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Demonstration of the Habitat Climate Change Vulnerability Index (HCCVI)
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The earth’s rapidly changing climate requires substantial adjustments to existing strategies for conserving natural systems. Managers need a better understanding of factors that contribute to the vulnerability of ecosystems and plant communities in order to formulate new adaptation strategies. The Climate Change Vulnerability Index for Ecosystems and Habitats documents series of indicators of vulnerability to climate change.
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Designing reserves for biodiversity
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What is the best way to design a new conservation reserve? There are multiple factors to consider, including species diversity, spatial extent, and future climate changes.
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Determining suitable locations for seed transfer under climate change: A global quantitative method.
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Changing climate conditions will complicate efforts to match seed sources with
the environments to which they are best adapted. Tree species distributions may have to
shift to match new environmental conditions, potentially requiring the establishment of
some species entirely outside of their current distributions to thrive. Even within the
portions of tree species ranges that remain generally suitable for the species, local populations
may not be well-adapted to altered local conditions. To assist efforts to restore
forests and to maximize forest productivity in the face of climate change, we developed a
set of 30,000 quantitatively defined seed transfer ‘‘ecoregions’’ across the globe.
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Project Documents
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Literature
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DeWan et al 2010_Climate Change_NC.pdf
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Diffenbaugh et al 2008 Climate change hotspots.pdf
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Do geographic distribution, niche property and life form explain plants' vulnerability to global change?
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Author's abstract:
We modelled the future distribution in 2050 of 975 endemic plant species in southern Africa distributed among seven life forms, including new methodological insights improving the accuracy and ecological realism of predictions of global changes studies by: (i) using only endemic species as a way to capture the full realized niche of species, (ii) considering the direct impact of human pressure on landscape and biodiversity jointly with climate, and (iii) taking species' migration into account. Our analysis shows important promises for predicting the impacts of climate change in conjunction with land transformation. We have shown that the endemic flora of Southern Africa on average decreases with 41% in species richness among habitats and with 39% on species distribution range for the most optimistic scenario. We also compared the patterns of species' sensitivity with global change across life forms, using ecological and geographic characteristics of species. We demonstrate here that species and life form vulnerability to global changes can be partly explained according to species' (i) geographical distribution along climatic and biogeographic gradients, like climate anomalies, (ii) niche breadth or (iii) proximity to barrier preventing migration. Our results confirm that the sensitivity of a given species to global environmental changes depends upon its geographical distribution and ecological proprieties, and makes it possible to estimate a priori its potential sensitivity to these changes.
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DOI Invited Nominations for NCCWSC & CSC Federal Advisory Committee
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Intent to create a Federal Advisory Committee for the USGS National Climate Change and Wildlife Science Center and DOI Climate Science Centers
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News & Events
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Downscaling Scenarios of Climate Change Project to Map Entire Appalachian LCC Region
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A DOI Southeast Climate Science Center funded project will be evaluating the latest generation of global climate models to generate scenarios of future change to climate, hydrology, and vegetation for the Southeastern U.S. as well as the entire range of the Appalachian LCC.
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Emerging Consensus Shows Climate Change Already Having Major Effects on Ecosystems and Species
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Plant and animal species are shifting their geographic ranges and the timing of their life events – such as flowering, laying eggs or migrating – at faster rates than researchers documented just a few years ago, according to a technical report on biodiversity and ecosystems used as scientific input for the 2013 Third National Climate Assessment.
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Enhancing the Climate Resilience of America’s Natural Resources
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The President's Climate and Natural Resources Priority Agenda is the result of an interagency process to inventory and assess current policies, programs, and regulations related to climate change adaptation. The Agenda builds upon the robust climate change adaptation work already accomplished by Federal agencies and identifies significant actions moving forward. It specifically mentions how Federal agencies working to address ecosystem management issues through LCCs and other multi-stakeholder bodies will work with partners to select flagship geographic regions for which they will identify priority areas for conservation, restoration, or other investments to build resilience in vulnerable regions, enhance carbon storage capacity, and support management needs. Within 24 months, these agencies and their partners will have identified and mapped the initial list of priority areas within each of the selected geographic landscapes or regions.
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