Cover crops, crop rotation and no-till practices can improve soil health, improve nutrient and water-use efficiency and boost yields while simultaneously reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Photo: NRCS

The Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) is a Department of Agriculture agency that helps farmers, ranchers and other landowners both mitigateand adapt to the consequences of climate change.

For example, the NRCS promotes conservation practices that store, or sequester, carbon in the soil, reducing the amount of atmospheric greenhouse gasses while simultaneously adding organic matter to the soil. Farmers benefit not only from increased soil fertility but from the expanded capacity of such soil to capture and retain water, which builds resiliency to several recognized hallmarks of climate change: extreme precipitation events, high temperatures and drought.

Another NRCS program attacked the root cause of climate change, the burning of fossil fuels, by providing financial assistance to replace old combustion engines with newer, less polluting ones.

Studies conducted by the NRCS help farmers and ranchers understand and prepare for what they are likely to face under climate change. Identifying conservation standards that positively reduce greenhouse gas emissions and increase carbon sequestration, the NRCS enables conservation planners to choose practices that are most effective in addressing the consequences of a rapidly changing climate. The NRCS has developed the world’s largest soil carbon data set, establishing a benchmark against which future soil carbon levels can be measured.

A brief article summarizes the ways in which this agency is helping to ensure the sustainability of the nation’s food supply by increasing resiliency to climate change. Other links on the agency’s home page lead to tools such as the Carbon Management Evaluation tool for soil carbon accounting on croplands and grazing lands and the Greenhouse Gas and Carbon Sequestration Ranking tool that allows landscape managers and conservationists to select practices most effective in combating the effects of climate change. The agency offers online courses and books and publications to increase understanding of the science of climate change and the reasons for concern.

Scenic Hudson:

Sunrise at Black Creek Preserve.
Photo: R Rodriguez, Jr., www.scenichudson.org

Protecting and restoring freshwater tidal migration zones along the Hudson River

Although during Hurricane Sandy they proved the value of natural habitats in mitigating flood damage, the tidal wetlands of the Hudson River could nonetheless drown as sea levels rise. The nonprofit organization Scenic Hudson is undertaking a number of measures to protect the river and its valley from this consequence of climate change, such as building resilient structures; encouraging community conversations about climate-change readiness, land conservation and stewardship; and conducting acquisition and restoration projects.

Grand Canyon Trust:

Beaver near its lodge. Photo: NPS

Restoring a natural ecosystem engineer to provide riparian areas in Southern Utah 

Can a nocturnal, semi-aquatic rodent  become a superhero in the fight against climate change? The Grand Canyon Trust thinks its possible. By forming ponds, wetlands and meadows, beaver restore and expand riparian habitat that numerous species depend on. As climate change lengthens droughts and produces more extreme precipitation events, beaver dams could increase the volume of water retained in the mountains, raise the water table and expand riparian areas. To encourage the work of these natural engineers, the Trust is reintroducing beaver in scores of stream segments in southern Utah.

Cutthroat trout
Photo: USGS

Trust for Public Land:

Using climate science to strategically guide habitat conservation

Saving the entire earth is a daunting prospect, but identifying and protecting areas that offer the most important conservation opportunities is a size of task that collaborative efforts can tackle. In Montana, the Trust for Public Land worked with Trout Unlimited, The Nature Conservancy and Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks to conserve and restore 52,000 acres identified as potentially resilient and pertinent to two at-risk coldwater fisheries, bull trout and Westslope cutthroat trout. The project has multiple benefits both for the species dependent on this habitat and for modeling an approach to public investment in landscape-level conservation.

Because of the far-reaching impact of top predators such as wolves on the landscape, Hannibal argues that everyone has a stake in their preservation. She points out that the removal of keystone species worldwide leads to increasingly simplified and less stable ecological networks. “This is a conversation everybody needs to get in on,” she says. “One thing is certain about global change: we’re all in it together.”

A man, 6″2″ tall, stands among willows near a river’s edge in Yellowstone Park. Photo: NPS

The twentieth century disappearance of wolves in Yellowstone Park loosened control of elk populations, which led to over-foraging of willow in riparian habitats. With the reintroduction of wolves to the area, elk numbers have declined but willows have not made a come-back. Missing, a study published February in the Proceedings of the Royal Society (fee required) and summarized in an article in Science Now postulates, are beaver.

Although they eat willows and use them as building material, beaver enhance the growth of willows by creating mud flats and raising the level of the water table. Without these hydrologic influences, willow growth is less robust and unable to sustain a thriving beaver population.

Some scientists believe that time will resolve this circular problem. With fewer elk eating willows before the plants can reproduce, willows may eventually grow large and numerous enough to be able to support greater numbers of beaver.

According to a story published in the New York Times, the goal of an accord would be to manage the harvesting of fish long protected by impenetrable ice and of fish populations that migrate north as ocean waters warm.

As climate change allows human activity in the Arctic to increase, the five countries are attempting to set up frameworks for resolving problems before they arise. Regulating commercial fishing in the Arctic would be the third accord designed to manage development and industrialization in the Arctic region. Agreements are already in place among these far north countries for search and rescue operations and oil spill responses.

