Many Tribes in Washington and Oregon call coastal areas home, meaning they are especially affected by climate change. They also face changes in wildfire risk and in changes to fisheries that are economically and culturally important.

A led by the 91探花鈥檚 Climate Impacts Group, the Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians, and Washington Sea Grant compiles the experiences of Washington and Oregon coastal Tribes as they prepare for climate change. The report aims to build on successes and identify common barriers to progress.

鈥淓very year the climate crisis continues to elevate and accelerate. The lack of a coordinated federal response is what causes Northwest coastal Tribes 鈥� and other coastal communities 鈥� to suffer from hazards which are imminently impacting life, property, Tribal rights and resources,鈥� said project co-lead of the . 鈥淲ith direct quotes from Tribal citizens and staff with lived personal and professional experiences, [this report] describes the immediate urgency of the federal government to take coordinated climate action.鈥�

Results will be shared with Northwest coastal Tribes and other governmental and nongovernmental entities.

鈥淭he report is based on listening sessions with Northwest coastal Tribes, and summarizes the barriers and unmet needs they face in their efforts to prepare for climate change,鈥� said project co-lead Meade Krosby, who is director of the UW-based and senior scientist at the 91探花. This report was funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration through the .

The project team held six Tribal listening sessions, each 2.5 hours long, in varying formats. Three listening sessions took place during Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians conferences already attended by many Northwest coastal Tribal members.聽Two sessions were held virtually, and one was hosted by an individual Tribal Nation. Participants in each session met in small groups and shared information with each other and with a moderator.

All participants had the choice of making their comments public or not, and of contributing anonymously or under their name. Researchers later coded all the contributions and summarized the overall findings. Contributions represented 13 Tribal nations, roughly half of the federally recognized Tribes within the study鈥檚 coastal regions. The overall findings include:

• Despite being national leaders in climate adaptation, Northwest coastal Tribes face significant needs in realizing their adaptation goals
• Key barriers and unmet needs centered in five areas: funding, staffing, technical expertise, partnerships and communications
• Successful efforts noted strengths in many of these same areas, such as securing external funding, the dedication of Tribal staff, and building robust partnerships

Participants described specific situations and frustrations, including the piecemeal nature of federal funding; challenges recruiting and retaining key staff; potential partners鈥� lack of familiarity with Tribal processes and priorities; and establishing stable support for long-term initiatives.

Participants鈥� quotes included:

鈥淚f you just looked at the total amount of Tribal land, you鈥檇 say: 鈥榃ell, there鈥檚 lots of places that the Tribe can move,鈥� but if you take away all the places that are sacred or culturally significant, or habitat for important species, or landslide hazard, or some other hazard, the options are diminished. We must also be careful not to move away from one hazard into another. How bad would it be if we move away from the shoreline, and we put ourselves in harm鈥檚 way for fire?鈥�

鈥� Robert Knapp, environmental planning manager and climate resilience lead, Jamestown S鈥橩lallam Tribe

鈥淪ome of the challenges that we face on the coast are due to the magnitude of some of the projects that we need to undertake. For example, we are in the midst of relocating our two main Quinault villages on the Washington coast. That鈥檚 a multimillion-dollar, multi-agency effort 鈥� It鈥檚 very difficult to integrate our plans and priorities for village relocation with those of the agencies and constrains on available funding.鈥�

鈥� Gary Morishima, natural resources technical advisor, Quinault Indian Nation

鈥淭o build capacity we need funding sources that are long-term, that we can say to Tribal leadership: 鈥榃e know we鈥檙e going to have funding for five or six years, so we want to hire this person who鈥檚 an engineer, who鈥檚 a project manager, who can take on these projects, talk to other [external] engineers, and who can make these projects happen.鈥欌��

鈥� Rochelle Blankenship, Tribal council member and executive director, Jamestown S鈥橩lallam Tribe

The report concludes: 鈥淲hile these findings do not fully represent the depth and breadth of [the challenges faced by Northwest coastal Tribes] and what is required to address them, we hope they will help build awareness among funders, policymakers, climate service providers and others to mobilize necessary action in support of the climate adaptation efforts of Northwest coastal Tribes.鈥�

In related upcoming work, the Northwest Climate Resilience Collaborative鈥檚 Tribal Coastal Resilience effort at the 91探花was as part of a to support coastal readiness in Washington state.

