1. Monitoring a changing climate:
An overview for State Wildlife Planners
Jonathan Mawdsley
The Heinz Center

2. Why Monitor Climate Change?
• Tells you what is happening on the ground
• Provides data for testing model projections
• Provides data for additional modeling
• Provides feedback on effectiveness of your
conservation actions
• Allows course corrections to your
management activities

3. Questions Monitoring Can Answer
• How is the climate actually changing?
• How is climate change affecting the
biophysical environment?
• How is climate change affecting species and
ecosystems?
• How effective are our climate-change
mitigation and adaptation activities?

4. Monitoring Climate Change
Elements of a monitoring program:
• Direct measures of climate change
• Secondary effects of climate change
• Ecological effects of climate change
• Effectiveness monitoring of mitigation and
adaptation activities

5. Good News!
• Many existing monitoring programs
• Much data already available
• Synthetic studies of data published
– Intergovermental Panel on Climate Change
– U. S. Global Change Research Program
– National Climate Assessment
• Translational products available on Web, some
even user-friendly!

6. Direct Measures
Meteorological measures
– Temperature, precipitation, weather events, storm
frequency…
Records maintained and synthesized by:
– National Climatic Data Center (NOAA)
• www.ncdc.noaa.gov
– Regional Climate Centers
Recommend working with local meteorologists (local
university) to obtain and interpret data

7. Secondary Effects of Climate Change
• Sea Level Rise
– NOAA Tides and Currents, Sea Level Rise Viewer
• Fire frequency, intensity
– Forest Service Remote Sensing Applications Center
LANDFIRE
• Floods
– USGS Floods and Droughts
– FEMA National Flood Hazard Layer
• Droughts
– USGS Floods and Droughts
– National Drought Monitor (USDA, NOAA)
• Extreme Storm Events – National Climatic Data Center

8. Ecological Effects
• Changes in phenology
– USA National Phenology Network, Nature’s Notebook
– Extensive literature on phenological shifts
• Changes in distribution
– 2012 analysis of Breeding Bird Survey data
– Many reports in literature
• Changes in population size/extent
– Again, Breeding Bird Survey analyses
– Increasing number of reports in literature

9. Monitoring Species
Different approaches:
• Identify species that are of interest to
management authorities, determine areas of
vulnerability, and monitor those
• Identify species at greatest risk from climate
change and monitor changes in those species
• Depends on the management approach of your
department/agency

10. Climate Change and Western Lands
• Workshops in four states
(AZ, NV, UT, WY)
• Identify conservation
targets for management
• Identify
threats, stressors, conserva
tion actions
• Develop conceptual model
• Identify key
rates, states, processes for
monitoring
• Identify existing monitoring
programs that provide
relevant data
• Establish priorities for new
data collection

11. • Strategic planning effort
paralleling State Wildlife Plan
• Identified focal species of
cultural, ecological, economic
importance
• For focal species, identify
movement corridors, refugia
• Manage habitat along
corridors to promote
connections
• Judicious translocations to
suitable future habitats
• Monitor habitat, population
responses
Helping Desert Bighorns Adapt

12. What you monitor depends on what you are trying to
accomplish with your management activities
Many proposed measures are straightforward:
• Mitigation: plant trees; measure tree growth and
carbon uptake
• Mitigation: protect forest lands; measure carbon
sequestered in forest & not released to atmosphere
• Adaptation: restore corridors; measure wildlife
movements along restored corridors
• Adaptation: species translocation; measure survival
and recruitment at new site(s)
Effectiveness
Measures

13. Take-home Messages
• You can incorporate climate
monitoring information into
your State Wildlife Plan
• Climate monitoring
programs, data already
available
• Many of our existing
monitoring programs can
yield data about climate
change and its effects on
wildlife and ecosystems