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Southeast Climate Adaptation Science Center

Symposium Resources

A wide range of new research, posters, tools, and information was shared over the two days of the Regional Science Symposium. You can find project descriptions, as well as related links and resources, for the World Cafe Session, and the Poster and Tools Networking Session throughout this page.

Tools Resources

laptop computer with map display

Tools shared during the Poster and Tools Networking session demonstrated new resources to help stakeholders interpret and apply science information.

undefinedA real-time monitoring tool for weather and fire risk information to help plan prescribed burns, analyze historical conditions affecting burn success, and track environmental indicators of drought and fire danger. Provides easy access to past, current, and short-term forecast conditions for a variety of weather parameters. Learn More

The Conservation Prioritization Tool (CPT) enables users to evaluate a proposed conservation project or suite of projects. This tool is relevant to the broad land conservation community, including land trusts, federal and state agencies,NGOs and private industry.undefined Learn More

The Tribal Resources Web App is aundefinedweb-based platform that hosts climate adaptation resources and general resources for, and about, Federally and State Recognized Tribes as well as geographic information and web links to connect users with Tribes’ web pages. Learn More.

The Florida Conservation Planning Atlas is a data discovery, visualization, and analytical platform for stakeholders throughout Florida to increase collaboration. Tools found on the atlas include Climate Adaptation Explorer, Conservation Actions Tracker, Fire Map Viewer, Simple Map Viewer and Advanced Mapper. Learn More.

The Ecosystem services map products for wild pollination, recreational birding, and open space access, are now available for download. Products include regional priority areas at the county and watershed levels as well as underlying information that enables users to refine the prioritization for specific areas of interest. Learn More.

The Forests after Florence project maps the path of Hurricane Florence and its impact on urban forests, coastal communities and NCSU students. Learn More.

Downloadable files allow users to develop customized fact sheets that describe local sea level rise scenarios and potential impacts at specific locations in the northern Gulf of Mexico. Fact sheets have been developed for each of the federally managed lands in the area, as part of SE CASC project, New Sea Level Rise Fact Sheets for Federal Lands in Northern Gulf of Mexico, and are available in SE CASC Resources. Learn more.

Poster Resources

Image of Tribal Climate Liaison poster

Tribal Partners: Tribal Resilience Liaisons

Tribal nations and native communities face significant challenges in responding and building resiliency to the extreme weather events and environmental hazards resulting from climate change. The Bureau of Indian Affair’s Tribal Resilience Program (TRP), the US Geological Survey (USGS), and Tribal Groups are collaborating to support a nationwide network of Tribal Resilience Liaisons that operate in conjunction with USGS’ regional Climate Adaptation Science Centers (CASCs). The liaison program will increase the resources available to: Help tribes access information, data, and expertise at the CASC’s elsewhere; Facilitate research integrating traditional knowledge; and support tribal forums and information exchange. These efforts are designed to better understand, communicate, and meet the needs of tribes through partnerships to promote more resilient tribal communities.

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Invasive Species: Landscape Genetics of an Invasive Species in an Urban-Rural Landscape

Landscape genetic studies can reveal how anthropogenic features drive dispersal and gene flow in invasive populations. This study explores the impact of urban landscapes on gene flow in the tiger mosquito Aedes albopictus, one of the most successful invasive species across the globe. This research contributes to a growing body of work that demonstrates how genetic data can enhance knowledge of how environmental processes affect dispersal, distribution, and evolution of invasive species at fine scales. These studies can improve existing programs for controlling invasive species and will help fill knowledge gaps needed for effective, adaptive management.

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Saltwater Intrusion: Lost Amongst the Skeletons

Live oak forests in southeast Louisiana are largely fragmented and considered imperiled environments due to anthropogenic development and habitat change. Saltwater intrusion into freshwater forests, from human activity such as canal dredging and natural processes such as storm flooding, contribute to ecosystem conversion and plant migration that changes environmental dynamics. Indigenous relationships with the land are at risk due to habitat conversion. Explore the biocultural importance of live oak forests for Indigenous communities in southeast Louisiana and how the relationship to these forests would be affected by saltwater intrusion.

