U.S. Bureau of Land Management

Research has established that the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) pattern in the equatorial Pacific has relatively predictable seasonal influences on the weather and climate of the US Southwest, making climate information valuable for environmental and economic decision-making. Fire management agencies are an ideal target audience for climate information. Significant work has gone into creating wildfire-specific climate outlooks and information products. Research has identified networks of actors successful at disseminating this information. This study addresses two questions: how is climate information being used to inform wildland fire management decisions and what is the economic value of such information? Focus groups and an online survey of Southwest wildfire experts address the first question and form the basis of an economic analysis of the value of fire management information. This research seeks to reveal what opportunities exist to improve existing products and develop new ones.

Drought risks and vulnerability varies within regional stakeholder networks. This project aimed to better characterize the complexity of drought vulnerability in the Lower San Pedro watershed. CLIMAS investigators engaged with a mix of stakeholders with shared interest in better understanding how drought and climate vulnerability might shape future climate risks. The project takes a local-to-regional perspective on drought and climate vulnerability and asks how that could inform a drought early warning system.

Extreme weather impacts our transportation system in many ways. This project focuses on dust storms, particularly as they connect to drought. One goal is to increase the safety of drivers during these events along the Interstate 10 in southwestern New Mexico, where danger from dust storms often occurs. An early warning dust forecast system could minimize the number of vehicle accidents and associated fatalities on New Mexico highways. A neural network camera study indicated an accuracy of 97% and a precision of 94% for dust storm classification utilizing a combination of hue, saturation, and value bands. Researchers successfully acquired additional instrumentation to test a new early warning system that is different from roadway information systems often installed along highways. A Vaisala CL51 ceilometer was purchased by NMDOT in 2019 to sense dust plumes as they form over the dust source areas. The instrument is currently being tested in the laboratory and will be tested outside during Summer 2020 to determine locations where it will be most useful.

This research project was highlighted in the 2019 NOAA Science Report, page 40. https://nrc.noaa.gov/Portals/0/edited%20final%20report.pdf

In partnership with The Nature Conservancy, CLIMAS researchers are assessing the impacts of precipitation variability and temperature changes on vegetation production and mortality and identifying optimal drought monitoring metrics. It focuses on the Las Cienegas National Conservation Area (NCA) to examine longer-term drought impacts in this multi-use Bureau of Land Management NCA. The assessment shows how seasonality and precipitation timing and frequency relate to monthly scale precipitation-based drought indices. The modeling approach was also used to assess the performance of temperature-based indices and further explore the role of increasing temperatures in driving drought stress across the region. CLIMAS researchers have also been working with the Las Cienegas Watershed group as well and may be able to recommend specific drought indices for their ongoing State of the Watershed monitoring.

Resource managers face major challenges in developing medium- and long-term management plans considering the uncertainty arising from various climatic and socioeconomic factors. One approach to circumventing what can be a paralyzing level of uncertainty is Scenario Planning. This approach allows managers to “embrace uncertainty” and strategically prepare for a wide range of possible futures. In this project, we worked with the Cienegas Watershed Partnership to develop a set of scenario narratives, with specific scenario sets for each of four resource areas: Montane, Upland, Riparian, and Cultural. Participants were challenged to consider uncertainties and potential changes in climate, social, technological, economic, environmental, and political forces that are beyond the control of the Cienegas Watershed Partnership. Under the auspices of Scenario Planning, each resource group was able to consider and discuss future sets of conditions and management challenges that generally do not get a lot of attention.

Three newsletters were distributed to middle and upper management personnel across the various state and federal organizations that were involved in this project to keep them apprised of our progress.

Similar to many other metropolitan areas in the western United States, Albuquerque and surrounding cities in central New Mexico comprise a rapidly growing region in an arid environment. Planning for such an area in the 21st century requires addressing a mixture of challenges from congestion, sprawl, energy use, vehicle emissions, water supply, and potential changes in future regional climate along with related impacts.

Led by the U.S. Department of Transportation’s John A. Volpe National Transportation Systems Center and with funding from the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), National Park Service (NPS), and Bureau of Land Management (BLM), a group of federal agencies and the Mid-Region Council of Governments of New Mexico (MRCOG) , is embarking on a project – the Central New Mexico Climate Change Scenario Planning Project – to help the region address these intertwined challenges. Through the process of scenario planning, which evaluates the costs and benefits of different types of, and strategies for, growth, development, and investments, this project aims to influence regional transportation and land-use decision making, and analyze strategies to reduce carbon emissions and prepare for impacts related to potential changes in future climate

Dust storms in the Southwest U.S. and northern Mexico continue to be a serious health and safety issue. This project aims to locate the sources of dust that have impacted people in southwestern New Mexico, northwestern Chihuahua, and west Texas. Researchers continued surveillance of dust storms and determined the latitude and longitude of each event. To better understand the characteristics of the land surface from where the dust emission occurs, researchers identified more than 2,000 locations responsible for a dust plume as seen in satellite imagery and are in the process of understanding the state-of-the-land surface at those locations. Researchers also have started work to construct a synoptic climatology of these dust storms to increase their ability to forecast these events.

Dust storms in the Southwest United States and northern Mexico continue to create serious health and safety issues. In a continued effort to locate the sources of dust, researchers continued surveillance of dust storms and determined the latitude and longitude of these storms.

Findings: Researchers completed their work designing a method to characterize dust storm events using data from the North American Regional Reanalysis model archive. Based on 60 dust storm events, they generated patterns to compare with non-dust days. While that method proved to be successful in identifying dust storms, it also identified other non-dust events. One particular variable that needs to be included in the future is soil moisture.

For more information documenting dust events that impacted New Mexico, northwestern Chihuahua, and west Texas: (http://nmborderaq.blogspot.com/)

For videos published on the New Mexico Climate Center’s YouTube channel to support outreach on climate, air quality, and projects at the New Mexico Climate Center: (https://www.youtube.com/NMClimate).

Through engagement with a variety of agencies and stakeholders, we are developing methods, resources, and tools for incorporating climate change and non-stationarity into planning efforts. Through this project and leveraged activities, we are: a) developing and applying scenario planning to address uncertainty of climate change and other stressors; b) evaluating needs and approaches for system-wide climate literacy training of National Park staff; c) identifying the needs and capacities of the water resources sector related to climate change and non-stationarity; d) evaluating methods for combining paleoclimatological information with historical observations and climate change projections; e) communicating uncertainty of projections of Colorado River flows; f) supporting the National Climate Assessment.

To date, we have demonstrated a practical process for using scenario planning to consider climate change in the context of multiple stressors. the approach is now being used within the National Park Service. We have also developed a comprehensive curriculum for improving climate change literacy in the National Park Service.