The grant will support hiring a full-time climate adaptation specialist to provide technical assistance to Northwest coastal Tribes, Krosby said. That person will also coordinate a small grants program that will distribute most of the funds to Tribes to support their adaptation efforts. The grants program was designed to respond to Tribal priorities without imposing barriers that often make funds difficult to apply for and administer. Awards will be made starting in 2025.

鈥淲e’re really excited that this is happening at the same time our report is coming out,鈥� Krosby said. 鈥淪o it’s not just describing the problem. It’s also: Here, let鈥檚 bring some resources to bear based on what we learned.鈥�

Other co-authors on the report are Ryan Hasert at the 91探花Climate Impacts Group; Kylie Avery at the Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians; and Chandler Countryman and Melissa Poe at UW’s Washington Sea Grant. The project鈥檚 Tribal advisory group and report reviewers include representatives from the Makah, Tulalip, Coquille, Squaxin Island, Swinomish and Quinault Tribes and the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission.

For more information, contact Marchand at amarchand@atnitribes.org, and Krosby at mkrosby@uw.edu or 206-579-8023.聽

Climate Impacts Group scientist Meade Krosby honored by conservation organization

, a senior scientist with the , has received the 2019 Wilburforce Conservation Leadership Award for her work advancing biodiversity conservation under climate change.

The is from the , a private philanthropic organization that supports land, water and wildlife conservation efforts in western North America.

Meade was honored for her “impressive and highly relevant body of science scholarship and her dedication to the art and science of collaboration,” the organization wrote. “A great example of her dedication to connecting science to the climate change conversation is her in the Seattle Times about moving from despair about climate change to action.”

Krosby works with land and wildlife managers and policymakers to incorporate climate change into natural resource management. She is also the university deputy director of the Northwest Climate Adaptation Science Center. Read more on the Climate Impacts Group .

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Carey Farquhar, School of Public Health vice dean, begins World Health Organization consulting assignment

, professor of global health, medicine and epidemiology and vice dean in the School of Public Health, has begun a six-month consulting assignment for the World Health Organization on HIV, hepatitis and sexually transmitted disease testing.

Farquhar will be based in Geneva, but plans to travel throughout West and Central Africa. She will map health care service delivery in up to 13 countries in that region, and work with ministries of health on country-specific ways to support training in carrying out the testing. She began her assignment Jan. 1.

“All of my work so far has been in East Africa. I have wanted to get back to West Africa for a long time,” Farquhar said. “With the World Health Organization, I’ll have an opportunity to explore new collaborations and new areas of research.”

The assignment is a sort of return for Farquhar, who volunteered in Ivory Coast, or C么te d’Ivoire, as a college student. Read more on the school’s .

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Political scientist Lance Bennett receives honorary doctorate from University of Bern

, professor of political science and communication, has received an honorary doctorate from the University of Bern, as part of the celebration Dies academicus (Foundation Day) 2020, which the founding of the Swiss university in 1834.

Bennett received the award Dec. 7 at the University of Bern; he also participated in a daylong seminar on disinformation and democracy and communications among movement-based political parties on the radical right in Europe.

He is the Ruddick C. Lawrence Professor of Communication, and directs the 91探花. Read more on the .

91探花Notebook is a section of the 91探花News site dedicated to telling stories of the good work done by faculty and staff at the 91探花. Read all posts here.

Under climate change, plants and animals will shift their habitats to track the conditions they are adapted for. As they do, the lands surrounding rivers and streams offer natural migration routes that will take on a new importance as temperatures rise.

