Minnesota Department of Natural Resources Section of Fisheries are partnering with other federal and state agencies, academia, local units of government, and citizen volunteers to better understand and respond to the potential effects of climate change on Minnesota’s glacial lake resources and fish communities.
The first effort is dubbed “SustainingLakes in a Changing Environment” or SLICE.SLICE is designed to understand, predict, and respond to the outcomes of major drivers of change such as development, agriculture, invasive species, and climate change on lake habitats and fish populations.Climate change has the potential to exacerbate the harmful effects of other watershed or in-lake perturbations.We are exploring processes and mechanisms at the watershed scale that drive patterns in water quality and fish habitat in a diverse set of 24 sentinel lake watersheds spread across the state’s major land types (See Lake Map).
Our approach is to augment ongoing ‘snapshot’ data collection efforts in many MN lakes with an intensive focus to understand processes in a few representative sentinel systems.This represents a novel and promising direction in water resource and fisheries management.Further, cooperation with multiple entities charged with aquatic resource management ensures rigor (e.g., the right people doing the job), efficiency, relevance, and shared ownership in common-held goals.
The first phase of SLICE runs from 2008 – 2011.Partners are collecting comprehensive datasets on watershed stressors, water quality, zooplankton, aquatic plants, and fish populations.These datasets are informing comprehensive baseline reports for each sentinel lake to form the foundation of future explorations.Analysis teams will also be busy in 2011-2012 identifying a set of lake habitat and fish indicators that exhibit little natural variability but respond predictably across a gradient of lake habitat conditions.These results will be used to set a long-term monitoring schedule; moving SLICE into its implementation phase.
Minnesota DNR Fisheries is also participating in a large-scale research project sponsored by the United States Geological Survey (USGS) focused on the effects of climate change on fish habitat. DNR Fisheries researchers will team up with the Natural Resources Research Institute (NRRI) at the University of Minnesota (Duluth) to investigate the effects of climate and land use change on cisco (tullibees) in a number of Minnesota lakes.Populations of cisco in Minnesota are especially vulnerable to climate change, because the state is in the southern part of the species range. A requirement for cold, well oxygenated water make cisco an excellent indicator species for understanding the effects of climate change on many of our deeper lakes in the state.
The USGS National Climate Change and WildlifeClimateCenter (http://nccw.usgs.gov/) is funding this research so state management agencies can develop climate change adaptation strategies.Deep lakes with exceptional water quality will be specifically targeted because they will represent important sanctuaries for coldwater fish in a climate-warmed Minnesota. After identifying these potential refuge lakes, watershed protection efforts can be initiated that will protect these systems from any additional nutrient enrichment that would likely exacerbate climate-induced losses of cisco thermal habitat. Landscape ecologists at NRRI will assist with modeling the effects of climate and land use change on cisco habitat using newly developed, downscaled climate and land use projections that allow for analysis at very high geographic resolutions. Results of the Minnesota cisco study will be integrated with the analyses of several other state, federal, and university research partners who will be studying the effects of climate and land use change on fish habitat in the Rocky Mountain West, Desert Southwest, and Northeast US. The research will allow state management agencies like the Minnesota DNR to develop strategies that strengthen the resilience of fish habitat in lakes and streams against the effects of climate change.
For further information regarding SLICE contact SLICE coordinator RayValleyray.valley@state.mn.us
For further information regarding The Cooperative USGS climate change grant contact Peter Jacobson peter.jacobson@state.mn.us
Virginia’s Wildlife Action Plan identifies more than 900 species that are being impacted by the loss or degradation of their habitats. Many of these species could become extinct or extirpated from the Commonwealth if steps are not taken to reverse these trends. In coming decades, climate change will exacerbate and intensify many of the existing threats and will likely result in new sets of impacts and stressors. Virginia’s Strategy for Safeguarding Virginia’s Species of Greatest Conservation Need from the Effects of Climate Change was created to provide initial guidance on actions Virginia’s conservation community can implement immediately to enhance the conservation of wildlife and habitats in the face of climate change while more comprehensive adaptation strategies are developed. Conservation strategies include specific actions for conserving species and habitats, developing new data and climate modeling resources, and implementing new outreach efforts related to climate change. The document was prepared by the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fish, National Wildlife Federation, and Virginia Conservation Network with funding provided by Wildlife Conservation Society’s Wildlife Action Opportunities Fund and USFWS’s State Wildlife Grants Program.
The State of Montana's Department of Fish Wildlife and Parks (MFWP) convened its first meeting of its Climate Adaptation Working Group on October 16, 2009 in Helena Montana. There were 21 participants representing government and the NGO community. Montana's Climate Adaptation Working Group is the result of the State's effort to implement the Western Governors Association Wildlife Corridor Initiative and comes just after the State has compiled its new Crucial Areas and Connectivity Assessment, now provisionally called the Montana Decision Support System.
