Climate information to support wildlife management in the North Central United States

Abstract

This paper investigates what is needed to make climate and weather information more usable for the wildlife management practitioners and ecological researchers in the Prairie Potholes Region (PPR) of the North Central United States. Using interviews, policy document analysis, and participant observation, we identify climate and weather information needs, barriers to use, and opportunities to provide better information to these users. We found that the research and management communities need guidance on how to interpret and apply existing information. Climate information needs in the PPR are driven by the need to understand how projected changes in precipitation will impact prairie wetland ecology. Primary needs include guidance towards selecting, interpreting, and using various climate information products to understand impacts and explanations of the differences between new products and previously available information. Another need includes information on how the societal responses to climate change will further impact ecological systems. Existing management priorities, limited institutional resources, and limited ecological data are remaining barriers that can be ameliorated by leveraging existing policy processes or trusted sources of information to provide guidance, thereby reducing time and costs associated with using climate information in wildlife policy planning. Throughout, we emphasize the importance of the social and ecological aspects of the decision-making context to shape climate information needs, barriers, and entry points. Additional research is needed on the diverse ways that users engage with and use climate information, and additional efforts are needed to co-produce guidance documents that interpret climate information for management and research communities.

Limited shifts in the distribution of migratory bird breeding habitat density in response to future changes in climate

“…2020) using climate‐modeling best practices (Sofaer et al. 2017) for managing this ecosystem of continental and global importance (Yocum and Ray 2019).…”

“…Additionally, multiple wetland monitoring efforts have been sustained for over three decades and enabled the development of different modeling tools and approaches to assess how climate change could impact wetlands and waterbirds in the PPR (Johnson and Poiani 2016, McIntyre et al 2019, McKenna et al 2019. Despite past efforts to forecast the future impact that climate change may have on prairie-pothole wetlands, the conservation and management community has identified the need for more robust and relevant climate/wetland projections (Rushing et al 2020) using climate-modeling best practices (Sofaer et al 2017) for managing this ecosystem of continental and global importance (Yocum and Ray 2019).…”

A predictive model for seasonal pond counts in the United States Prairie Pothole Region using large-scale climate connections

“…Additionally, these models use variables that influence the climate variability of the region and capture seasonal climate information and trend. Capturing this variability is important because managers are very interested in the climate variability of the region [8]. These models exhibit high skill exemplified by high linear correlation values and low RMSE in LOOCV mode.…”

“…Near-term threats include land modification due to agriculture or oil/gas well production and climate variability, and longer-term threats include climate change. Managers must respond to both, though near-term threats typically take priority for addressing within agency resource constraints [8]. Complicating matters further, much of the land in the United States portion of the PPR is privately owned [9].…”

Use of web-based species occurrence information systems by academics and government professionals

“…Studies have found that social context, professional cultures and organizational structures have an effect on information use by professionals [42][43][44][45], while the user's discipline, type of activity, personality, and experience with data, influence how they search for information [46]. In addition, aspects of the data, such as how and for what purposes data were produced within a discipline, appear to be important in generating trust to facilitate data use by researchers [47].…”