Spring Webinar Recordings Now Available

NE CASC recently concluded a highly successful Spring Webinar Series, which garnered a cumulative audience of more than 500 members of the climate adaptation science community. If you missed these talks the first time around or simply want to view them again, we invite you to check them out! For more information, please take a look at our spring webinar information below.

Webinar 1: The Status of Tribes and Climate Change Report
Presenter: Nikki Cooley, Institute for Tribal Environmental Professionals
Description: A groundbreaking document, The Status of Tribes and Climate Change Report was created to honor the resilience of Tribes across the country as they face increasing climate impacts. To develop this document, the Institute for Tribal Environmental Professionals Tribes and Climate Change Team convened a group of more than 90 authors, including those from Tribal Nations, federal agencies, Tribal organizations, academic institutions, and non-profits. Each chapter of the report is preceded by narratives that feature Tribal representatives who speak about the climate impacts their communities are confronting and describe the actions they are taking to address the effects of climate change on their lands and culture. In this webinar, Nikki Cooley provided an overview of the report while focusing on portions that are especially relevant to Tribal nations and communities of the Northeast.
Recording: Click here to view

Webinar 2: Localizing Forest Adaptation Strategies to Diverse Northeastern Forest Ecosystems and Threats
Presenter: Anthony D'Amato, University of Vermont
Description: Northeastern forests span a great diversity of ecological settings and ownership types, which limits the general utility of broad recommendations for sustaining forest functions and values under changing climate and disturbance regimes. Similarly, the varied nature of climate change impacts and their interactions with other stressors, including non-native insects and diseases, present unique, site-level management challenges that complicate strategies for maintaining specific species or habitat conditions into the future. To address the need for site- and ecosystem-level guidance on best forest adaptation strategies, a series of operational-scale studies were co-developed with diverse partners over the past decade across a range of key forest types in NH, NY, and VT. Strategies tested include a mix of novel tactics, such as planting future-climate adapted species, and more commonly applied ecological silvicultural approaches designed to increase ecosystem complexity, all localized to current forest conditions and long-term forest and wildlife goals for the site. In this webinar, Anthony D'Amato highlighted the outcomes from this work and discussed the implications for balancing objectives associated with increasing adaptive capacity while sustaining key wildlife species and ecosystem processes (such as carbon storage and sequestration).
Recording: Click here to view

Webinar 3: Gulf of Maine Flood Hazard: From Theoretical to Community-Collaborative Research
Presenter: Hannah Baranes, Gulf of Maine Research Institute
Description: Coastal management and resilience planning relies on estimates of present and future coastal flood recurrence intervals – for example, what does the 1% annual chance flood look like? Modes of flooding along the Gulf of Maine coast (the north shore of Cape Cod through Maine) are unique within the U.S. in that a storm’s timing relative to high tide and the height of the tide on the particular day the storm hits are more dominant drivers of flood severity than the intensity of the storm itself. Thus, standard observation and model-based methods do not yield reliable estimates of flood recurrence intervals in the Gulf of Maine. During her time as an NE CASC fellow, Baranes developed a statistical model that more accurately captures the influence of storm-astronomical tide alignment on flood hazard. In this webinar, she described how she has leveraged that work to support coastal resilience planning efforts in collaboration with municipal, civic, and community partners in Massachusetts and Maine. In Massachusetts, Baranes served on the Greater Boston Research Advisory Group, co-authoring a sea level rise and coastal flooding chapter for their climate projections report. In Maine, she is expanding the state’s network of tide gauges using emerging low-cost technologies; developing community science and education programs to tie measured water levels to local flood impacts; and designing statistics for a statewide probabilistic flood hazard model.
Recording: Click here to view

Webinar 4: Lake Water Level Management Under Climate Change
Presenters: Allison Roy, USGS Massachusetts Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit & Kostas Andreadis, UMass Amherst
Description: Winter water level drawdown (WD) is a common lake management strategy to protect shorelines from ice damage, control nuisance macrophytes, and support recreation. Most WD lakes undergo small magnitude (<1 m) drawdowns without a special permit; thus, there is no database for where, when, and how lakes are drawn down. Moreover, there is little guidance (or adherence to any official guidelines) on drawdown depth and timing to meet management objectives while allowing refill to minimize ecological and recreational impacts. We developed novel methods that use satellite-derived lake surface area and water level to assess the prevalence and hydrologic characteristics (timing, magnitude, duration) of lakes that undergo WDs. A web interface, powered by Google Earth Engine, was developed to facilitate water level information access for stakeholders. We also developed a hydrologic modeling framework to evaluate the ability of lakes to meet different drawdown magnitudes and refill initiation timing, given different drawdown magnitudes and climate conditions. Unsurprisingly, there is high variability in potential to refill among lakes and years, and thus management strategies to optimize duration of the drawdown will be lake-specific. We will continue working with regional partners to disseminate information in order to help managers make climate-informed decisions. 
Recording: Click here to view

Webinar 5: Connecting with NE CASC: How We Work & How to Work with Us
Presenters: Will Farmer and Addie Rose Holland, NE CASC
Description: Do you want to be more involved with the NE CASC community but aren't quite sure how to take the first steps towards this goal? Would you like to know more about who we are, what we do, and how to collaborate with us? Then this webinar is for you! This presentation will discuss the basics of partnering with NE CASC on research projects and other work related to our mission. It will outline the types of work we do, how to make connections with our principal investigators and staff, and how to develop, frame, and submit NE CASC funding proposals. This wide-ranging webinar will begin with an overview of key information regarding NE CASC and will reserve ample time for a Q & A period. Please bring your questions for our speakers.
Recording: Click here to view