Some of the highlights from this first meeting include:
1. Building the architecture for a robust plan. Given the fact this is the first plan for the State, that climate predictions are still imprecise at the fine scale, and that capacity and resources to perform detailed modeling and monitoring for the entire State, all its biodiversity, and all ecoregions is limited, this group aspires to build a planning framework to insert climate data and climate impacts as information comes online and is refined. The building blocks for the plan include the the Montana Decision Support System; regional information from ongoing or planned efforts in the Crown of the Continent, Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, the Northern Great Plains; federal efforts to assess climate impacts on public lands; statewide climate data efforts with the University of Montana, NatureServe, the Nature Conservancy and US Geologic Survey; and interstate efforts with the activities of the Western Governors Association, with NGOs that are working to connect planning efforts between states such as National Wildlife Federation and Defenders of Wildlife. The Working Group hopes to create the basic architecture of an initial plan that the State can refine as adaptation knowledge and resources come online over time (i.e., Montana Climate Adaptation Plan version 1.0).
2. Discreet tasks. The Working Group was subdivided into several smaller task teams with discreet objectives. The overall goal of the working group is to develop a plan to assess climate impacts and develop management recommendations for conserving species, habitats and ecological processes in Montana based on observed and expected impacts. As such, task groups looking at species, habitat and ecological process exposure to climate change were established (i.e., vulnerability risk assessment). Other task groups include data collection, climate modeling, outreach (to the Governor's office, to other states and to federal partners), and Working Group coordination.
For more information please contact: Amielle DeWan at adewan@defenders.org
The U.S. Government Accountability Office report, "Climate Change Adaptation: Strategic Federal Planning Could Help Government Officials Make More Informed Decisions," GAO-10-113, is now published. Please see links below for the report and the hearing held today by Chairman Ed Markey of the U.S. House of Representatives Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming.
US Fish & Wildlife Service Draft Climate Change Strategic Plan is Available for Public Comment
The US Fish and Wildlife Service released the draft versions of their Climate Change Strategic Plan and 5-Year Action Plan for public comment today. Please consider taking the time to look over both documents and submitting comments to USFWS for your state fish and wildlife agency. It is essential that the Service receive your individual input on their Plan. Comments are due by the 23rd of November, 2009. To view the plan electronically, upload your comments, and find out more about Service efforts to address climate change, visit: http://www.fws.gov/home/climatechange/ Please see USFWS Director Sam Hamilton’s note below for more details.
“I’m pleased to notify you that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Draft Climate Change Strategic Plan is available for your review and comment. The plan, which has been in development for more than a year, is intended to guide our agency’s actions over the next several years as we work to respond to the unprecedented challenge of accelerating climate change. The Service’s Strategic Plan complements the Department of the Interior’s Secretarial Order issued last week, calling for unprecedented collaboration, coordination, and information sharing among Department agencies in response to the threat of accelerated climate change. The plan outlines more specifically what the Service proposes to do to fulfill our responsibilities under the Secretarial Order.
To adequately respond to long-term climate changes, the Service is moving to establish regional climate science partnerships with the U.S. Geological Survey, other federal agencies, state fish and wildlife agencies and the conservation community, to expand our ability to turn continental climate science into knowledge that managers can use to make better decisions on the ground. We will establish landscape-level partnerships taking advantage of expertise across the conservation community to set population and habitat goals, plan and execute conservation across landscapes, and enhance our research, monitoring and evaluation tools through the establishment of a National Biological Inventory and Monitoring Partnership.
We truly value your perspective, and would appreciate your ideas and suggestions for how we can improve the plan and work together to make a difference for fish and wildlife in North America and across the globe.”
Sincerely, Sam
Sam Hamilton Director U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
-WAFWA:Information on the Department's activities related to the Western Association of Fish and Wildlife agencies (WAFWA)-specifically the WAFWA climate change committee can be viewed at http://dfg.ca.gov/climatechange/wafwa/.This site contains the 2009 update on climate change activities in all the western states and provinces.The PowerPoint presentations from the plenary session will be online soon.
The USGS National Climate Change and Wildlife Science Center (NCCWSC) announces the suite of science projects that will be funded under its Fiscal Year 2009 Request for Proposals.Seventeen projects were selected from among the 175 proposals through a rigorous review process.As part of the NCCWSC’s science portfolio, these multiyear projects will greatly advance our understanding of how climate change may affect our Nation's wildlife, fish, and terrestrial and aquatic habitats.
The award announcement and list of proposals is available at the NCCWSC web site: http://nccw.usgs.gov/
effects of climate and land use change on cisco habitat using newly developed, downscaled climate and land use projections that allow for analysis at very high geographic resolutions. Results of the 