An open-access led by the 91探花 pinpoints which riverside routes in Washington, Oregon, Idaho and western Montana will be the most important for animals trying to navigate a changing climate. The study was published this fall in PLOS One.

“This corridor network is already there, and it’s already important for animal movement,” said lead author , a scientist in the UW’s Climate Impacts Group. “Under climate change these will become ‘superhighways’ for animals that are seeking new places to live. We’ve identified ones that could be priorities for conservation and restoration.”

Riparian areas 鈥� areas of habitat along the banks of rivers and streams 鈥� are known to be used by bears, coyotes, wolves, deer, mountain lions and other large mammals. But these regions could also benefit smaller mammals, like beavers and marmots, and even insects, birds and other species looking for cooler, moister terrain as conditions become less habitable.

“We aren’t the first to realize that riparian areas are likely to be really important for animals seeking refuge from warmer or drier conditions, or for connecting fragmented habitats under climate change,” Krosby said. “But we hadn’t seen anybody identify which riparian areas would be particularly valuable in the future.”

The authors developed a ranking system for riparian areas and applied it to the Northwest, creating a general technique that could be applied elsewhere. They rated the land surrounding rivers and streams for various features that would help animals on the move: width; amount of shade; tree cover; connection across temperature gradients; and general condition of the landscape.

Results show that the highest-quality routes in the Northwest are mostly in the mountains, which have shaded, well-protected riparian corridors that connect warmer to cooler habitats.

The authors then looked at which areas should be priorities for restoration 鈥� places that are not currently protected, or that offer the only natural pathway linking warmer and cooler landscapes. Here the routes through the Columbia Plateau, covering Eastern Washington, central Oregon and western Idaho, popped out as particularly important.

“If you look at an aerial photograph of an agricultural or urban landscape you’ll see these green corridors that follow streams and rivers,” Krosby said. “Humans use the flat areas of the landscape: we live there, we farm there, we use it for all kinds of things. So the riparian areas in these landscapes may not be in the best shape, but in some ways they’re the most valuable, because they’re the only natural habitat left.”

The authors don’t identify individual waterways as priorities for riparian conservation. Instead they leave it to regional managers to single out individual areas and choose methods 鈥� whether it be working with landowners to keep areas in a natural state, planting native vegetation, removing invasive species along streams, creating easements in property deeds, or other methods 鈥� to ensure that riverside land remains friendly to wildlife movement.

“Riparian areas offer a huge bang-for-buck as conservation opportunities in the effort to reconnect our fragmented habitats,” Krosby said. “The nice thing about riparian conservation is it’s a two-fer: The same vegetation that provides cover for terrestrial species moving through riparian zones can, for example, help shade streams to cool water temperatures for aquatic species.”

The study is part of a growing trend in wildlife conservation. This winter, the state of Washington anticipates opening a over Interstate 90 at Snoqualmie Pass, which will allow animals to safely cross the freeway. That infrastructure in combination with other measures could help animal populations be more resilient to climate change.

“The idea is to have a whole network: You want to make sure that your landscape is permeable to wildlife movement,” Krosby said. “That’s important now, and it’s especially important under climate change, because moving to track shifting habitats is the primary way that species deal with a changing climate.”

The research was funded by the Washington Department of Fish & Wildlife, the North Pacific Landscape Conservation Cooperative, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Wilburforce Foundation.

Co-authors are David Theobald at Conservation Science Partners, Robert Norheim at the UW’s Climate Impacts Group, and the late Brad McRae at The Nature Conservancy.

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For more information, contact Krosby at 206-579-8023 or mkrosby@uw.edu.

WDFW grant: 10-1515; USFWS grant: Fl2AC01044; Wilburforce grant: UNIVE1211

Which Pacific Northwest streams will warm the most in the next 50 years, and where would restoration work make a difference for salmon? Where will wildfires and pests be most aggressive in forests as the Earth warms, and how can better management help?

As the natural world responds to climate change, American Indian tribes across the country are grappling with how to plan for a future that balances inevitable change with protecting the resources vital to their cultural traditions.

