Using NASA Resources to Inform Climate and Land Use Adaptation: Ecological Forecasting, Vulnerability Assessment, and Evaluation of Management Options Across Two US DOI Landscape Conservation Cooperatives

Hansen, Andrew; Goetz, Scott; Melton, Forrest; Monahan, Bill; Nemani, Ramakrishna; Olliff, Tom; Theobald, Dave; Gross, John

Project description for NASA-NPS climate change study 2011-2015. Designation of US Department of Interior Landscape Conservation Cooperatives (LCCs) emphasizes the important threat that climate and land use change pose to biological resources in national parks and on other federal lands. Developing strategies for management and adaptation in the coming century requires improvements in our ability to forecast biological responses under future scenarios, assess spatial variation in the vulnerabilities of biological resources, and design multi-scale management strategies based on vulnerability and management feasibility. The goal of this project is to develop and apply decision support tools that use NASA and other data and models to assess the vulnerability of ecosystems and species to climate and land use change, and to evaluate management options. Our objectives are to: 1. Quantify trends in ecological processes, ecosystem types, and dominant tree species from past to present, and under projected future climate and land use scenarios using NASA and other data and models across two LCCs. 2. Assess the vulnerability of ecosystem types and dominant tree species to climate and land use change by quantifying exposure, sensitivity, adaptive capacity, and uncertainty in and around focal national parks within LCCs. 3. Evaluate management options for the more vulnerable ecosystem types and tree species within these focal parks. 4. Design multi-scale management approaches for vulnerable ecosystem types and tree species to illustrate adaptation strategies under climate and land use change. 5. Facilitate transfer of data, methods, and models to federal agencies to facilitate broad application of the decision support tools. The proposed work will build on our previous successful NASA Applied Sciences project to enhance decision support within the National Park Service Inventory and Monitoring Program. This project will focus on portions of the Great Northern and Appalachian LCCs, both of which support critical biological resources and have already undergone climatic warming. Within a climate adaptation framework recently derived by an interagency team, we will integrate component models and data from the Terrestrial Observation and Prediction System (TOPS; Nemani et al. 2009) and the SERGoM land use change model (Theobald 2005) to hindcast (2001-2010) and forecast (2010-2100) responses of ecosystems and illustrative species to 36 future scenarios.

Using NASA Resources to Inform Climate and Land Use Adaptation: Ecological Forecasting, Vulnerability Assessment, and Evaluation of Management Options Across Two US DOI Landscape Conservation Cooperatives

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