NW CASC Update: Federal Funding Uncertainty & Potential Program Impacts

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As the Northwest Climate Adaptation Science Center consortium is hosted by the Climate Impacts Group at the University of Washington, we are sharing this note from the Climate Impacts Group to keep you, our valued partners, aware of recent news affecting our work. Thank you for your continued support of the NW CASC.

Dear supporters of the University of Washington Climate Impacts Group,

We appreciate the role each of you has played in our collective efforts to help make communities, Washington state, and the Pacific Northwest more resilient to extreme weather events, climate variability, and climate change over the past 30 years.

We wanted to share with each of you an update regarding federal funding for two of our programs: 1) the Northwest Climate Resilience Collaborative (NCRC), a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) funded Climate Adaptation Partnership program, and 2) the Northwest Climate Adaptation Science Center (NW CASC), a federal-consortium partnership funded by the US Geological Survey (USGS). The loss of both programs would represent about half of all funding that supports CIG and our efforts to support climate resilience for communities and ecosystems across the Pacific Northwest.

Below, we provide more details on what we know about the status of proposed changes in federal funding for each program and highlight a few of the efforts supported by each program.

1) Further information about the NCRC

As has been reported by the journal Science, the New York Times, and Politico among others, the Trump Administration has proposed a budget that would eliminate funding for the NOAA Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, which directly funds the NCRC. The future of funding for this program is therefore uncertain and will depend on the results of the Congressional budget process. Losing this funding would set back CIG’s efforts to support and scale community resilience in a rapidly changing environment. Since 2020, the NCRC has worked with Tribes and rural and urban communities throughout the PNW region to address climate risks, including:

  • Saving Lives from Extreme Heat. In response to the 2021 “heat dome” event that resulted in record high summer temperatures in Washington, we conducted a policy analysis and proposed concrete actions to reduce illness and save lives published in: In the Hot Seat: Saving Lives from Extreme Heat in Washington State. This report and its findings were cited for implementation as Action 2A in the September 2024 Washington State Climate Resilience Strategy mandated by the Washington State Legislature.
  • Empowering Tribal Resilience. We worked with the Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians to understand the barriers Northwest coastal Tribal governments face in implementing resilience projects. This needs assessment was informed by community listening sessions with Tribal staff, citizens, and elected officials, totaling 39 participants representing 13 Northwest coastal Tribes.
  • Improving Farmworker Health from Heat and Smoke. Under the NCRC, Washington State University engaged with farmworker support organizations across Washington state to understand farmworkers’ vulnerability to extreme heat and wildfire smoke. We targeted site managers as critical actors to ensure that farmworkers have adequate protective equipment and knowledge to promote positive health outcomes.
  • Community Heat and Smoke Health in Chelan and Douglas Counties. We worked with the Community for the Advancement of Family Education to design a seven-week interactive curriculum that uses wearable sensors as learning tools to promote understanding of air pollution and extreme heat, providing youth and adults information on how to protect themselves, their families, and communities.
  • Ensuring Safe Drinking Water in Umatilla, Oregon. Residents of Umatilla, Oregon, asked us to help them address the health effects of excessive groundwater nitrate pollution. We helped local community organizations raise awareness of this issue and train youth on how to test well water, install filtration systems, and distribute clean water.
  • Protecting Against Wildfire Smoke and Extreme Heat in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. Under the NCRC, the Gonzaga Climate Institute and the Coeur d’Alene Tribe are providing direct assistance to Tribal members to mitigate the health impacts of wildfire smoke and extreme heat. The team is distributing box fan filter kits, installing indoor and outdoor air quality sensors at a tribal facility to inform heat and smoke planning, and developing a real time heat and smoke dashboard at a Tribal facility.

2) Further information about the NW CASC

This past Friday, Science magazine reported about plans in the President’s fiscal year 2026 budget to eliminate the USGS Ecosystems Mission Area, which includes the NW CASC. The future of funding for this program is therefore uncertain and will depend on the results of the Congressional budget process. Losing this funding would set back CIG’s efforts to support Northwest natural resource management in a changing climate. Since 2011, the NW CASC has delivered relevant and accessible science on climate change impacts and adaptation actions for Northwest natural and cultural resource managers. This work has included:

  • Delivering actionable science to help the Northwest’s fish, water, wildlife land and people adapt to a changing climate. The NW CASC has funded more than 200 projects responding to resource managers’ on-the-ground information needs around climate impacts and adaptation responses. These projects harness the expertise of Northwest universities, Tribes and federal agencies to help ensure resource managers have the science needed to anticipate and respond to climate risks.
  • Transforming the way we train scientists so they have the skills to produce science that meets real-world needs. To date, NW CASC has trained 79 Research Fellows — graduate students and postdocs from a variety of scientific backgrounds — who’ve collaborated with more than 80 partners from Tribes and federal and state agencies to deliver a wide range of useful research products to inform resource management in a changing climate.
  • Creating a pipeline for the climate-ready resource management workforce the Northwest desperately needs. Most alumni of the NW CASC Research Fellowship program have gone on to work as scientists and resource managers at local, state, and federal agencies, Tribes, and environmental nonprofits, with the majority remaining in the Northwest. If the NW CASC is eliminated, this pipeline will be lost along with it.
  • Convening scientists and natural resource managers to prepare for emerging climate risks. The NW CASC’s Deep Dive working groups have engaged 500 participants from across more than 100 government, academic, and nonprofit entities, to build regional capacity for understanding and responding to emerging climate risks, like changing wildfire risk west of the Cascade crest. NW CASC is also host of the Northwest Regional Invasive Species and Climate Change (NW RISCC) Network, which convenes scientists and resource practitioners to better understand regional threats related to invasive species and climate change and equip resource managers with information and tools to manage these threats.

In conclusion

Even amidst funding uncertainty for the NCRC and NW CASC, the Climate Impacts Group remains committed to working with partners across the Northwest to build climate resilience in our region. Thank you for your continued support in our vision to create a just and resilient world where people and nature thrive in a changing climate. We encourage you to reach out to us with any questions.

Susan Dickerson-Lange
Director, Climate Impacts Group
dickers@uw.edu

Jason Vogel
Deputy Director, Climate Impacts Group
Co-Director, Northwest Climate Resilience Collaborative
jmvogel@uw.edu

Meade Krosby
University Director, Northwest Climate Adaptation Science Center
mkrosby@uw.edu

Now Available! Status of Tribes and Climate Change Report, Volume 2

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The Status of Tribes and Climate Change (STACC) is a series of reports that elevates the voices and efforts of Indigenous Peoples, Nations, and communities and provides a space within published literature to share Indigenous stories about climate change impacts and the solutions being implemented —a Steering Committee of 17 Knowledge Holders, Elders, Young leaders, Tribal representatives, and scientists oversaw the report development, including 79 contributing authors and many artists.

Now Available: Pacific Northwest 2024 Water Year Impacts Assessment

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The Washington State Climate Office, University of Washington Climate Impacts Group, Oregon Climate Service, Idaho Department of Water Resources, and NOAA’s National Integrated Drought Information System released the fifth Pacific Northwest Water Year Impacts Assessment, which summarizes variations in temperature, precipitation, and snowpack across Oregon, Washington, and Idaho in Water Year 2024. Additionally, it details the impacts of these variations on key sectors, such as agriculture and drinking water and how sectors responded to these impacts.

 

Surprises in the Klamath: How disease, invasives, and warming waters are affecting redband trout

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Written by guest author Heidi Shepard, NW CASC communications graduate research assistant for the winter 2025 quarter

A five-pound redband trout spawns in a spring on the margins of Upper Klamath Lake. The cloudy appearance of the background are where the spring and lake water mix.
Source: Jason Ching

 

Jordan deploys dissolved oxygen loggers in the Sprague River, the longest tributary of the Upper Klamath Basin.
Source: Jonny Armstrong

Upper Klamath Lake in south-central Oregon is perhaps the last place one might think of as being trout habitat. It’s shallow and warm, and its high nutrient content fuels summertime algae blooms, which in turn can cause massive fish die-offs. By comparison, the clear, cold rivers and streams that feed the lake are prime real estate for coldwater fish like the redband trout.

Or so you’d think. But Dr. Jonathan Armstrong, an ecology professor at Oregon State University (OSU), is discovering it’s not that simple. Armstrong joined the faculty at OSU in 2016 and quickly partnered with the Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife (ODFW) to study redband trout. These large salmonids are native to the western United States and are highly migratory, though they never venture into the ocean, instead living their entire lives in freshwater. Over the years, Armstrong has studied their life cycles and the ways they use the diverse habitat throughout the Klamath Basin — and it turns out that these fish unexpectedly spend a lot of time in the warm, eutrophic waters of Upper Klamath Lake. “When you’re in the [cold streams and rivers] they use as refuge, they look glorious…hundreds and hundreds of meters of expansive, clear cold water…exactly what you’d think of as trout habitat,” says Armstrong. “And it’s like, ‘why would you ever leave here if you’re a trout?’”