The 91探花 and regional tribal partners have developed a that may be useful to tribes at any stage in the process of evaluating their vulnerability to climate change. The project is a partnership among tribes, tribal associations, universities and the federal government.

“This work really is to support tribes鈥� leadership in climate adaptation, and the goal is to make it easier for every tribe that wants to complete the process,” said , a research scientist at Climate Impacts Group and the project lead. “This is a way to support the tribes that are leading the way, but also to make sure those that are having a harder time getting started have the resources to begin.”

Many tribes are deeply tied to the natural environment for culturally significant practices and traditions, health and livelihoods. Most tribes have reservations and treaty rights that are connected to specific places and resources, making it a challenge to go elsewhere in response to future changes in climate.

This new suite of resources is intended to support tribes in all phases of assessing the possible impacts of climate change 鈥� in other words, how a warming world might affect the things each tribe cares about most. The tools are tailored geographically to each of the 84 tribes in the Pacific Northwest and Great Basin regions of the western U.S., with the possibility to expand across the country.

The , mainly online, include a climate tool that provides interactive summaries of projected climate change on annual precipitation, stream temperatures, growing season, fire danger and other variables. It also provides links to resources such as guidebooks and sample climate assessments, and a technical support line for tribal staff and members to call with any questions. Both Western science and indigenous approaches that draw on traditional ecological knowledge are featured in the resource toolkit.

While other tools exist to help assess vulnerability to climate change, these resources present information about future predictions in a user-friendly format that focuses on areas of geographic importance to various tribes. Project leaders spent considerable time testing the tools with tribal staff and community members to make the resources more intuitive and responsive to their needs, Krosby said.

“This is a way to get cutting-edge climate information directly into the hands of tribes,” she said. “Overwhelmingly, the response among tribes has been positive.”

The project began about two years ago after an initial assessment led by Don Sampson, climate change project manager with the , in partnership with the Northwest Climate Adaptation Science Center, found that a number of tribes didn’t have the resources or staff to plan for climate change.

In response, the Northwest Climate Adaptation Science Center and Great Basin Landscape Conservation Cooperative funded the 91探花Climate Impacts Group 鈥� under the guidance of a tribal advisory group 鈥� to develop climate change resources that could help fill gaps for those tribes needing additional support.

The Climate Impacts Group contacted all 84 tribes in the Northwest and Great Basin regions, asking what climate impacts they were most concerned about and which geographic areas are important to them. As responses came in, it was clear each tribe had specific factors they were most concerned about, including how stream temperatures, snowpack and habitat might change in the future in their location.

“For some tribes just beginning to look at climate impacts on important resources to their communities, they can analyze quite quickly and begin to narrow their focus to some of the priority resources, whether it be salmon, deer and elk, or migratory birds,” Sampson said. “Our goal is for all of Indian Country to have a tool like this and get all of the tribes in the country able to assess the impacts of climate on their resources.”

“The Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians and the tribes of the Pacific Northwest are leading tribal efforts nationwide to address climate change impacts in Indian Country. This project, in collaboration with the 91探花, represents us using our traditional knowledge and the best available scientific analysis,” said Leonard Forsman, president of the Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians.

As one example, the Makah Tribe in northwest Washington has started to form a plan to adapt to climate change, drawing on these resources as well as community surveys, elder interviews and staff input to consider aspects such as natural resource management, infrastructure, health, cultural activities and carbon mitigation. They have found the new tools to be particularly useful in analyzing potential climate impacts on their specific area, said Mike Chang, climate adaptation specialist at the Makah Tribe.

“The downscaled climate models are able to provide information at locally relevant scales. This is super helpful because many regional climate models can’t provide hyper-local climate projections, which is crucial when making planning and adaptation decisions,” Chang said.

Like the Makah Tribe, planning for climate change is underway for many tribes across the country, said Rachael Novak, Tribal Resilience Program coordinator with the Bureau of Indian Affairs. About 10 percent of federally recognized tribes have a plan drafted, but the remaining tribes 鈥� still over 500 鈥� are at various points in the process, from implementing adaptation plans to assessing possible impacts to not having begun. Time and resources are usually the biggest barriers to creating a plan, she said.

