Ecological Assessments

In concert with the US Fish and Wildlife Service’s Great Northern Landscape Conservation Cooperatives, a network of teams and work groups will determine priority conservation needs for fish, wildlife and land management ecological systems through a Strategic Habitat Conservation framework. The USGS will provide downscaled climate information to resource managers and field scientists for application to ecological assessments used in population and habitat modeling and forecasting to ensure scientifically sound and timely application of projected climate effects on fish, wildlife and land/water resources.

The USGS will also provide remote sensing technical assistance to field scientists specifically related to applying climate change research products, datasets, and model projections and interpretations to resource management. Because such an effort will be focused on the effects of climate change, the integration with the Climate Monitoring and Climate Effects Network will allow partner agencies to utilize the expertise centered in the team to optimize their remote sensing efforts with targeted data acquisition and analyses. This is another specific area where the USGS will work closely with those agencies with great remote sensing capabilities, Science Centers within the USGS, as well as those in NASA, NOAA, and other federal agencies and in the academic community.