The Great Plains region plays an important role in providing water and land resources and habitat for wildlife and livestock, crops, energy production, and other critical ecosystem services to support rural livelihoods. The semiarid conditions of the region and tight coupling of livelihood enterprises with ecosystem services creates a situation of increased sensitivity to climate changes and enhanced vulnerability among the rural communities and Native American nations across the region. Recent climate conditions associated with warming trends, and altered atmospheric flows have resulted in rapid onset of drought conditions and other extreme weather events across the region that are changing seasonal patterns of temperature and precipitation and warming trends. Projected climate changes provided in the fourth US National Climate Assessment indicate that potential warming and variability of precipitation will further increase drought and extreme weather events.

Recent research and assessment efforts of current and projected climate changes in the Great Plains indicate that rural communities and ecosystems are becoming more vulnerable to changes associated with warming trends, droughts, and increased variability in precipitation. These climate changes are having differential impacts on ecosystem services that are critical to livelihood enterprises. Strategies for how resource managers and the research community can better collaborate and more effectively codesign and coproduce efforts to understand and to respond to these challenges are needed.

大平原地区在为野生动植物和牲畜，农作物，能源生产以及其他重要的生态系统服务提供水和土地资源及栖息地以支持农村生计方面发挥着重要作用。该地区的半干旱条件以及生计企业与生态系统服务的紧密联系，使该地区的农村社区和美洲原住民国家对气候变化的敏感性增强，脆弱性增强。与变暖趋势相关的近期气候条件以及大气流量的变化已导致该地区干旱条件的迅速发作和其他极端天气事件，这些事件正在改变温度，降水和变暖趋势的季节性模式。

大平原当前和预计的气候变化的最新研究和评估工作表明，农村社区和生态系统越来越容易受到与变暖趋势，干旱和降水变化性相关的变化的影响。这些气候变化对生计企业至关重要的生态系统服务产生不同的影响。需要有关资源管理者和研究团体如何更好地协作和更有效地进行代码签名和联合制作以理解和应对这些挑战的努力的策略。