, visit http://doi.gov/whatwedo/climate/strategy/index.cfm.  This site features interactive maps of Climate Science Centers and Landscape Conservation Cooperatives, as well as additional details on the services they will provide.  Additional information can be found at http://nccwsc.usgs.gov.