Jordan Ortega with a brown trout.
Source: Jonny Armstrong

Why indeed? Why do redband trout choose to spend so much time in a lake that Armstrong describes as “neon green and downright nasty at times”? And why are their invasive counterparts — brook trout and brown trout, the latter of which are typically tolerant to warmer waters — not doing the same? That’s the question Armstrong and his team, in collaboration with partners at ODFW and the Klamath Tribes, are hoping to answer through their current project, which is funded by the Northwest Climate Adaptation Science Center. The Klamath Tribes rely on redband trout for their last remaining subsistence fishery, as other first foods like endemic sucker fish are endangered and salmon have been cut off by dams. His colleague Jordan Ortega, a PhD student at OSU who is currently working as the anadromous fish specialist for the Klamath Tribes, visited the cold, spring-fed tributaries where redband trout are known to spawn. Ortega found that these places were teeming with invasive brown and brook trout — and they were preying on juvenile redband. “It’s nature, you know, everything eats each other,” says Armstrong. But the scientists got the impression that the redband trout’s ability to rear their young in the areas where they’re born is greatly diminished by the presence of these invasive trout species.

Armstrong and his team, which also includes Oregon Cooperative Research Unit assistant professor Dr. Melanie Davis, were also puzzled by the brown trout’s behavior. “In a lot of places, you have these mixed assemblages of native and nonnative salmonids, and the way they tend to distribute themselves is that brown trout usually go the furthest downstream, to the warmer water,” he explains. “We usually think of brown trout as one of the salmonids that are more tolerant to warm habitats. What was interesting in the Klamath Basin is that this wasn’t the case: we only found brown trout in spring-fed or snow-fed habitats.”

Researchers suspect that at certain water temperatures, a freshwater parasite may kill invasive trout but not redband trout

Julie Alexander and Michelle Jakaitis collect benthic samples targeting the worm host (Manayunkia occidentalis) of parasite C. shasta using the modified Hess sampler.
Source: Jonny Armstrong

Parasites and water temperature, Armstrong explains, are two pieces of this puzzle. Salmonids infected with Ceratonova shasta (C. shasta), a freshwater parasite native to the Northwest, experience higher mortality rates in warmer water temperatures, which does not bode well for their future on a rapidly warming planet. But Armstrong and his colleague, OSU disease ecologist Dr. Julie Alexander, are looking on the bright side. In collaboration with the Klamath Tribes, they suspect that at certain water temperatures, C. shasta appears to kill invasive trout, but not native redband trout. Armstrong and his team have hypothesized that since redband trout have co-evolved with local pathogens, parasites, and warm temperatures, they’re more tolerant to these stressors than invasive brown and brook trout. This allows redband trout to take advantage of warmer habitat like Upper Klamath Lake, while the invasive trout are limited to the colder tributaries. However, at higher temperatures, C. shasta is lethal to native fish too, so Armstrong and his team are researching the optimal temperature range where C. shasta could benefit redband trout by killing their invasive competitors while allowing them to survive — essentially acting as the enemy of their enemy.

Ultimately, Armstrong’s goal is to improve the ability of his project partners to anticipate the future locations where redband trout may thrive, but invasive trout won’t — and to concentrate their conservation efforts accordingly. To do this, he and his team are working to provide Ambodat (formerly Klamath Tribes Aquatic Resources) and the Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife with maps of the distribution of invasive species and diseases in the Klamath Basin, as well as models that can account for the effects of disease on fish distribution.

Summer season aside, warmer habitats like Upper Klamath Lake can act as an all-you-can eat buffet for redband trout

Coldwater fish research and conservation efforts tend to focus on the coldest habitats and disregard those that Armstrong has called “loser habitats” — places that are already warm and projected to continue warming as the climate continues to change. According to Armstrong, this preferential treatment neglects key habitat that highly migratory species like redband trout not only tolerate, but thrive in. Armstrong and his team knew that redband trout leave Upper Klamath Lake for a few months every summer when it gets too hot and eutrophic. What they didn’t expect, during their fieldwork, was seeing redband trout in the lake again as early as late August, when the water was still bright green with algae growth. “It was barely [tolerable] and they were already back in there,” Armstrong recounts. “I remember that was really striking because it showed us how valuable that habitat was.”

