Stories from Our First 10 Years

[00:00:00] My name is Renai Nez, and I'm a Research Assistant in National Forest System, Region 8 Support Lead for the USDA Southeast Climate Hub. My projects focus on supporting forest health, addressing climate variability, and change impacts, and educating the public about tools and resources that help them make climate informed decisions.

In my current role, I collaborate with researchers, land managers, universities, and communities to develop webinars, workshops, manuals, and fact sheets. Climate change and variability are negatively impacting the productivity and resilience of forests, farms, and range areas, also called working lands. The increased concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere from human caused burning of fossil fuels has resulted in elevated global temperatures.

This temperature rise has subsequently caused more [00:01:00] extreme weather, shifts in precipitation regimes and sea level rise. Sea level rise is of particular concern on coastal working lands due to the land's low elevation and susceptibility to saltwater intrusion and soil salinization. Saltwater intrusion and soil salinization occur when salty ocean water accumulates in soil and fresh groundwater due to storm surges, salt spray, water management, and drought.

Oftentimes, the salts are naturally flushed out of the soil through precipitation with minimal to no impact on agriculture. However, crop yields and forest health start to decline on salinity levels, increase in repeated or chronic exposure to saltwater can reduce or eliminate the economical variability of traditional crops.

Some coastal areas in the southeast are starting to see crop and forest decline [00:02:00] that is being attributed to saltwater intrusion and soil salinization. So producers and extension agencies in the region need guidance to help them identify potential salinization issues, mitigate those issues when possible, and adapt when necessary.

In 2019, the Southeast Climate Hub hosted a workshop with subject matter experts to share knowledge and develop plans for addressing salinization issues in the region. Information learned during and after the workshop was used to develop the manual, Identification, Mitigation, and Adaptation to Salinization on Working Lands in the Southeast.

The manual was shared with extension agents, state forestry offices, and NRCS field staff throughout the region, and additional outreach efforts through webinars, workshops are ongoing. The manual will allow land managers to identify the [00:03:00] stage, cause, and likely progression of salinization on their land mitigation options, if possible, and if not, adaptation strategies that are available.

The manual is one of the Hub's many resources being shared through ongoing presentations, webinars, and workshops. Currently, efforts are underway to partner with the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service to co produce a companion manual that will discuss conservation options on lands where traditional crop production is no longer economically viable due to saltwater intrusion and soil salinization.

The conservation of non commercial land will help to preserve the productivity of inland areas that provide valuable habitat for wildlife and carbon shortage to mitigate climate change.

[00:00:00] Hi, I'm Allison Jordan. I'm the Executive Director of the California Sustainable Wine Growing Alliance, a non profit organization founded by Wine Institute and the California Association of Wine Grape Growers 20 years ago to promote sustainability in the wine industry from grapes to glass. The mission of the alliance is to be recognized globally as a leader in sustainable wine growing through the development and promotion of sustainable practices, tools for education and outreach partnerships with stakeholders, and prioritization of research. I first became aware of the California Climate Hub as a board member of the National Grape Research Alliance, and that's an organization that drives research to maximize the productivity, sustainability and competitiveness of US grape industries. As the California Sustainable Wine Growing Alliance began to work on a new climate smart agriculture project. I knew that the [00:01:00] hub was going to be a perfect partner for us. Given the climate crisis and related pressures and potential impacts, we felt it was really important for California wine growers to be able to mitigate and adapt to climate change. We've been working on this issue for about 20 years. I'm really looking back at our code of sustainable wine growing, which covers things like energy and water use efficiency and healthy soils - some really key elements to climate smart agriculture. We also knew that we had to have the science behind it. So back in the early 2000s, we worked with the University of California-Davis to do a literature review to understand the state of the science. And at the time, it was really quite sparse for specialty crops for perennial crops.

And so we did what we could with what we had. Um, we also had done a carbon footprint for California wine, which really was essential to understand where our hotspots [00:02:00] are. And so we've continued on, but this has become more and more of an important issue for our industry. And so with this new project, we felt it was again, really important to have that understanding of potential impacts, climate beneficial practices that would help with both mitigation and adaptation, and then really having this actionable guidance and sound strategies and training tools, resources that are needed to expand climate smart practices in both vineyards and in wineries. And so that's really what our project is all about.

