DOI: 10.5061/dryad.8931zcs23
title: Systematic review data from: A climate adaptation menu for North American grasslands

description: North American grasslands are climate-vulnerable biomes that provide
 critical ecosystem services and support biodiversity. However, grasslands
 are often not included in climate policy and treaties, and they are
 underrepresented in the ecological climate-adaptation literature. We
 synthesized existing knowledge on climate adaptation in North American
 grasslands to provide resources and guidance for grassland managers facing
 increasing climate change impacts. We leveraged data from a systematic
 review and solicited input from management professionals at workshops to
 create a Grassland Adaptation Menu—a referenced, hierarchical list of
 specific grassland management tactics nested under broader climate
 adaptation strategies. Our review revealed that although the number of
 published studies examining grassland-climate topics is increasing,
 relatively few provide actionable recommendations for adaptation. Among
 studies that did make recommendations, landscape-planning principles such
 as conserving grasslands in future climate refugia and enhancing
 connectivity were the most frequently recommended practice types, but
 there were also suggestions for site-level management such as adjustments
 to fire and grazing, improved seed-sourcing and restoration practices,
 increased heterogeneity and biodiversity, use of assisted migration, and
 management of microclimate conditions. The Grassland Adaption Menu
 incorporates eight general strategies and 32 approaches in a structured
 format designed to help managers translate concepts into actions.
description: These data are the product of a systematic review conducted on
 Web of Science to identify studies conducted on North American grasslands
 that address climate adaptation and managment in these systems under
 climate change. Studies were screened for revelvance, complied and
 collated, and vote count data were extracted on location, broad managment
 topic, system and organismal focus, and wether or not managment
 recommendations were made. 
description: # Systematic review data from: A climate adaptation menu for North
 American grasslands
 [https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.8931zcs23](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.8931zcs23) ## Description of the data and file structure These data were collected as part of a systematic review to support the creation of a grassland climate adaption menu tool. This repository contains 3 files including a word document containing Web of Science search terms, a csv containing metadata for all studies identified after screening, and a csv containing management recommendations extracted during a qualitive textual analysis.   ### Files and variables #### File: Bernath-Plaisted\_et\_al\_2025\_management\_reccomendations.csv **Description:** this file contains management recommendations extracted from studies identified in review in a qualitative textual analysis. Extracted text pertaining to management recommendations for grassland climate adaptation are associated with study metadata  ##### Variables * Author: study authors * Year: study year * Title: study title * Journal: study journal * Volume: study volume number * Issue: study issue * DOI: study DOI * Taxa: focal study of study, if applicable  * Text: text containing recommendation * Category: type of management recommendation  #### File: Bernath-Plaisted\_et\_al\_2025\_vote-count\_studies.csv **Description:** master file containing metadata for all topical studies identified in the review regardless of if they made management recommendations.    ##### Variables * Author: study authors * Year: study year * Title: study title * Journal: study journal * Volume: study volume * Issue: study issue * DOI: study DOI * Country: country study was conducted on/in * State/province: state or province study was conducted on/in * Topic: broad topic of study * Taxa: focal taxa of study, if applicable * Ecosystem: focal ecosystem of study #### File: Bernath-Plaisted\_et\_al\_2025\_wos\_search\_terms.docx **Description:** this file contains Web of Science search terms used to identify records relevant to the topic of grassland climate adaptation.