The stomach contents from a single redband trout, which ODFW encountered when doing a creel survey.
Source: Bill Tinniswood

But just what is it about Upper Klamath Lake that makes it so valuable to redband trout? To tackle this question, Armstrong and his team sampled the trouts’ stomach contents. “Fish that eat other fish often have empty stomachs,” he tells me. “Around one out of every three has something in its stomach, because they have these really patchy encounters with prey. So what was astounding when we started sampling these redband trout is every time we got our hands on one, it would cough up multiple fish.”

It makes sense, Armstrong says, because that lake is so productive: “When redband trout are in the lake, they’re pretty much just feeding at their physiological capacity, like every day is Thanksgiving.” That’s how these trout get as large as salmon without ever venturing into the ocean. And they aren’t the only freshwater salmonids that utilize warm habitat like this: so do Siberian taimen, the largest members of the salmonid family, native to northern Asia. Taimen, Dr. Armstrong explains, are big river obligates. “A taimen can’t be a taimen if it has to live in a tiny little snowmelt stream. They’ve got to get big and eat things and use large rivers,” he says, referencing the fact that conservation efforts not only focus on colder areas over warmer ones, but also on resident species over migratory ones like taimen and redband trout.

At Wild Salmon Center’s invitation, Armstrong shares redband trout research with visiting salmonid experts from Mongolia

In October 2024, Dr. Armstrong met with a delegation of Mongolian scientists who study taimen. They traveled to the U.S. at the invitation of the Wild Salmon Center to compare U.S. research and conservation efforts on redband trout with their own work on taimen, since the two are so similar in their biology and their habitat needs. Armstrong serves on the Center’s Science Advisory Board and has co-authored papers on redband trout with Matt Sloat, their Director of Science, so he was the logical choice to lead the delegation on a trip to see how Klamath River ecosystems are bouncing back after several recent mainstem dam removal projects.

Jonny Armstrong checks a radio telemetry station in the lake, where the research team monitored fish leaving and entering.
Source: Vicky Sturtevant

The Mongolian scientists “wanted to learn about the work on redband trout, see these habitats firsthand, and see the different technologies and research approaches they could think about doing,” Armstrong explains. Matt Sloat is doing research on taimen in collaboration with the Mongolian scientists, including studies to understand their physiological tolerances to dissolved oxygen levels in warming waters and radio telemetry to understand how they move across the landscape. The group is also looking at whether taimen are moving to find refuge during summer, as well as where they’re spawning and what habitats they’re getting their nutrients and growth from. By comparing their work to the state of redband trout research, the Mongolian scientists could gain a better sense of how to support these apex predators.

Similarly, the approaches used by Armstrong and his research partners include physiology studies and temperature-transmitting radio tags. Once attached to the trout, these tags allow the researchers to not only see where the fish are, but to know the temperature of the water they’re in. “You can get in a plane and fly over the lake with a little receiver, and even if you can’t take the time to pinpoint the fish, it’ll tell you that it’s in 15° Celsius water, whereas the lake’s at 25° Celsius,” Armstrong explains. This data is significant because when combined with the results of the physiology studies, it will help Armstrong and his team better understand what habitats redband trout use at different times of the year — and why.

Climate-informed management can help migratory fish persist in a warming world

A redband trout captured in the lake during spring, when the water is the optimum temperature for salmon and trout.
Source: Jordan Ortega

What does the future hold for redband trout? While there are many uncertainties, one thing is clear: Dr. Armstrong’s research will help his project partners make informed decisions about redband trout habitat conservation. The maps and models he’s developing on disease and temperature will, he hopes, help focus conservation efforts on areas where redband trout may thrive, but invasive brown and brook trout will not. The changes taking place due to the recent mainstem dam removals along the Klamath are also on Armstrong’s mind. “Maybe soon [redband trout] will be eating juvenile chinook salmon,” he says, grinning. “That’s an exciting possibility, to think about them eating marine-derived prey.”

As for Armstrong’s future? He’s partnering with Trout Unlimited on a new NW CASC-supported project to quantify the benefits to migratory fish of removing migration barriers like culverts. “You take a barrier out, and then try to quantify the benefits of the habitat downstream. But that can be difficult sometimes because if that place is seasonally warm, like Upper Klamath Lake is, it doesn’t even register as trout habitat,” Armstrong explains. So this project will examine the ways migratory fish use habitat systems, eventually translating that research into decisions about barrier placement or removal. Armstrong sees this project as an extension of his research on redband trout — shining a spotlight on the needs of migratory fish in a warming world.