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Flow Policies: Developing flow policies to balance the water needs of humans and wetlands requires a landscape scale approach inclusive of future scenarios and multiple timescales

Downscaled climate models predict an increase in drought frequency, intensity, and duration by mid-century. Conflicts over water allocation seem imminent between human and ecological needs. Current minimum flow policies are insufficient given the complexities of ecosystem processes and the changes in precipitation patterns and sea level rise that are expected in the future. Improved flow policies need to be established that reflect the functional relationships between specific representative ecological resources and components of the natural flow regime across all relevant time scales. Similarly, flow policies need to be developed within a landscape scale to implicitly address the socio-ecological trade-offs as well as the complexities of water management. Multi-disciplinary collaborations will be essential for increasing our resiliency to anticipated future changes.


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Endangered Butterflies: Maintaining Historic Disturbance Regimes Increases Species’ Resilience to Catastrophic Hurricanes

As habitat loss and fragmentation, urbanization, and global climate change accelerate, conservation of rare ecosystems increasingly relies on human intervention. However, any conservation strategy is vulnerable to unpredictable, catastrophic events. Whether active management increases or decreases a system’s resilience to these events remains unknown. Following Hurricane Irmas landfall in our habitat restoration study sites, rare ecosystems with active, human-imposed management suffered less damage in a hurricane’s path than un-managed systems. At the center of Irma’s landfall, we found Croton linearis (a locally rare plant that is the sole host for two endangered butterfly species) survival and population growth rates in the year of the hurricane were higher in previously managed plots than in un-managed controls. As climate change increases the probability and intensity of severe hurricanes, human management of disturbance-adapted landscapes will become increasingly important for maintaining populations of threatened species in a storm’s path. Doing nothing will only accelerate extinction.

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POSTER PDFs

CCS Program: Climate Change and Society Program

The Applied Climate Experience (ACE) is the capstone project for the Climate Change and Society Master’s degree. It is an opportunity for hands-on experience with a variety of hosts ranging from NOAA to communication leaders in the industry. Students are paired with mentors from climate-sensitive fields at the beginning of the program in their desired field of study and career path. This exposes students to exciting opportunities to display their talents and network with potential employers.

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RPA Assessment: The Future of America’s Forests and Rangelands: An Overview of the Resources Planning Act Assessment

The RPA Assessment examines how the interaction of economic, social, and biophysical factors affect the productivity of forest and rangeland ecosystems, and their ability to meet increasing demands for goods and services. Recent RPA Assessments and Updates have shown that the interaction of socioeconomic and biophysical drivers including land development, climate change, and natural disturbances continue to influence the extent, pattern, and conditions of forest and rangeland ecosystems, and their ability to meet increasing demands for goods and services. These effects vary regionally and locally, requiring flexible adaptation and management strategies. Resources covered in the RPA Assessment include forests, rangelands, urban forests, forest products, carbon, wildlife and fish, biodiversity, outdoor recreation, wilderness, and water.

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Rare Plant Islands: Islands of rare-plant biodiversity in the southeast: new approaches for climate-change assessments

The southeastern U.S. landscape contains a variety of small, and commonly overlooked, unusual geologic and topographic features. Since these insular ecosystems are geographically small, spatially isolated, and anchored to the landscape by geologic and topographic features, assessing and mitigating climate-related risks to biodiversity may require different sets of tools and approaches than are commonly applied to large-scale ecosystems. A recently published framework for these ecosystems builds on many decades of site-level investigations in individual insular ecosystems and proposes that changes in physical stress levels (e.g. hydrologic variability, temperature extremes, nutrient limitation, or soil geochemistry) which tip the scales between rare plants and their competitors may be a principal way in which regional climate change translates to habitat alteration for many rare species. Local-scale threats to individual species or whole ecosystems can be anticipated using this framework, allowing the design of targeted strategies for rare-species conservation.

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Conservation Priorities: Incorporating Stakeholder-Derived Conservation Priorities into Models of Coastal Land-use and Land Cover Change

Mitigating rapid population growth threats requires development of appropriate planning strategies for both urban growth and conservation. These strategies should include local stakeholder perspectives in addition to expert knowledge, as a failure to include these perspectives can lead to ineffective and unpopular initiatives. Traditional conservation approaches, as reflected in the coastal protective services and working lands scenarios, do little to ameliorate the trade-offs between development and cultural ecosystem services. This indicates that we need to consider alternate conservation mechanisms that specifically target cultural ecosystem services if we are to address priorities related to the intangible benefits nature provides. The integration of stakeholder opinions and preferences into dynamic simulations of landscape-scale processes can serve as decision- support tools that aid in the development of more relevant, acceptable, and locally-specific policy instruments for resource protection.