“There’s so much diversity across Indian Country and Alaska Native Villages in terms of staffing and resources,” Novak said. “It’s important to have tools to be able to connect and meet people where they are in planning for climate change.”

Project leaders will continue to offer trainings on using the online assessment resources; Krosby will hold a Nov. 15 to go over the climate tool and how tribes can begin using it.

The project was funded by the Northwest Climate Adaptation Science Center and the Great Basin Landscape Conservation Cooperative.

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For more information, contact:

• Meade Krosby, Climate Impacts Group: mkrosby@uw.edu or 206-579-8023
• Don Sampson, Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians: Don@seventhgenerationllc.com or 541-215-2753
• Rachael Novak, Bureau of Indian Affairs: novak@bia.gov or 202-219-1652
• Mike Chang, Makah Tribe: m.hsu.chang@gmail.com

“Climate change is causing species’ ranges to shift, and that could bring a lot of closely related species into contact,” said , a research scientist in the 91探花’s .

She is the lead author of a published July 6 in that tallies the potential number of such pairings. Looking across North and South America, it finds that only about 6 percent of closely related species whose ranges do not currently overlap are likely to come into contact by the end of this century.

“People have been concerned that climate change would be bringing all these species into contact, and that this could unleash a wave of interbreeding,” Krosby said. “What we found is, not so much.”

A 2010 in the journal Nature suggested that northern species may begin to interbreed and create a so-called “Arctic melting pot,” and even prompted one of what those new offspring would look like.

The idea also worried land managers looking at how to prepare for climate change. At a workshop, land managers told Krosby they worked with very closely related species separated by small distances. What if managers linked the two areas with a wildlife corridor, and as the climate changed the species started to mix?

This study is an attempt to see how much that should be a concern. It looked at 9,577 pairs of closely related species of birds, mammals and amphibians in North and South America. For the 4,796 pairs whose ranges currently do not overlap, computer models show that only 6.4 percent of them will come into contact due to climate change by the year 2100.

The most overlap among species occurred in the tropics, and among birds, likely because more species live in the tropics and birds cover wider ranges, Krosby said.

While the study suggests that climate change is unlikely to result in widespread interbreeding, wildlife biologists still need to consider their particular region and animals of interest to best protect specific populations.

“Managers still need to look case-by-case at species at a local scale, but at a global scale, the big picture is that it’s probably not going to be a huge problem,” Krosby said.

The study likely overestimates how many species could be at risk of interbreeding because it assumes that all species will be able to access new habitats that become available due to climate change. In fact, natural barriers prevent animals from reaching all potential new habitats, and humans have created new barriers such as highways, farms, and cities that can block migrations to more hospitable places.

“The number one strategy for helping biodiversity respond to climate change is to increase connectivity, to link up habitats that have been fragmented by human activity, so species can move, and track climate as it shifts to stay comfortable,” Krosby said.

“If people are worried that wildlife corridors and other ways to increase connectivity could bring these species into contact, we’re saying: That’s probably not going to happen, and allowing species to move is far more important.”

Krosby did her doctoral work looking at how historic climate changes affected species in the past, including how the end of the last ice age led to interbreeding among . Now she focuses on contemporary climate change, to see how species are responding and how land managers can best protect biodiversity under faster, human-driven changes to Earth’s climate.

Co-authors include , an associate professor in the UW’s School of Environmental and Forest Sciences; , a 91探花professor of biology; postdoctoral researchers and in the School of Environmental and Forest Sciences; and former 91探花researchers , now at the National Audubon Society; , now at California State University Monterey Bay; and , now at the Georgia Institute of Technology. The research was funded by the Wilburforce Foundation, the Doris Duke Foundation and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation.

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For more information, contact Krosby at mkrosby@uw.edu or 206-579-8023.