Register today for the 2023 Northwest Regional Invasive Species & Climate Change Symposium, September 7-8, 2023. This free, virtual, 2-day event will include talks from more than 15 invasive species and climate change experts as well as a virtual networking event! A detailed agenda will be available soon, so watch your email and NWRISCC.ORG for announcements and updates.
The Symposium will bring together managers, scientists, and other practitioners to discuss the nexus of climate change and invasive species management in the Northwest (including Washington, Oregon, Idaho, British Columbia, and neighboring states and provinces) and to help scientists learn more about current management needs and practices.
Day 1 | September 7 Talks and Panels, 9:00am – 12:00pm PT: REGISTER HERE
Networking Event, 12:15pm – 1:00pm PT: REGISTER HERE
Day 2 | September 8 Talks and Panels, 9:00am – 1:00pm PT: REGISTER HERE
The goal of the NW RISCC Network is to help practitioners within federal, tribal, state/provincial, local agencies, and other organizations integrate climate change science and adaptation with invasive species prevention, early detection, control, monitoring, and research activities.
Organizers of the 12th Northwest Climate Conference (NWCC) are now accepting abstract and session proposal submissions for this year’s Conference, to be hosted virtually by Boise State University on October 2-4, 2023 — for more than a decade, this conference has provided a networking and learning community for practitioners, scientists, tribal members, and community organizers interested in climate change impacts and adaptation in the Northwest.
The Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) Branch of Tribal Climate Resilience (TCR) is now accepting applications for its Fiscal Year 2023 Annual Awards Program. TCR will make available approximately $120 million in funding for Tribes and tribal organizations to address the unique impacts of climate change affecting vulnerable tribal communities.
Check out the how to apply guideand submit applications through the TCR Annual Awards Program Application Portal. The deadline to apply is Friday, October 13, 2023.
Researchers from the Northwest Climate Adaptation Science Center will be gathering at the 108th Annual Ecological Society of America meeting, to be held in Portland, Oregon the week of August 6-11.
This year’s theme seeks to help create an ESA for All Ecologists by providing programming to better engage private- and public-sector ecologists. This year’s conference will highlight projects that are implementing ecological science, collaborating across sectors, educating future scientists and decision makers, and disseminating basic and applied ecology research to those who need it most.
Upekala Wijayratne, a member of the NW CASC Advisory Committee, is an ecologist with the U.S. Forest Service, in the Northwest Oregon Area Ecology Program. She is based at the Mt. Hood National Forest, where she also serves as climate change coordinator. Her team, consisting of two other ecologists, works in the Mt. Hood, Siuslaw and Willamette National Forests, as well as the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area.
Upekala has been been working professionally in the field of plant ecology since 2003, starting with the U.S. Geological Survey and then moving over to the U.S. Forest Service, where she has been for the past 11 years. Her work has brought her to the Mojave Desert, Great Basin, Sierras, Oregon Cascades, Oregon Blue Mountains, Tanzania and Portugal. Upekala holds a master’s in ecology and evolutionary biology from University of Michigan and a doctorate in botany and plant pathology from Oregon State University.
What led you to work in the field of climate adaptation?
Thinking about climate adaptation is an important part of managing our forests sustainably in the face of climate change. Some key issues facing forests now are prolonged drought and increased disturbances like insect and disease outbreaks and wildfire.
What does your day-to-day work look like?
My day-to-day work involves a variety of tasks including keeping up with the latest relevant scientific publications, producing landscape analyses and data products, monitoring effectiveness of management actions and working with district planning teams to integrate climate adaptation into management actions.
How does your work support climate resilience in the Northwest?
The National Forests have recently produced several climate vulnerability assessments which are used by planning teams to identify climate adaptation strategies and actions at the local level as well as climate action plans at the national level. Each national forest also has a climate change coordinator, such as myself, to assist with integrating climate adaptation into management projects.
What is your favorite thing about your work?
My favorite thing is the varied nature of my work, from data analysis to fieldwork to working with stakeholders and partners.
Snow algae protect themselves from intense solar radiation by developing pigments that give the snow a reddish hue. NW CASC researchers sampled snow algae in their study sight to compare with data collected via drones.
Source: Shannon Healy
If you happen to find yourself hiking in snow-covered areas of Northwest mountains this summer, you may come across a strange sight — large stretches of pinkish red snow. This phenomenon, sometimes referred to as “watermelon snow,” is not as benign as it sounds. In the warm summer months, there is more water present between ice crystals in snow, providing habitat for snow algae to grow. These snow algae protect themselves from intense solar radiation by developing pigments that give the snow a reddish hue. While clean, white snow surfaces reflect almost all incoming solar radiation — helping protect our atmosphere from warming — snow darkened with algae absorbs heat that would otherwise be reflected, causing it to melt more quickly.
Snowmelt is an important source of freshwater, recharging streams and rivers in the dry summer months, and sustaining Tribes, species, and other human and non-human communities until the rains return in the fall. However, when the timing and quantity of snowmelt shifts, it can affect water availability for these downstream communities. Since snow algae is expected to become more widespread as the climate warms, it’s important to understand how snow algae will affect our Northwest snowpack and water availability into the future.
