U.S. Department of the Interior

U.S. Geological Survey

Fact Sheet 2011–3057

July 2011

Delivering Climate Science for the Nation’s Fish, 

Wildlife, and Ecosystems: The U.S. Geological Survey 

National Climate Change and Wildlife Science Center 

Printed on recycled paper

Changes to the Earth’s climate—temperature, precipitation, 

and other important aspects of climate—pose significant challenges to our Nation’s natural resources now and will continue 

to do so. Managers of land, water, and living resources need to 

understand the impacts of climate change—which will exacerbate ongoing stresses such as habitat fragmentation and invasive species—so they can design effective response strategies. 

In 2008 Congress created the National Climate Change and 

Wildlife Science Center (NCCWSC) within the U.S. Geological 

Survey (USGS); this center was formed to address challenges 

resulting from climate change and to empower natural resource 

managers with rigorous scientific information and effective 

tools for decision-making. Located at the USGS National 

Headquarters in Reston, Virginia, the NCCWSC has invested 

over $20M in cutting-edge climate change research and is now 

leading the effort to establish eight regional Department of the 

Interior (DOI) Climate Science Centers (CSCs).

The mission of the NCCWSC is to provide natural 

resource managers with the tools and information they need to 

develop and execute management strategies that address the 

impacts of climate and other ongoing global changes on fish and 

wildlife and their habitats. NCCWSC is building cooperative 

partnerships with resource managers and scientists at Federal, 

State, tribal, local, academic, and nongovernmental institutions 

and at national, regional, and local scales. 

NCCWSC goals will be achieved by supporting scientific 

activities that

• predict fish and wildlife population changes in response to 

climate change;

• assess the vulnerability of species and habitats to climate 

change;

• link climate model output (for example, temperature and precipitation) with models that predict ecological, habitat, and 

population responses to climate change;

• standardize approaches to monitoring and link existing 

monitoring efforts to models of climate and ecological and 

biological response; and

• develop data management policies and practices to ensure 

that data generated at NCCWSC and the DOI CSCs are 

shared and interoperable with other datasets.

Partnering closely with managers of natural resources 

will ensure that NCCWSC-supported science is founded on 

stakeholder needs and that research products are successfully 

delivered. Examples of current NCCWSC-funded research 

activities are

• predicting the effects of climate change on fish such as native 

trout species at national, regional and local scales;

• quantifying risks of extinctions of endangered birds and 

plants because of habitat loss from sea-level rise in the northwestern Hawaiian Islands and San Francisco Bay; 

• measuring the effects of melting glaciers on freshwater and 

nutrient flows in the Gulf of Alaska;

• “downscaling” global climate model output to use as input 

for regional and local species, habitat, and ecosystem models 

in locations such as the Florida Everglades; and 

• producing tools for resource managers to visualize tomorrow’s climate on today’s landscape.

Once established, the DOI CSCs will manage regional 

scale and landscape scale research projects, and NCCWSC will 

focus on addressing broader national and multiregion climate 

science priorities.

The California black rail (Laterallus jamaicensis corturniculus) 

is a California state threatened bird that lives in the salt 

marsh estuary of San Francisco Bay, the largest extent of 

tidal marsh in the Western United States. National Climate 

Change and Wildlife Science Center-supported research is 

helping resource managers protect the California black rail and 

other endangered species and their habitats by determining 

the impacts of sea-level rise on the tidal salt marshes. The 

interdisciplinary project is a joint effort of researchers and 

resource managers at the U.S. Geological Survey, University 

of California Davis, University of San Francisco, California 

Department of Fish and Game, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife 

Service. (Photographby D. Tsao, USGS.)
Establishing Regional Partnerships and Meeting 

Local Needs: NCCWSC, CSCs, and Landscape 

Conservation Cooperatives

The NCCWSC and CSCs will coordinate regional to 

national climate change research and will deliver research 

products to resource managers. Regional DOI CSCs are housed 

at universities with substantial capacity to conduct climate 

change research and leverage existing resource management 

partnerships (fig.1). Beginning in fiscal year (FY) 2010, the 

NCCWSC established three DOI CSCs at host universities in 

Alaska (University of Alaska), the Southeastern United States 

(North Carolina State University), and the Northwestern United 

States (a consortium led by Oregon State University). Eight 

CSCs will be established by FY2012, with two planned for 

FY2011 at universities in the Southwest and North-Central 

United States and three for FY2012 in the Northeast and 

South-Central United States and the Pacific Islands.

DOI Landscape Conservation Cooperatives (LCCs) are 

primary partners and clients of the DOI CSCs. LCCs are a 

network of public-private partnerships that provide applied 

conservation science to inform integrated resource 

management actions addressing climate change and other 

stressors at a landscape level. CSCs prioritize delivery of 

fundamental research, data products, and decision-support 

tools to meet the needs of the LCCs and other resource 

managers within their respective regions. 

The DOI CSCs and LCCs provide complementary decision 

support for adaptive management of climate change impacts on 

natural and cultural resources. Each CSC will use formal and 

informal means to work with LCCs and other public and private 

resource management and science partners in the region to 

establish the Center’s priorities. A formal stakeholder advisory 

committee in each CSC region will solicit input on priorities 

from LCCs, as well as from nongovernmental organizations, 

private landowners, and others. These stakeholder inputs will 

determine the scientific agenda of the CSC. 

Guided by stakeholder needs and scientific research priorities identified by the DOI CSCs and LCCs, NCCWSC staff 

foster national partnerships and provide products that meet 

national or multiregional science needs. The NCCWSC National 

Partners Committee will be created to guide the overall direction of NCCWSC and the network of CSCs. The committee will 

include representatives from Federal, State, tribal, academic, 

nongovernmental, and private institutions. Together, NCCWSC, 

CSCs, and LCCs form the cornerstones of DOI’s integrated 

approach to climate change science and adaptation.

For more information, contact

Douglas Beard

Director

National Climate Change and Wildlife Science Center

703-648-4215

dbeard@usgs.gov

http://nccwsc.usgs.gov/

Figure 1. The shaded areas show approximate CSC regions. Scientific activities will be designed to address the full range of an issue and 

will not be limited by regional boundaries. 

7

10

9

8

17

3

4

5

6

19

11 18

16

15

14

20

13

12 NORTHEAST

SOUTHEAST

NORTH CENTRAL

SOUTHWEST

NORTHWEST

SOUTH CENTRAL

EXPLANATION

National Climate Change

and Wildlife Science Center

CSC Lead Institutions

CSC Institutions

Alaska CSC

1. University of Alaska - Fairbanks

2. University of Alaska - Anchorage

Northwest CSC

3. Oregon State University

4. University of Idaho

5. University of Washington

Southwest CSC

6. University of Arizona

7. Desert Research Institute (Nevada)

8. University of California - Davis

9. University of California - Los Angeles

10. Scripps Institute of Oceanography

11. University of Colorado

North Central CSC

11. University of Colorado

12. Colorado State University

13. Colorado School of Mines

14. Iowa State University

15. Kansas State University

16. Montana State University

17. University of Montana

18. University of Nebraska - Lincoln

19. University of Wyoming

Southeast CSC

20. North Carolina State University

Coming in 2012

Northeast CSC

Pacific Islands CSC

South Central CSC

Base from ESRI, 2009

Albers Equal Area Conic Projection

North American Datum of 1983

2

1

ALASKA

Papahanaumokuakea

Marine National Monument 

Hawaii

Samoa

Guam

Micronesia

Wake Island

Jarvis Island Howland Island