This story was written by Heidi Shepard. Heidi was the NW CASC communications graduate research assistant for the winter 2025 quarter. She is currently pursuing her master’s in library and information science at UW, after spending the past several years as an environmental educator and river guide on the Colorado Plateau. Heidi can be reached at hes84532@uw.edu. 

Susan Dickerson-Lange Joins UW Climate Impacts Group as the New Director

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The Climate Impacts Group, host of the Northwest Climate Adaptation Science Center at the University of Washington, has welcomed Susan Dickerson-Lange as its new director. In her role, Dickerson-Lange will provide strategic leadership for CIG, driving financial stewardship and fundraising while supporting the team to deepen partnerships and expand offerings advancing climate resilience in the Pacific Northwest.

Faces of Adaptation: Eva Colberg

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Dr. Eva Colberg is a research scientist at the Northwest Climate Adaptation Science Center. Her scientific training encompasses community ecology, restoration ecology and the social sciences, with specific interests in the ecology and management of climate change, invasive species and fire. Her current role includes coordinating the Northwest Regional Invasive Species and Climate Change (NW RISCC) Network and playing a leading role in the planning and implementation of the NW CASC’s annual Actionable Science Deep Dive.

Prior to joining the NW CASC, Eva was a Northeast CASC-funded postdoctoral researcher at Cornell University and the interim director of the New York Invasive Species Research Institute, where she worked with members of the Northeast RISCC Network to develop guidelines for climate-smart invasive species management. Before that, she served as a research ecologist for Green Again Madagascar, a community-centric reforestation non-profit. She earned her doctorate in ecology, evolution, & systematics from the Harris World Ecology Center and University of Missouri-St. Louis, and she received a bachelor’s in biology with a minor in environmental science & policy from the College of William & Mary in Virginia.

Eva grew up in Alaska and is eager to be back in the Pacific Northwest. She enjoys bringing her sketchbook with her everywhere she goes, and after work might be found finding new patterns of movement, appreciating nature, or practicing another language.

What led you to work in the field of climate adaptation?

Growing up in Alaska motivated me to learn and care about climate and environmental issues from an early age—the nature there is breathtaking, but so are the ways in which climate change and human activities are altering the landscape. That motivated me to work in the climate and environmental sector, but I initially thought I’d be doing so from a policy perspective so that I could impact human actions. However, I wanted a solid understanding of the science behind climate change and the environment, and one undergraduate biology class was alluring enough to make me switch tracks to become an ecologist. Ecology and ecological restoration felt like a better fit for me than pure policy, but even after my doctorate I felt like something was missing. I finally found the missing puzzle piece(s) during my postdoctoral work, which explicitly focused on co-production, boundary-spanning and climate adaptation. That brought the human and action components back into my work in a way that feels like I’ve come full circle. My postdoc also introduced me to the CASC and Regional Invasive Species & Climate Change networks, and I’m grateful to be able to continue working within both in my current position.

What does your day-to-day work look like?

I split my time between coordinating the Northwest Regional Invasive Species & Climate Change Management Network and organizing the NW CASC’s Deep Dive process, both of which require a lot of networking, planning, and meeting facilitation. With NW RISCC, that includes planning our 2025 programming, reaching out to researchers and managers in the region to get a better sense of current priorities and what research is up-and-coming, and presenting at different venues to let people know we’re back in action and looking for more collaborators. I’m also working on different synthesis and outreach products, such as updating a factsheet on European Green Crab and climate impacts in the Northwest, and writing summaries of different journal articles relevant to climate change and invasive species. Every day is a little different and will keep changing as we wrap up old projects and start new ones!

How does your organization support climate resilience in the Northwest?

The Northwest Regional Invasive Species & Climate Change Management Network is a regional collaboration that supports climate resilience as it relates to invasive species in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, British Columbia, and neighboring states and provinces. Specifically, NW RISCC aims to help practitioners within federal, Tribal, state, and local agencies and conservation organizations integrate climate change science and adaptation with invasive species prevention, early detection, control, monitoring, and research activities. We do this by facilitating interactions between researchers and practitioners, identifying management needs and research opportunities, and synthesizing and summarizing current science at the nexus of climate change and invasive species.