More jack pines are cut as weather limits access to other species. Graphic: dnr.wi.gov

Winter warming is reducing lumberjack access to New England forests, declare loggers who have worked outdoors in upstate New York for decades. Late freeze dates and early thaws are shortening the harvest season and lengthening the seasons of mud, during which forests become inaccessible. Unreliable winter roads reduce the number of work days for loggers and increase costs as outfits build gravel roads to ensure access to operations. Converting skidders to swamp “balloon” tires to ply the mud is possible, but poses risks to the environment as knubby tires on heavy equipment can tear up fragile soils and cause silting in streams

The loggers’ observations, related in a story first published in The Daily Climate, are corroborated by a study of seven Wisconsin counties that correlated records of public-land harvests to temperatures over the past 60 years . The study determined that frozen-ground conditions have declined by two to four weeks since 1949. Weather also influences the kind of tree cut: as winter conditions become more variable, Wisconsin loggers are favoring cutting timber grown on sandy, well-drained soils.

The strategy identifies the major impacts that climate change is expected to have on natural resources:

• changes in species distributions and migration patterns
• spread of wildlife diseases and invasive species
  

  The strategy presents guidelines for natural resource managers assisting wildlife in adapting to climate change. Photo: National Park Service

• inundation of coastal habitats with rising sea levels
• changing productivity of coastal oceans
• changes in freshwater availability

To safeguard natural resources, reduce future damages, and take advantage of beneficial opportunities in a changing climate, the strategy recommends seven actions:

1.  Conserve and connect habitat

2.  Manage species and habitats

3.  Enhance management capacity

4.  Support adaptive management

5.  Increase knowledge and information

6.  Increase awareness and motivate action

7.  Reduce non-climate stressors

With the strategy’s goal of assisting fish, wildlife, plants and related ecological processes become more resilient, adapt to, and survive the impacts of climate change, governmental agencies and their conservation partners may use it to focus planning, coordinate efforts and foster cooperation.

Released by the Obama administration, the strategy is the result of a call in 2010 by the U.S. Congress to develop a plan to assist the nation’s natural resources adapt to climate change. It was produced by a partnership of federal, state and tribal fish and wildlife conservation agencies.

Native brook trout. Photo, USDA Forest Service

Testing the assumption that stream temperatures rise in correspondence with air temperatures, researchers from the U.S. Forest Service and the U.S. Geological Survey delivered good news for brook trout in the Appalachian region.  Because these native trout do not thrive in waters warmer than 70 degrees, forecasts for the trout’s survival in all but the highest headwaters looked grim.  Then scientists from the two agencies started calculating  additional factors affecting stream temperature, such as slope aspect, stream bed composition, forest canopy and elevation, variables omitted in large-scale climate models. Field measures verified that stream temperatures are not always coupled with air temperatures, revealing “unexpected resilience in mountain streams.”

A more accurate picture of factors affecting the quality of stream habitats helps fish and wildlife managers project and prioritize locations where native trout could survive.  “This (trout) life cycle is susceptible to disruption from climate change, as warm winter temperatures may cause the trout to emerge too early, when there’s nothing to eat, and many could starve,” says FS project leader Andrew Dolloff. “It looks like the winter effects of climate change … could impact coldwater species, but the the resistance we found of stream temperatures to changes in air temperature promises some protection.”

A wet winter diminishes drought’s reach

According to NOAA scientists, this was the 20th warmest winter on record, with the average temperature 1.9°F above the 20th century average.  

Total winter precipitation across the contiguous United States averaged 0.63 inches above the 20th century average. During February, several winter storms alleviated drought conditions across the Southeast and Midwest. Lower precipitation levels across the Central Plains and the Mountain West did little to mitigate the drought.

Winter season climate highlights

Precipitation totals, December-February

Temperature in the contiguous U.S.: Winter was warmer than average for all states east of the Rockies. In three states – Florida, Delaware and Vermont – this winter was among the ten warmest on record.
However, the Southwest was cooler than average while the Northwest reported near-average winter temperatures.

Precipitation in the contiguous U.S.: Winter brought above-average precipitation for most states east of the Rockies. In many states in the Great Lakes region and Gulf Coast – Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia – this winter was among the ten wettest on record. However, states on the West Coast and in the Northern Plains and Rockies received below-average precipitation, even though the Rutgers Global Snow Lab reported the 15^th largest overall seasonal snow cover since the start of record-keeping in 1966.

Temperature and precipitation in Alaska: Winter was both warmer and wetter than average. The statewide average temperature registered 2.0°F above average, making this three-month period the 27^th warmest  in the 95-year record. Winter was the 17^th wettest on record, with precipitation at more than 30 percent above average.

Looking forward: NOAA’s three-month spring outlook

Current conditions of snowpack, drought, soil moisture, stream flow, precipitation, Pacific Ocean temperatures and climate forecast modeling contribute to formulating NOAA’s spring climate predictions.

Above-average temperatures are likely to continue throughout the contiguous U.S.. There is no drought relief in sight for Texas, the Southwest and the Great Plains, and Florida joins this list of regions expecting below-average precipitation during the spring season.

Across the country other states should prepare for river floods worse than last year. North Dakota was singled out as being at most risk of floods.