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The U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) was established by Presidential Initiative in 1989 and mandated by Congress in the Global Change Research Act (GCRA) of 1990 to develop and coordinate “a comprehensive and integrated United States research program which will assist the Nation and the world to understand, assess, predict, and respond to human-induced and natural processes of global change.”

Today, delivering on our legal mandate and the President’s Climate Action Plan, the U.S. Global Change Research Program released the Third National Climate Assessment, the most comprehensive, authoritative, transparent scientific report on U.S. climate change impacts ever generated. The report confirms that climate change is affecting every region of the country and key sectors of the U.S. economy and society, underscoring the need to combat the threats climate change presents and increase the preparedness and resilience of American communities.

Over the next century, climate change will dramatically alter natural resource management. Specifically, historical reference conditions may no longer serve as benchmarks for restoration. The authors review the potential role for riparian restoration to prepare ecological systems for the threats posed by climate change.

From 02/09/18 New Mexico In Focus broadcast: This month on “Our Land: New Mexico’s Environmental Past, Present and Future,” we head to Sandia Peak—and learn what’s missing up there right now. With Kerry Jones, a warning coordination meteorologist with the National Weather Service, we learn why this year’s record-low snowpack has such big implications for New Mexicans across the state. A “water year” runs from October 1 through the end of September, and New Mexicans right now are standing at the driest start to any water year on record—that is, all the way back to the 1890s.

Video presentations from the conference held October 18-19, 2016 at Utah State University. As climate changes, forests are being impacted by severe drought, longer fire seasons, and impressive insect epidemics. New approaches to landscape restoration are needed to cope with these disturbances. The 2016 Restoring the West Conference offered presentations by experts in climate science, landscape restoration, and forest ecology on techniques for this uncertain future, and gave examples where these techniques are working.

Goals of the project include identifying work being done by tribes in Arizona and New Mexico on climate change, assessing their climate change research and information needs, making tribes aware of resources and opportunities that might assist them in their work, and sharing research results of the project with tribes, the USFS and other agencies.

This volume reviews existing climate models that predict species and vegetation changes in the western United States, and it synthesizes knowledge about climate change impacts on the native fauna and flora of grasslands, shrublands and deserts of the interior American West. Rocky Mountain Research Station Online Publication.

This assessment uses SAVS, an assessment tool based on ecological principals, to rank individual species of interest within the eastern portion of the Barry M. Goldwater Range, Arizona, according to predicted climate change responses and associated population declines balanced with responses expected to incur resilience or population increases. Rocky Mountain Research Station Online Publication.

This final report uses biological data collected in wadeable rivers and streams, by four states, to examine the components of state and tribal bioassessment and biomonitoring programs that may be vulnerable to climate change. The study investigates the potential to identify biological response signals to climate change within existing bioassessment data sets; analyzes how biological responses can be categorized and interpreted; and assesses how they may influence decision-making processes. The analyses suggest that several biological indicators may be used to detect climate change effects and such indicators can be used by state bioassessment programs to document changes at high-quality reference sites.

Seavy, Nathaniel E. et al. 2009. Why Climate Change Makes Riparian Restoration More Important Than Ever: Recommendations for Practice and Research. Ecological Restoration 27:3. September 2009