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Voices of African American Forestry
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This short video captures the insights and reflections on past and present issues as well as the future aspirations for African American forestry and land retention. Featuring interviews with African American forest owners in the Southeastern Black Belt who are part of the Sustainable Forestry and African American Land Retention Network (SFLR).
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Videos and Webinars
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Private Land Stewardship Academy: Natural Resource Management Lessons
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The role of landowners as stewards of private lands and the public benefits derived from them is paramount. Most often successful land stewardship begins when natural resource professionals convey good land stewardship practices and techniques to private landowners.
In this series of online lessons, learn about Natural Resource Management -- how management can help address current and emergent private land challenges -- from the Texas A&M Natural Resources Institute.
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Training Resources Exchange
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Facilitating Local Stakeholder Participation in Collaborative Landscape Conservation Planning
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Landscape-scale conservation enables conservation professionals to understand the biological and social factors at work across a broad range of traditional geopolitical boundaries. With a solid understanding of these factors comes the ability to make sound management decisions based on desired future conditions. However, even the most informed decisions rely on the support of local stakeholders to become successful on the ground. Join host Brad Milley from the National Wildlife Refuge System and Dr. Catherine Doyle-Capitman as they discuss the different scales at which conservation occurs and the importance of integrating local stakeholder participation and social data into collaborative landscape conservation planning. Shared by the FWS through the National Conservation Training Center.
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BOTANY AND A CHANGING WORLD: INTRODUCTION TO THE SPECIAL ISSUE ON GLOBAL BIOLOGICAL CHANGE
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The impacts of global change have heightened the need to understand how organisms respond to and influence these changes. Can we forecast how change at the global scale may lead to biological change? Can we identify systems, processes, and organisms that are most vulnerable to global changes? Can we use this understanding to enhance resilience to global changes? This special issue on global biological change emphasizes the integration of botanical information at different biological levels to gain perspective on the direct and indirect effects of global change. Contributions span a range of spatial scales and include both ecological and evolutionary timescales and highlight work across levels of organization, including cellular and physiological processes, individuals, populations, and ecosystems. Integrative botanical approaches to global change are critical for the eco- logical and evolutionary insights they provide and for the implications these studies have for species conservation and ecosys- tem management.
Key words: community dynamics; flowering phenology; functional traits; global biological change; invasive species; land-use patterns; plant–microbial interactions; species interactions.
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Climate Science Documents
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Biodiversity and ecosystem multifunctionality
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Biodiversity loss can affect ecosystem functions and services1–4. Individual ecosystem functions generally show a positive asymptotic relationship with increasing biodiversity, suggesting that some species are redundant5–8. However, ecosystems are managed and conserved for multiple functions, which may require greater biodiversity. Here we present an analysis of published data from grassland biodiversity experiments9–11, and show that ecosystem multifunctionality does require greater numbers of species. We analysed each ecosystem function alone to identify species with desirable effects. We then calculated the number of species with positive effects for all possible combinations of functions. Our results show appreciable differences in the sets of species influ- encing different ecosystem functions, with average proportional overlap of about 0.2 to 0.5. Consequently, as more ecosystem pro- cesses were included in our analysis, more species were found to affect overall functioning. Specifically, for all of the analysed experiments, there was a positive saturating relationship between the number of ecosystem processes considered and the number of species influencing overall functioning. We conclude that because different species often influence different functions, studies focus- ing on individual processes in isolation will underestimate levels of biodiversity required to maintain multifunctional ecosystems.
