Managing climate impacts to natural resources in protected areas can be hampered by lack of monitoring data, poor understanding of natural resource responses to climate, or lack of timely condition assessments that can inform management actions. Here we demonstrate the utility of water balance as a tool for understanding natural resource responses to climate by developing case studies focused on stream flow, vegetation production, and wildfire ignition at Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve (GSDNP), U.S.A. The efficacy of water balance to predict these responses stems from the explicit integration of climate with site conditions that modify the effects of climate. This in turn results in estimates of water availability, water use, and water need that are proximal drivers of aquatic and terrestrial natural resource conditions. The water balance model successfully forecasted stream flow (r² = 0.69, P < 0.001); determined the critical water needs for maintaining annual vegetation production in different vegetation types spanning a large environmental gradient (r² = 0.18–0.71); and predicted proportion of historic wildfire ignitions in forest (r² = 0.96–0.99) and non-forest (r² = 0.96–0.97) vegetation types. Collectively, these case studies demonstrate practical approaches to translate climate data into assessments of natural resource condition that inform long-term planning and near-term strategic actions needed for conservation of protected areas.

缺少监测数据，对自然资源对气候的反应了解不足或缺乏可以为管理行动提供信息的及时状况评估，可能会阻碍管理气候对保护区自然资源的影响。在这里，我们通过在美国大沙丘国家公园和自然保护区（GSDNP）开展侧重于溪流，植被生产和野火点火的案例研究，证明了水平衡作为理解自然资源对气候的反应的工具的实用性水的功效预测这些反应的平衡来自于气候与改变气候影响的现场条件的明确整合。这进而导致对水，陆地自然资源状况的近端驱动因素-水的可获得性，水的使用和水的需求的估计。²  = 0.69，P <0.001）；确定了跨越较大环境梯度（r ²  = 0.18–0.71）维持不同植被类型的年度植被产量所需的关键水需求；以及森林（r ²  = 0.96-0.99）和非森林（r ²  = 0.96-0.97）植被类型的历史性野火点火的比例。这些案例研究总体上展示了将气候数据转换为自然资源状况评估的实用方法，这些信息为保护保护区所需的长期计划和近期战略行动提供了信息。