Until recently, it’s been difficult to study how snow algae affects the timing and quantity of snowmelt in remote and inaccessible areas. To address this challenge, 2020 NW CASC Research Fellow Shannon Healy and colleagues tested remote sensing approaches for mapping snow algae distribution in the North Cascades using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).
An unmanned aerial vehicle, or drone, flies over Bagley Basin. It carries a multispectral camera system, which captures a wide spectrum of light at fine spatial scales, to map the distribution of snow algae in the area.
Source: Shannon Healy
This study was conducted on the alpine glaciers of the Bagley Basin in Washington’s North Cascades. The snowmelt-fed Bagley Lakes flow into a tributary that leads to the North Fork Nooksack River. Since time immemorial, local Tribes have relied on the snowmelt from the Bagley Lakes Basin to replenish the river in the rain-scarce summer months and support salmon populations. The Nooksack River also provides drinking water and water for irrigation in the region. The research team chose this study site because it’s accessible by foot, offering a unique opportunity to collect physical snow samples to ground truth the data collected in aerial surveys.
Though satellite images have been used to remotely detect snow algae in rugged and inaccessible sites, they are limited in their ability to detect light wavelengths and spatial data at fine resolutions. Recognizing a need for new approaches to more accurately map snow algae, Shannon Healy and colleagues tested methods for collecting snow algae data using camera systems attached to UAVS. In recent years, UAVs have become more widely available and affordable, making them an exciting and accessible tool for research.
In the summer and fall of 2021, this research team conducted three survey flights of the Bagley Lakes basin to test remote sensing approaches for mapping snow algae. They used a multispectral camera system, which captures a wide spectrum of light at fine spatial scales, attached to a UAV, to map snow algae in the Bagley Basin. The first two flights collected data during the summertime snow algae bloom, while the third survey in the fall captured elevation data from the snow-free basin. After each aerial survey, the research team collected ground samples of varying bloom intensities across the study area to validate the data collected with the UAVs.
The Bagley Basin in Washington’s North Cascades was the study sight for a team of NW CASC researchers testing methods for mapping snow algae to better understand its impact on snowmelt.
Source: Shannon Healy
Researchers used two approaches to collect snow data from the UAVs. The first approach, a Principal Component Analysis (a type of analysis that reduces the dimensions in large datasets), allowed researchers to use all of the 10 spectral bands of data to extract precise snow algae coverage from other spectrally unique features like rock, water and vegetation. As a second approach, researchers used spectral indexing (a classification approach that uses ratios of specific spectral bands to detect snow algae) to draw out snow algae data from snow. In the first survey, both approaches provided clear separation between snow algae and the rest of the snowpack. In the second survey, the separation between snow and algae was less distinct. This difference in separation effectiveness was attributed to the peak in bloom intensity during the first survey, detected from the associated ground samples, which provided greater spectral contrast between the clean snow and the red snow algae.
The research team combined the UAV mapping results with the physical samples taken after each flight to calculate the snowmelt caused by snow algae in the study area that summer. This study demonstrated the ability to remotely detect and map snow algae in mid-latitudes using UAVs carrying a multispectral camera. It also revealed that remote detection of snow algae works best during periods of greater bloom intensity. In the North Cascades, snow algae will continue to influence the timing of peak snowmelt and should be considered in regional watershed melt models. The advances in collecting snow algae and mapping its distribution can support adaptation strategies to manage and preserve our water resources as the climate changes, both in the Northwest, as well as other mountain ranges experiencing snow algae in the spring and summer, such as the Colorado Rockies and the Sierra Nevada.
In the second webinar of our series on Navigating a Collaborative Research Career in Academia, we’ll hear from experts who will share how they are rethinking the traditional CV format to create space for more meaningful, contextual information and to emphasize quality over quantity of information in CVs, as well as perspectives on how this shift can move academia towards fairer research assessment.
In a new USGS Climate Science Champions episode, NW CASC Partnerships Ecologist Dr. Lindsey Thurman explores how climate change impacts amphibians in the Northwest, looking to understand the traits that allow species to survive and thrive in a changing world.
The Bureau of Indian Affairs’ Branch of Tribal Climate Resilience, the USGS Climate Adaptation Science Centers, and several Tribal Nations and organizations are collaborating to support a nationwide network of Tribal climate resilience liaisons, each of whom works directly with a regional CASC to connect resources to federally-recognized Tribes in climate adaptation efforts: check out a new handout that describes the program and contains contact information for the current CASC Tribal Liaisons.
Do you want to be part of a dynamic, intertribal organization that works at the intersection of Tribal sovereignty, climate solutions, environmental justice & Indigenous cultures? The Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians is hiring 2023 Climate Fellows as well as a Senior Tribal Climate Resilience Liaison.
Register today for the 2023 Northwest Regional Invasive Species & Climate Change Symposium, September 7-8, 2023. This free, virtual, 2-day event will include talks from more than 15 invasive species and climate change experts as well as a virtual networking event! A detailed agenda will be available soon, so watch your email and NWRISCC.ORG for announcements and updates.