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Climate Science Documents
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Climate Change and Existing Law: A Survey of Legal Issues Past, Present, and Future
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Summary: This report surveys existing law for legal issues that have arisen, or may arise in the future, on account of climate change and government responses thereto. At the threshold of many climate-change-related lawsuits are two barriers—whether the plaintiff has standing to sue and whether the claim being made presents a political question. Both barriers have forced courts to apply amorphous standards in a new and complex context. Efforts to mitigate climate change—that is, reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions—have spawned a host of legal issues. The Supreme Court resolved a big one in 2007: the Clean Air Act (CAA), it said, authorizes EPA to regulate GHG emissions. EPA’s subsequent efforts to carry out that authority have been sustained by the D.C. Circuit. Another issue is whether EPA’s “endangerment finding” for GHG emissions from new motor vehicles will compel EPA to move against GHG emissions from other sources, and, if EPA does, whether the CAA authorizes cap- and-trade programs. Still other mitigation issues are (1) the role of the Endangered Species Act in addressing climate change; (2) how climate change must be considered under the National Environmental Policy Act; (3) liability and other questions raised by carbon capture and sequestration; (4) constitutional constraints on land use regulation and state actions to control GHG emissions; and (5) whether the public trust doctrine applies to the atmosphere. Liability for harms allegedly caused by climate change has raised another crop of legal issues. The Supreme Court decision that the CAA bars federal judges from imposing their own limits on GHG emissions from power plants has led observers to ask: Can plaintiffs alleging climate change harms still seek monetary damages, and are state law claims still allowed? The two rulings so far say no to the former, but split on the latter. Questions of insurance policy coverage are also likely to be litigated. Finally, the applicability of international law principles to climate change has yet to be resolved.Water shortages thought to be induced by climate change likely will lead to litigation over the nature of water rights. Shortages have already prompted several lawsuits over whether cutbacks in water delivered from federal projects effect Fifth Amendment takings or breaches of contract. Sea level rise and extreme precipitation linked to climate change raise questions as to (1) the effect of sea level rise on the beachfront owner’s property line; (2) whether public beach access easements migrate with the landward movement of beaches; (3) design and operation of federal levees; and (4) government failure to take preventive measures against climate change harms. Other adaptation responses to climate change raising legal issues, often property rights related, are beach armoring (seawalls, bulkheads, etc.), beach renourishment, and “retreat” measures. Retreat measures seek to move existing development away from areas likely to be affected by floods and sea level rise, and to discourage new development there.
Natural disasters to which climate change contributes may prompt questions as to whether response actions taken in an emergency are subject to relaxed requirements and, similarly, as to the rebuilding of structures destroyed by such disasters just as they were before. Finally, immigration and refugee law appear not to cover persons forced to relocate because of climate change impacts such as drought or sea level rise.
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Climate Science Documents
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Scenarios of future land use change around United States’ protected areas
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Land use change around protected areas can diminish their conservation value, making it important to
predict future land use changes nearby. Our goal was to evaluate future land use changes around protected
areas of different types in the United States under different socioeconomic scenarios. We analyzed
econometric-based projections of future land use change to capture changes around 1260 protected
areas, including National Forests, Parks, Refuges, and Wilderness Areas, from 2001 to 2051, under different
land use policies and crop prices. Our results showed that urban expansion around protected areas
will continue to be a major threat, and expand by 67% under business-as-usual conditions.
Concomitantly, a substantial number of protected areas will lose natural vegetation in their surroundings.
National land-use policies or changes in crop prices are not likely to affect the overall pattern of land use,
but can have effects in certain regions. Discouraging urbanization through zoning, for example, can
reduce future urban pressures around National Forests and Refuges in the East, while the implementation
of an afforestation policy can increase the amount of natural vegetation around some Refuges throughout
the U.S. On the other hand, increases in crop prices can increase crop/pasture cover around some protected
areas, and limit the potential recovery of natural vegetation. Overall, our results highlight that future
land-use change around protected areas is likely to be substantial but variable among regions and
protected area types. Safeguarding the conservation value of protected areas may require serious consideration of threats and opportunities arising from future land use.
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Climate Science Documents
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AMJV Partnership Receives $8 Million RCPP Award to Enhance Cerulean Habitat
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A project proposal from the Appalachian Mountains Joint Venture (AMJV) Partnership was one of 115 high-impact projects to receive in total more than $370 million as part of the new Regional Conservation Partnership Program (RCPP), Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced today.
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News & Events
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Virtual tour: Native Warm Season Grass Grazing
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Join a tour of pasture lands that use native warm season grasses to provide good grazing for livestock and invaluable habitat, food, and shelter for native wildlife. The video highlights the benefits of different native grasses and how quickly these grasses can benefit working lands.
Developed and provided by Ohio NRCS, Ohio State University Extension, the Madison Soil and Water Conservation District, and Quail/Pheasants Forever. Released September 2020.
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Videos and Webinars
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SFE Lessons Learned from Learn-n-Burn Events
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"Learn and Burn" workshops are an excellent way for private landowners and others to gain hands-on burning experience and knowledge from expert mentors. This webinar will provide some lessons learned from coordinating these events, and tips to putting one on in the future. Participants will be provided with a template checklist, examples of past agendas, ideas for potential partners and funding opportunities, suggestions on how to measure program impact, and successes from past events.
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Online Training Programs and Materials
