Thursday, May 11, 2023, 11 AM – 12 PM MT
Presented by: Dr. Christine Miller Hesed (NC CASC, CIRES, CU Boulder) & Dr. Heather Yocum (NC CASC, CIRES, CU Boulder)
Register in advance for this meeting:
https://cuboulder.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJAvdeiopzoiH9TxDIwaNZbV8jk5ZEezf79E
After registering, you will receive an email confirmation containing information about how to join the meeting.
ABSTRACT:
This webinar will discuss findings from the Grasslands Synthesis Project, recently published as USGS Open File-Report 2023-1037 and USGS Open File-Report 2023-1036. Grasslands in the Great Plains are of ecological, economic, and cultural importance in the United States, and understanding how climate change and variability will impact these ecosystems is crucial for successful grassland management in the 21st century. In 2020, the NC CASC began a project to establish a baseline of information to best serve grassland managers at Federal, State, and Tribal agencies and nongovernmental organizations to help meet regional grassland management goals. This project, “A Synthesis of Climate Impacts, Stakeholder Needs, and Adaptation in Northern Great Plains Grassland Ecosystems” (hereafter, the Grasslands Synthesis Project), had two primary goals: (1) to synthesize management goals and challenges for grassland managers across the region and (2) to assess the state-of-the-science and identify knowledge gaps for addressing the goals and challenges within the context of climate change. Two working groups and an advisory committee worked for two years to collect, analyze, and synthesize existing reports, peer-reviewed literature, and management documents. We identified 70 specific research questions organized into 15 categories of research needs that, if answered, would support grassland managers in meeting their management goals under a changing climate. Those research questions were then used to guide a synthesis of available information on the impacts of climate change and variability on temperature, water availability, wildfire, vegetation, wildlife, large-bodied ruminants, grazing, and land-use change and the implications for grassland management in the North Central region. We will discuss these findings, remaining research needs, and next steps in this research.
About the speakers:
Dr. Christine Miller Hesed is a conservation biologist and environmental anthropologist whose work focuses on engaging diverse stakeholders in climate change adaptation planning. Located in rural Kansas, Christy is exploring the ways in which natural resource management decisions may impact rural and tribal communities’ vulnerability to climate change. She has also coordinated two working groups to assess and report on climate science and adaptation knowledge and gaps for the grasslands in the North Central region of the United States. Prior to working at the North Central Climate Adaptation Science Center (NC CASC) in the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, Christy was the project director of Engaging Faith Communities for Coastal Resilience, an applied research project that brought together rural church communities with scientists, conservation organizations, and county and state government employees to address climate change on the Chesapeake Bay. Her doctoral research focused on rural African American communities on the Chesapeake Bay in order to understand environmental justice, vulnerability, adaptation, and resilience to sea-level rise. Christy is a former EPA STAR Fellow.
Dr. Heather Yocum is a Research Scientist at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado-Boulder. Heather is an environmental anthropologist and political ecologist, and her research focuses on understanding decision-making around natural resources, how to create actionable and usable science, and how humans interact with and understand the world around them. Heather joined CIRES in 2014 as a postdoc and worked as an embedded social scientist at NOAA’s Earth Systems Research Labs in the Physical Science Lab. Since then, she has also worked with Western Water Assessment (the NOAA CAP/RISA program) and the NC CASC where she collaborates with federal, state, Tribal, non-profit, and private land and water managers on generating and applying climate information to inform climate adaptation. She is currently working on projects to better understand decision-making in National Parks, and working with the state of Colorado to update vulnerability assessments to include frontline communities. She also coordinates the Tribal Climate Leaders Program and the Climate Adaptation Scientists of Tomorrow program, both of which support students from historically-excluded communities to become leaders in fields related to climate adaptation.
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