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NE CASC Launches Six New Projects

Sunday, January 26, 2025
A white cedar wetland in Massachusetts.

Overview

The Northeast Climate Adaptation Science Center has awarded $2,900,000 to NE CASC university consortium institutions, USGS Science Centers, and other colllaborators to initiate six new research initiatives that will advance natural and cultural resource climate adaptation in the Northeast. In addition to establishing or expanding our relationships with myriad federal and state agencies, Tribal nations, and non-governmental organizations, this work will address partner-identified information needs in the areas of coastal resilience, regeneration of Atlantic White Cedar and Hemlock forests, invasive insects, avian biodiversity, carbon storage, forest adaptation strategies, and stormwater management. Descriptions of the new projects are provided below. 

Project Summaries

Project #1: Restoring Climate-Resilient Atlantic White Cedar Wetland Forests in the Northeast: Lessons from Culture and Science
Atlantic white cedar (AWC) ecosystems naturally filter and store water, cool the surrounding landscape, and serve as refugia for wetland and forest species, especially during the hot and dry periods that are occurring more frequently because of climate change. Recognizing the importance of AWC wetlands, swamps, and forests, the state of Massachusetts invested in a cranberry bog restoration program to convert thousands of acres of retired cranberry farmland back to their original AWC state. Though partners such as Living Observatory (LO) have detailed lessons-learned from this restoration work, more information is needed to ensure that the efforts remain resilient in the face of climate change. Researchers supported by this project will integrate traditional Indigenous forest stewardship and historical geologic land use (including past fire patterns and pollen distribution) with modern strategies to develop climate-resilient forests. The researchers will explore strategies to help speed up seedling adaptation to changing conditions, such as using seeds sourced from southern forests, planting younger trees, and adding soil amendments. They will also document the optimal conditions for healthy stands and seedling germination and create test beds to improve the survivability and lower the cost of plantings at restored project sites. Additionally, the team will support the design of cultural respect easements so the Nipmuc and other local tribes, who have stewarded AWC forests for thousands of years, can access protected AWC lands. This project will result in a knowledge base for resilient stewardship and restoration of AWC ecosystems that highlights the achievements of Indigenous stewardship. It will also provide actionable guidance for Massachusetts state agencies, restoration consultants, and conservation groups to restore and manage threatened northeastern Atlantic white cedar wetland forests as the climate changes. 

 

Project #2: Forecasting Changes in Avian Biodiversity Under Changing Climate
Infrastructure development projects, including renewable energy projects, can negatively affect migratory birds, especially as development occurs at the same time that climate change is shifting bird distributions, populations, and abundances. The US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) enacts regulations to minimize harm to wild bird populations and identifies low-risk areas for development. Since current low-risk areas for migratory birds may become higher-risk in future climates, decision-makers need detailed information about bird population sizes and their movements throughout the year, both now and in the future. This project aims to identify areas in the Northeastern United States that are currently important to bird populations and areas that will become important under future climate and land-use scenarios. Despite limited formal monitoring data for many species of regulatory and conservation interest, the number of bird observations recorded by citizen scientists on eBird continues to grow exponentially. This collaborative, interdisciplinary research team will create a framework to make better use of eBird data to help the USFWS make decisions to minimize long-term negative impacts of development and climate change on bird populations. This framework will incorporate information across species’ full annual life cycles rather than only a single season (e.g., breeding). Results from this project include high-resolution visualizations of species-specific distributions that highlight low-risk areas for infrastructure development. The team will publish protocols and methods so other agencies and institutions can adapt them to meet their own specific information needs. This study will help the USFWS make science-based decisions to monitor and minimize risk to birds posed by the combined impacts of infrastructure development and climate change. 

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Project #3: Designing Climate-Resilient Stormwater Management in Northeastern US Cities to Support Stream Ecosystems
Stormwater, or rainfall that lands on rooftops and pavement and quickly drains away, transports pollution like excess sediment and phosphorus to nearby streams, rivers, and lakes, and can also cause flooding. While urban communities have engineering and management strategies to deal with stormwater, those strategies are based on historical weather data, so they don't account for the extreme rainfall that is expected to occur more frequently with climate change. A major obstacle to adapting stormwater management strategies is that current infrastructure was built to be long-lasting, and it is difficult and expensive to replace. These challenges make it critical for managers to understand how climate change will impact their local communities and the effectiveness of different stormwater adaptation approaches. The goal of this project is to bring together stormwater managers and decision-makers to learn from each other and identify the most effective strategies to adapt to climate change in the northeastern US. Researchers supported by this project will combine climate change data, numerical models of stormwater runoff, and information on how urban streams carry sediment and phosphorus to understand how climate change will impact urban streams in 6-10 cities across the region. They will also synthesize adopted and proposed climate adaptation strategies and assess whether strategies are transferable across different cities. Throughout the project, the team will discuss ideas and results directly with city stormwater managers, scientists, and engineers. This project will produce a series of fact sheets and webinars evaluating potential stormwater climate adaptation strategies, tailored for cities across the northeastern US. Datasets and other actionable information will be shared with managers who make on-the-ground decisions to improve lake and stream ecosystems for the well-being of people who live around them. 

