Science Themes

This theme is designed to address gaps in understanding of climate impacts on key resources, increase understanding of the complex interactions between climate and other stressors and translate this information into next-generation vulnerability and risk assessments. Through informational interviews, stakeholders and partners identified the following as strengths and growth activities for the center:

• Advancing knowledge of climate impacts to Regional Species of Greatest Conservation Need (RSGCN), listed species – including those under consideration for the Federal Endangered Species Act, – Tribal Trust Resources, and other fish, wildlife, and habitats of economic or cultural importance

• Addressing understudied species, processes, and ecosystems – including wetland systems (inland, tidal river, estuarine and coastal), insects and pollinators, mussels, rare plants, and loss of hemlock – in addition to continued analysis of priority species and center strengths

• Understanding the impacts of interactive, compounding effects of multiple stressors (e.g., climate change, invasive species, disease, sea level rise, coastal erosion, and drowning, land use change, urbanization, nutrient loading, and pollution) including integrated ecosystem assessments and cumulative risk assessments

• Identifying ecological thresholds for when species or habitats cross tipping points towards non-linear declines as a result of climate change as well as timelines and trigger points for management of at-risk species and habitats to inform managers when recovery goals and conservation plans need to be modified

• Addressing gaps in existing climate change vulnerability assessments (CCVAs; e.g., for Tribal communities and resources, urban ecosystems, cultural resources, and coastal communities) and incorporating new science, tools, and approaches into next-generation, finer scale, more collaborative CCVAs

• Understanding how monitoring programs could be adapted to better capture and track system-level climate impacts and leverage data from existing monitoring programs to do the same

This theme seeks to understand the impact and feasibility of existing and novel adaptation strategies, evaluate integrative adaptation strategies in the face of compound effects, and translate efficacy and transferability into actionable guidance for managers. Through informational interviews, stakeholders and partners identified the following as strengths and growth activities for the center:

• Piloting and evaluating the effectiveness of planned and implemented adaptation strategies, including how existing non-climate strategies could be modified to better meet climate adaptation goals as well as the risks associated with adaptation strategies (e.g., prescribed fire, dam removal, living shorelines, assisted migration, climate-smart restoration)

• Understanding the challenges of moving from local to regional (and regional to local) applications of adaptation strategies to inform management actions

• Providing adaptation alternatives by modeling the impacts of individual and integrated adaptation practices

• Evaluating potential adaptation benefits of mitigation strategies (and vice versa)

• Evaluating the efficacy of broad climate adaptation strategies for data-deficient RSGCN and determining and balancing the needs for more targeted strategies

• Identifying and evaluating urban resilience strategies (e.g., disaster recovery, nature-based solutions) that incorporate co-benefits for fish and wildlife habitat and other urban resilience targets

This theme is designed to increase the inclusion of social, cultural, and economic variables in management decisions and priorities and evaluate how these variables influence efficiency, transferability, and buy-in for climate adaptation strategies. Through informational interviews, stakeholders and partners identified the following as strengths and growth activities for the center:

• Partnering with Tribal and Indigenous communities, municipalities, States, NGOs, and other entities to assess the breadth of cultural resources in the Northeast threatened by climate change and to develop integrative adaptation strategies

• Developing technical support to build partners’ capacity to implement climate adaptation strategies

• Understanding effects, values, and perceptions around future ecosystem configurations that may occur under changing climate conditions and determining the social acceptability, cost-effectiveness, trade-offs, and benefits of various management actions to address or adapt to these changes

•  Incorporating predictions of the human population, consumption, migration, distribution, land use, and shoreline change into assessments of ecosystems and ecosystem services in a changing climate

•  Assessing the values, perceptions, and economic incentives that influence the application and effectiveness of adaptation strategies (e.g., incentives to engage private landowners)

• Evaluating the return on investment of different types of adaptation and implementation strategies across ecosystems and socio-economic conditions

• Using community-based participatory research and other social science research methods to integrate Indigenous and Western Science and identify how climate change impacts  various socio-cultural groups responsible for and engaged with water, terrestrial, and coastal resources

The purpose of this theme is to inform the development of a resilient habitat network across the Northeast in support of conservation planning for climate change adaptation, to understand the regional impacts of coordinated and uncoordinated adaptation, and to develop forums for increased regional strategizing around adaptation.  Through informational interviews, stakeholders and partners identified the following as strengths and growth activities for the center:

• Advancing the understanding of habitat quality, shoreline change, species migration and habitat corridors and connectivity, and climate refugia across the northeast to inform landscape-scale conservation design

• Developing strategies to understand where management, conservation, restoration, and acquisition work best through multi-faceted modeling of land use change

• Evaluating the potential role of working lands and waters and urban and urbanizing habitat in contributing to regional conservation and adaptation strategies under future climate scenarios

• Supporting interdisciplinary activities at regional and larger scales which are aimed at integrating physical climate models with ecological, habitat, and population response models in order to better understand natural systems and the human communities they support.

• Advancing decision support tools and resources that help diverse managers evaluate and compare landscape scale conservation and adaptation strategies

• Expanding the exchange of data and knowledge across institutional, administrative, jurisdictional, and political boundaries