Recent Climate Changes Across the Great Plains and Implications for Natural Resource Management Practices
Introduction
The Great Plains (GP) 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 land use coverage supporting rural livelihoods is dominated by semiarid ecosystems, such as grasslands, shrublands, and dryland agriculture (Fig. 1). Climate change is affecting the natural resource base supporting enterprises associated with ranching, crop agriculture, conservation, and recreation (Ojima et al. 2015; Even and Ojima 2019). Reliance on the availability of ecosystem services and other natural resources in this semiarid region to support rural livelihoods forms a basis of a social-ecological system that links climate change, availability of ecosystem services, and socioeconomic and cultural characteristics operating across the region. Recent and projected climate changes across the GP are affecting drought events, extreme weather patterns (e.g., ice storms, hot spells, out-of-season frost events), flooding, and fire occurrences (Ojima et al. 2015).
The region's socioeconomic system is characterized by extensive rural population density with a recent concentration of population growth in urban areas. As of 2010, there were almost 42 million people (≈13% of the total US population) living in the nine US GP states, including Colorado (USDA Economic Research Service 2012). The average population density over the region is about 66 people per square mile, with a median of 10 people per square mile (US Census Bureau 2010). Although the region's overall population has been increasing, the growth has not been equitable across counties. Urban population numbers have grown to almost 33 million persons in 2010 (US Census Bureau 2010), whereas 39% of the counties in the GP have declined in population from 1990 to 2010 (US Census Bureau 2010). Rural counties are much more likely to lose population than those with urban development.
Native American tribes and communities also represent a critical population and cultural heritage in the GP. Native American tribes number approximately 65, managing extensive land, water, and wildlife resources. Reservation lands are often marginal and less productive with limited access to fertile soils; inadequate water resources, social services, and infrastructure; and limited food security. There are about 450,000 persons claiming Native American ethnicity according to the US census data (US Census Bureau 2000, US Census 2010).
The semiarid climate conditions and interannual variability driven by synoptic-scale atmospheric flows contribute to the varied weather patterns of the region. These conditions contribute to droughts; changing seasonal climate patterns affecting snow melt; altered seasonal stream flows; earlier green-up of the vegetation; and extreme events such as fires, ice storms, and floods affecting ecosystem services (e.g., forage and browse availability, soil moisture, habitat, water availability) in time and space. Livelihood strategies have evolved to the availability of ecosystem services and variable weather patterns so that recent and projected climate changes in the region result in greater uncertainty. The increased weather variability and extreme events are also contributing to enhanced vulnerability of rural communities (Marshall et al. 2014; Shafer et al. 2014; Even and Ojima 2019) and Native American communities across the region (Eiser et al. 2012; McNeeley 2017; Jantarasami et al. 2018).
This paper describes recent atmospheric conditions contributing to climate changes affecting weather patterns of the region. Future climate projections based on the US Fourth National Climate Assessment (fourth NCA) report (USGCRP 2017) are presented to provide a perspective of how these changes will manifest themselves into the future. The manner in which recent climate changes affect droughts, fires, and extreme events is discussed. Examples are provided of how natural resource managers are responding to these climate changes. We conclude the paper with a discussion of framing adaptation planning within a social ecological system perspective that enables the development of adaptive management strategies that incorporate aspects of adaptive capacity of a particular livelihood and to better target management options.
Section snippets
Trends in Recent Climate Patterns and Controls Across the Great Plains
Recent US National Climate Assessment reports (Kunkel et al 2013; USGCRP 2017) provide information on current trends of weather and climate conditions across the United States and GP. In addition to warming trends reported in the fourth NCA (Kunkel et al. 2013; USGCRP 2017), certain features of the GP climatology are changing and resulting in changes of weather patterns and extreme events of the region (USGCRP 2017). These include changes in the controls of arctic air mass flow across the
Projected Climate Changes for the Great Plains
Analyses of projected climate changes have been conducted with an ensemble of coupled atmosphere-ocean global circulation models (AOGCMs) under the guidance of the Coupled Model Inter-comparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5; Hibbard et al. 2007; Moss et al. 2008) for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fifth Assessment (IPCC 2013). Under the CMIP5 protocol, various projected climate scenarios were simulated under specified radiative forcing of the atmospheric using a number of AOGCMs
Implications of Climate Change on Natural Resources Management Strategies
Climate change is already impacting natural resources and ecosystem services (e.g., land productivity, water availability, seasonal dynamics of ecosystem and wildlife dynamics) and is expected to continue to exacerbate these effects on ecosystems, wildlife, other natural resources, and human livelihoods in the GP region (Ojima et al. 2015; Conant et al. 2018; Kloesel et al. 2018). Recent climate change impacts include a reduction in the snow season (e.g., later onset in the fall and earlier
Conclusions and Implications
Climate change continues to emerge as an issue that will challenge management operations and impact livelihoods in the GP. Changing seasonal patterns of atmospheric flows and continued warming of atmosphere will increase weather variability and extremes and impact natural resources critical to key ecosystem services for wildlife, conservation, agricultural, recreational, and livelihood needs. Collaborative efforts between researchers and management professionals are and will enhance development
Declaration of Competing Interest
We have no conflicts of interest. We are supported by federal grants and Colorado State University employees.
Acknowledgments
The content of this publication was presented at the 2018 Great Plains Summit, Denver, Colorado, and co-organized by Deborah Finch (USDA-ARS) and Justin Derner (USDA-ARS).
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Funding was provided by the USGS grant G11AC90009 in support of the North Central Climate Adaptation Science Center based at Colorado State University and USGS project funding (G17AC00284) related to Engagement Support Climate Adaptation. Research was additionally supported by funds from the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) Grass-Cast and DayCent modeling Coop agreements (58-3012-7-009 and 58-5402-4-011) and University of Nebraska USDA Grass-Cast project (58-0111-18-018). This work is also supported by the USDA UV-B Monitoring and Research Program, Colorado State University, under USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture grant 2019-34263-30552, and the Colorado Climate Center, Colorado State University. This research was a contribution from the Long-Term Agroecosystem Research (LTAR) network. LTAR is supported by the USDA.