2021 Ecological Drought Webinar Series

Ecological Drought Webinar 1: An Introduction

February 3, 2021, 11:30 a.m.–12:30 p.m. ET

Introducing ecological drought as a scientific concept distinct from other definitions of drought, this webinar explored recent research on the topic, including transformational drought impacts and ecological tipping points.

Speakers: 

• Dr. Shelley Crausbay, Senior Scientist, Conservation Science Partners
• Dr. Amanda Cravens, Research Social Scientist, USGS

View Webinar Recording

Ecological Drought Webinar 2: Planning for Resilience

February 17, 2021, 1–2:15 p.m. ET

This webinar focused on planning, restoration, and recovery actions that strengthen ecosystem resilience, mitigate the impacts of natural disasters, and realize co-benefits. 

Speakers:

• Dr. Jennifer Cartwright, Lower Mississippi-Gulf Water Science Center, USGS
• Rachel M. Gregg, Senior Scientist, EcoAdapt
• Hannah Panci, Climate Change Scientist and Robert Croll, Climate Change Program Coordinator, Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission

View Webinar Recording

Ecological Drought: Drought, Wildfire, and Recovery

March 3, 2021, 4–5 p.m. ET

Drought can exacerbate wildfire frequency, intensity, and severity. This webinar explored wildfire management approaches based on ecological principles, including those that embed traditional ecological knowledge.

Speakers:

• Dr. Jeremy Littell, Research Ecologist, Alaska Climate Adaptation Science Center, USGS 
• Bill Tripp, Director of Natural Resources and Environmental Policy for the Karuk Tribe Department of Natural Resources

View Webinar Recording

Ecological Drought: Impacts on Coastal Ecosystems

March 17, 2021, 3–4 p.m. ET

This webinar shared recent research on drought impacts to coastal ecosystems and services.

Speakers:

• Dr. Kirsten Lackstrom, Research Associate, Carolinas Integrated Sciences & Assessments 
• Dr. Beth Middleton, Research Ecologist, Wetland and Aquatic Research Center, USGS
• Dr. Michael Osland, Research Ecologist, Wetland and Aquatic Research Center, USGS 

View Webinar Recording

Key Takeaways: What We Know About Ecological Drought Today

• Drought is likely to increase with climate change, and future drought may be substantially different from current and historical drought in frequency, severity, and extent.
• Thinking about drought only as an ecohydrological process does not sufficiently address the socio-economic complexity of ecosystem impacts. 
• Ecological drought frameworks can help understand and address the vulnerability of people to drought.
• Drought preparedness solutions should consider ecosystems.
• A growing body of foundational science, actions, and a wide variety of tools exist to guide drought-adaptation actions, which are increasingly being tailored by location and case.
• Sharing knowledge and information across institutions and regions is beneficial, and should include examples of both successes and failures.

Examples of Key Ecological Drought Research Needs

Webinar presenters and participants were asked to identify priority research needs to support improved understanding and planning for ecological drought. 

Understanding Ecosystem Responses to Drought

• Understand ecological responses to drought that can include tipping points and thresholds, mortality, recovery, and system transformations.
• Understand how drought interacts with the various components of the landscape including local conditions (e.g. soils, topography) and human water use.
• Understand impacts of ecological drought on people and communities, which includes how different communities experience the impacts.
• Understand ecological drought sensitivity for an ecosystem that includes identifying what a proactive response looks like, accounting for lag times in drought management and decision making, and overcoming institutional challenges in oversight shared with multiple jurisdictions.
• Understand the interactions between temperature, precipitation, and land surface components based on location and the different types of drought (meteorological, hydrological, agricultural, ecological, etc.), recognizing that each drought may have different metrics and sensitivities to climate change.

Monitoring and Prediction 

• Establish long-term monitoring efforts to detect ecosystem response to droughts.
• Identify which drought metrics and indices are most useful in the context of ecologically available water.
• Link ecological impacts to drought metrics and indicators.
• Identify what information (tools, indicators, observations, etc.) is needed to make ecological drought decisions at different time scales, and improve the provision of this information to address vulnerability and impact assessment, monitoring and early warning, and preparedness and response.
• Develop new datasets and metrics/indices as needed to provide information for making ecological drought decisions.
• Develop dynamic water stress models for different ecosystems.

Information for Future Drought Planning

• Link hydrologic studies to conservation and restoration actions. 
• Use previous droughts as natural experiments to test hypotheses and prepare for future droughts, while assessing if this historical experience can be a valid reference for future droughts based on future water deficit trajectories. 
• Understand the socioeconomic impacts from ecological drought, such as recreation and events canceled or challenges for managing refuges.
• Understand the long-term implications of drought impacts which includes options for managing competing interests and priorities, monitoring and restoration needs, and climate adaptation strategies.

Wildfire Management

• Understand the role of antecedent conditions as they relate to drought impacts on wildfire, to inform predictions and long-term planning.
• Incorporate advances in drought predictions and our understanding of climate-fire futures to help manage future landscapes including decisions to resist change, adapt to it, or direct it.
• Assess our ability to manage changes in fire regime to include consequences for landscapes and people.

Coastal Resource Management

• Understand freshwater strategies for maintaining salinity, and incorporate a socio-economic balance of conservation/human needs to identify options to avoid relict ecosystems.
• Conduct species and functional group research that can be used to better anticipate coastal wetland responses to drought.
• Conduct field and satellite based investigations of drought induced vegetation dieback events that includes time to recovery, ecological regime shifts, peat collapse, and wetland loss.

Policy and Practice Gaps

• Incorporate ecological drought into mainstream definitions of drought and understanding of drivers and impacts.
• Identify ecological drought impacts in a range of ecosystems - and linking them to existing management objectives or community values.
• Identify mechanisms to incorporate ecological monitoring and impacts into drought planning and decision making, both during and before drought. 
• Incorporate stakeholder perspectives when identifying information and research needs. 
• Match sensitivity characteristics of ecological drought to decision making processes, such as assessing if more emphasis is required on preparedness than response.
• Identify institutional responsibility to prepare for and respond to ecological drought and develop coordination or collaboration mechanisms to overcome fragmented responsibility.
• Identify and implement strategies that (1) reduce future drought stress on ecosystems and species, (2) retain ecologically available water in the natural systems, and (3) facilitate species persistence under drought conditions.
• Explore the connection of the ecological drought framework with other new frameworks that incorporate more than the ecosystems, such as environmental drought.

Knowledge Sharing 

• Implement approaches for sharing knowledge and improving collaboration across institutions and regions, in order to share successes as well as failures. 
• Use the ecological drought framework as an organizing concept to bring together people and their ability to affect both landscapes and adaptive capacity.
• Increase awareness and utilization of existing assessments (e.g. EcoAdapt synthesis report with decision support table classifying actions by adaptation strategy, implementation feasibility, and effectiveness in reducing ecological drought vulnerabilities).

After the Webinar Series: Advancing Ecological Drought Research

In Fiscal Year 2022, NIDIS, in partnership with the USGS National Climate Adaptation Science Center, designed a NIDIS Coping with Drought grant competition that focused on research and tools to improve our understanding and management of drought risk in terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. The goal was to inform more deliberate and expanded decision-making that supports sustainable, healthy, and resilient ecosystems. Seven projects were funded that begin to address research needs articulated through the ecological drought webinar series.