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Coastal Squeeze: Participatory Mapping of Cultural Ecosystem Services Impacted by Coastal Squeeze

Development and rising seas squeeze coastal ecosystems, limiting their ability to provide a range of services that support human health and well-being. Accounting for all of these services leads to better-informed climate adaptation and planning decisions. However, cultural ecosystem services are particularly difficult to measure, value, and monetize, because they are intangible and locally specific. In order to give intangible services the same consideration as other ecosystem services that are more easily and more commonly mapped, an iterative participatory mapping approach can be used to identify and value cultural ecosystem services important to long-term residents of Johns Island in South Carolina. Identifying these opportunities to protect both biophysical ecosystem services and locally-relevant cultural resources will be critical to the success of any forward-looking and equitable planning or adaptation policies.

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POSTER PDF’s

World Cafe Resources

The World Cafe Session consisted of organizational tables and topical tables. Organizational tables provided resources and discussion for stakeholders about management and research partner organizations, while topical tables conducted focused discussions on specific topics related to actionable science research and outcomes.

Organizational Tables

The RESTORE Council was established out of the RESTORE Act, which is a regional approach to restoring the long-term health of the Gulf Coast Region. The council includes Governors from the states of Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas, as well as Secretaries of the US Departments of Agriculture, the Army, Commerce, Homeland Security, the Interior and the Administrator of US EPA. Learn More about their conservation plans and restoration partners.

undefinedThe NOAA Consortium is a federal/state partnership that matches NOAA Sea Grant expertise and resources with state academic institutions. Their mission is to provide integrated university and college-based research, communications, education, extension and legal programs to coastal communities that lead to the responsible use of ocean and coastalundefined resources in Alabama and Mississippi and the Gulf of Mexico through informed personal, policy and management decisions. Learn more about NOAA Consortium’s partners, projects and current opportunities.

The American Society of Adaptation Professionals is a 501(c)3 Nonprofit Organization that aims to support and connect climate adaptation professionals to advance innovation in the field of practice. Learn more about their partnerships and opportunities.

The Southern Climate Impacts Planning Program is a south central focused climate hazards and research program whose mission is to increase the region’s resiliency and level of preparedness for weather extremes. The area served includes the region of Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, Tennessee, and Mississippi. From severe storms, flooding, drought, hurricanes and storm surge, heat waves, wildfires, to winter storms, the South experiences among the nation’s most extensive collection of climate-related hazards with many southern states ranking at or near the top of the lists in disaster declarations and billion dollar disasters. Learn moreabout SCIPP projects and opportunities.

undefinedThe Southeast Climate Hub connects public, academic, and private sector organizations with researchers and outreach specialists to deliver technical support and provide tools that help producers cope with challenges associated with drought, heat stress, excessive moisture, changes in pest pressures. The Southeast Hub works to maintain and strengthen agricultural production, natural resource management, and rural economic development under increasing climate variability. Learn More about their current projects.

The Southeast Regional Partnership for Planning and Sustainability is a six-state partnership comprised of state and federal agencies promoting collaboration in making resource-use decisions supporting national defense, conservation of natural resources, and sustainable working lands and communities in the Southeast US. Learn More about their projects and resources.

Topical Tables

Are you a natural or cultural resource manager who considers climate science information in your management decisions? Natural and cultural resource managers, researchers and coordinators came together to discuss and provide input on what information, products and outcomes are most useful to stakeholders when considering CASC science projects.

Interested in addressing coastal resilience with social scientists? Idea generator tables hosted discussions with SE CASC stakeholders to explore how social science research can help inform coastal resilience challenges and decision making. Participants brought specific issues to the table to generate important social science research questions and discussions about interdisciplinary approaches to coastal resilience.

What ways have you used to communicate your science results? Participants discussed methods previously used to communicate scientific results and brainstormed new ways to effectively communicate their findings to their target audiences through examples and resources.