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Project #4: Coastal Responses to Sea Level Rise: Landscape-Scale Understanding in an Uncertain Future
Rising sea levels and more frequent high-intensity storms are rapidly changing the coastal landscape of the Northeastern US and threatening the services they provide (for example, storm protection, flood mitigation, habitat, carbon sinks, and recreation). However, coastal landscapes are complex – they include wetlands, rocky headlands, mainland and barrier beaches, dunes, and uplands -- and each environment will likely respond differently to change. This complexity makes it difficult, but critical, for resource managers, decision-makers, and the public to know ‘where,’ ‘when,’ ‘how likely,’ and ‘how extreme’ coastal landscape change is expected to be across the region. This project aims to create awareness, support engagement, and build a community of practice to explore the complexities, uncertainties, and management challenges of coastal landscape change. The project team will use landscape models to study coastal change at a variety of time scales (0 to 50+ years), scenarios (low to high sea-level rise rates), and coastal systems (e.g., tidal wetlands or beaches). Importantly, these models will be co-developed with input from coastal land managers, tribes, and other restoration practitioners to ensure the models meet their needs, uses, and priorities. This collaborative approach will make projections of coastal and wetland landscape responses to sea-level rise and climate change relevant and useable across the region.
The project team will produce public data releases of the model output and create an online geo-narrative describing the project and its outcomes. Focusing on coastal wetlands, the landscape-scale models from this project will improve collective understanding of future coastal change and provide tools and training needed to put the most up-to-date, useable science into the hands of decision makers and the public.

 

Project #5: Climate Smart Forest Adaptation in the Wake of Hemlock Woolly Adelgid
The Hemlock Woolly Adelgid (HWA) is an invasive insect that has caused extensive hemlock death from Georgia to Maine in many of the densest hemlock forests in the US. Managing for HWA then either replanting hemlock trees or allowing forests to naturally regenerate without planting is the current main conservation approach. However, climate change and other invasive species make regenerating healthy forests difficult. Active management with climate-proactive strategies can help slow the spread of invasive plants into disturbed areas affected by HWA and assist the development of climate resilient forests that sustain hemlock ecosystem services. The main goals of this project are to work with land managers to (1) identify information gaps in current hemlock conservation efforts and forest regeneration conditions and (2) develop region-specific management plans that incorporate climate adaptive practices to supplement hemlock conservation goals, adding diversity and resilience to disrupted forests. The project team will do this by synthesizing existing data on the expected ranges of other forest species that thrive in the shady, mesic, cool habitats typically occupied by hemlock, the ecosystem services these species provide, and forest adaptation strategies that support species projected to thrive in a changing climate. From this data synthesis, the project team will produce a decision support tool to help land managers plan their responses to hemlock loss in a changing climate. Users of the tool will select a specific location and receive customized lists of best practices for adaptive planning based on their ecological, cultural, and economic goals for the forest. Project findings will be presented to forest managers at the Forest Service HWA Managers’ Meeting, Northeast RISCC network events, and Northeast CASC events. Information gained from this project will help land managers integrate climate adaptation into their forest management decisions around HWA and hemlock loss, leading to healthier, more resilient forests for Northeastern wildlife and the general public.

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Project #6: Climate Adaptation in Northeastern Forests to Support Birds of Conservation Concern and Ecosystem Services
Climate change and related threats like invasive species and diseases are impacting forests and birds of the Northeast. Across the region, managers at Tribal, federal, and state natural resource agencies are grappling with how to protect habitat for forest-dependent birds and how to sustain other key ecosystem services like forest carbon storage in the face of these ongoing threats. Previously, this research team, in collaboration with others, devised climate change adaptation recommendations for forest and wildlife managers. Currently, on-the-ground experiments are testing those recommendations to see how well they support habitat for priority species like songbirds and grouse. The team will use existing and new data from these experiments to evaluate the effectiveness of the different strategies. They will also compare these results with carbon storage metrics for each site, derived from a forest growth model, to evaluate potential trade-offs and win-wins between stewarding bird habitat and maximizing carbon storage. The project team will synthesize findings from these analyses to refine their adaptation recommendations for managers, which will be shared through site-specific guidance, a regional guidebook, and an in-person learning exchange. Finally, the team will broaden their scope and explore how much adaptation is necessary to maintain forest bird habitat.

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