What is your favorite thing about your work?

I love so many aspects of this work, but what stands out the most is the ability to connect with different people on the topic of ecological resilience in a changing climate. Despite the immense challenges we face with climate change and invasive species and our ability to cope with both, working with others who also care about these issues and are taking action on them gives me a lot of hope.

Updated Climate Change Vulnerability Index (Release 4.0) Includes New Features to Support Climate Adaptation Planning for Species

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A new release of NatureServe’s widely-used Climate Change Vulnerability Index (CCVI) is now available, providing natural-resource managers with a rapid and cost-effective way to evaluate species’ relative vulnerability to climate change in specific geographies. This update is the result of a collaboration between NatureServe and scientists from the Northwest and Midwest CASCs.

The CCVI is largely centered around a three-part climate vulnerability framework that combines a species’ exposure  — the rate and magnitude of climatic change experienced by a species — with its sensitivity to changing conditions and its adaptive capacity, or its ability to cope with or adjust to changing conditions. The CCVI is often used by state fish and wildlife agencies to assess the relative vulnerability of species listed in State Wildlife Action Plans. By using the CCVI to understand the relative vulnerability of terrestrial and freshwater species to climate change within an assessment area, resource practitioners can identify which species are in the most urgent need of management actions.

Last updated in 2015, the recently launched CCVI 4.0 reflects advances in scientific understanding over the last decade about how climate change affects plants and animals. While CCVI 4.0 retains the fundamental features of the previous version, it includes some key updates that were guided by a technical advisory committee and targeted at state partners to assist with their State Wildlife Action Plans. CCVI 4.0 features a new online, web-hosted platform to facilitate collaboration and data sharing amongst users (https://ccvi.natureserve.org). For users who prefer the original format, an updated Excel workbook is still available. The new version also features updated climate exposure data for the lower 48 states, for mid-century (2040-2069), and a comparison of vulnerability results across two emissions scenarios — Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) 4.5 and 8.5 from Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP) 5. The other key update is the integration of the Thurman et al (2020) adaptive capacity assessment framework.

The Northwest CASC and NatureServe will be testing inclusion of more climate variables over the next year, exploring additional features like uncertainty and sensitivity metrics. They plan to release a next-generation CCVI 4.0 by the end of this year.

Learn More / Access CCVI Online & Excel Workbook

NW CASC is Now Accepting Proposals for our 2025-26 Research Fellowship Program!

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We’re now accepting proposals for our 2025-2026 Research Fellowship Program! This is a 1-year program that enables graduate students and postdocs from across our Consortium to develop decision-relevant science in collaboration with regional natural and cultural resource managers, while providing training in the principles of actionable science.

Upcoming NW RISCC Webinar: Climate-Smart Invasive Species Management from Coast to Coast

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The Northwest Regional Invasive Species and Climate Change (NW RISCC) Network is hosting an upcoming webinar — Climate-Smart Invasive Species Management from Coast to Coast — on Wednesday, February 12 at 11 am PT. In this team-up style webinar, presenters Raymond Willard and Eva Colberg will discuss and provide examples of climate-informed approaches to invasive species management and restoration from near and far. 

NW CASC Seeks Postdoc Focused on Coastal Squeeze

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The University of Washington, in partnership with the Northwest Climate Adaptation Science Center (NW CASC), is searching for a talented scientist with an interest in coastal squeeze — when human and natural barriers challenge the inland range shifts of coastal species and ecosystems in response to sea-level rise.

The postdoctoral fellow will join a national cohort as part of the Climate Adaptation Postdoctoral (CAP) Fellowship Program, hosted by the U.S. Geological Survey Climate Adaptation Science Centers. The Fellow will conduct research related to coastal squeeze in the Northwest and will also join eight other postdocs from around the country to conduct a national synthesis project related to species range shifts.

The successful candidate for this position will have strong spatial and quantitative modeling skills and a broad understanding of coastal ecology and/or coastal geomorphology and climate change. This full-time, two-year position will be based at the University of Washington School of Environmental and Forest Sciences and will work closely with partners at the Northwest Climate Adaptation Science Center and Oregon State University as well as  coastal managers from Washington and Oregon.

Apply today to join our dedicated team working to apply science in service of climate-resilient natural and cultural resources in the Northwest! Applications received by February 1, 2025 will be prioritized.

Learn More & Apply