It's about working with the California Climate Hub to do a literature review as a starting point, and also they've done an impact assessment for us, so we can really understand what are potential impacts in varying regions around the state, we have such a large state with really, really different climate and geography and conditions and so really understanding what impacts might be in [00:03:00] different wine growing regions, and also for different varietals. It's not as if we have a single crop that's very distinctive. We have a lot of variation. And so we wanted to understand those differences, too. And then for the literature review, we were envisioning that we'd have a scientist or 2 sit down and review the literature and write a report.

But instead, they created this very dynamic process where they brought in issue area experts and had a workshop, a two day workshop. And then it's been ongoing where they're working together to develop a paper on the latest science and that's going to be foundational for lots of different things, educational materials. We're creating this idea of a toolbox that includes climate smart practices, resources, case studies, videos. Um, and so all of the work that we're doing with the Climate Hub is really going to feed into that toolbox, which then, of course, will disseminate through workshops and lots of different ways that we get that word out through outreach and [00:04:00] education.

It's really important for wine grape growers and vendors to understand the climate change impacts they can expect and also to have the information they need to develop their own strategies for both mitigation and adaptation. And it's really important that that information is grounded in science. So we are thrilled to have the California Climate Hub as a partner.

California is the fourth largest wine producing region in the world. We have 5,900 wine grape growers, more than 6,000 wineries. So the potential impact for the work that we're doing with the hub is just tremendous. I just want to thank Dr. Steve Estoya and Dr. Lauren Parker for all they've done, all the work they've put in and their, their ability to go above and beyond what we expected for the project.

[00:00:00] I am William Gould. I'm the director of the USDA Caribbean Climate Hub, and I'm also a research ecologist with the USDA Forest Service at the International Institute of Tropical Forestry, located in San Juan Puerto Rico. And I've been with the Climate Hub Network since 2014, since the the Hub network began and our climate hub in the Caribbean focuses on agriculture and forestry in Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands.

And our climate is tropical, there are small islands, lots of diverse, diversity in crops, there's a strong awareness of the impacts of climate change. In Puerto Rico and the U. S. Virgin Islands, we have lots of hurricanes and issues with sea level rise, extreme heat issues came to the forefront in recent years, and that affects our, our agricultural community and folks that are working outdoors, as well as [00:01:00] the physiology and phenology of the plants that we work with in forestry and agriculture.

So there's a really strong awareness of the impacts of climate change in our region, and there's a strong presence of USDA agencies, other federal agencies and state agencies working on these issues, and a strong awareness from the public that the government has a role in addressing climate change.

However, a lot of the solutions and programs addressing climate change issues have been developed for temperate regions, not necessarily for the tropics. And a lot of the examples of some of the adaptation practices come from temperate agriculture and forestry scenarios. So folks involved in farming and forestry down here often don't have those kind of regionally relevant examples of adaptation solutions or mitigation [00:02:00] solutions.

So one of the things that we have done is look for leaders and champions in forestry and agriculture here that are starting to implement some practices that work well in our climate and in our kind of farming situations here. And what we've done is highlighted their work through a series of videos that we produce.

And we try to do three things in, in each of these short videos, we try to integrate some of the science so that there's an awareness of what the issues are, what the, what's driving the need for climate smart solutions. And then we, second, try to highlight some of the agency programs or incentives that help support implementing adaptation actions.

And then we highlight these local champions, these local farmers, and how they're implementing climate adaptation actions on their farms. And that in a nutshell is what we call the ADAPTA [00:03:00] program. And so these, uh, we use both these videos to share those best practices widely, and we tie those videos to printed material or to links to information that are available over the internet.

The thought being that we can disseminate these videos widely. They're in Spanish and English. Folks can learn from the videos, but also get a sense of where to go next if they see a practice that that might work in my situation, where do I go to get more information. And so we've typically we initiate the production of these videos in workshops where we have people present and we have those experts with us and they're sharing information about practices they've implemented on their farms.

We go to their farms, um, we capture one, two, three, maybe practices that they've implemented and then, uh, share those through these videos. We have 24 videos produced through this series now. [00:04:00] Probably a dozen or so different topics and most of them are, there's a Spanish version and an English version.

So, 24 videos, they're available, uh, through our website, through our YouTube channel, and we've got a wide, wide range of viewership of these videos, so we, we think they're having an impact. It's, it's always hard to connect people's actions with, with something, you know, information that you share, but they're, they're viewed widely, not only in Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands, but around Latin America and the Caribbean. And we have viewership really around the world from from different countries in these videos. And our hope is that these are part of the impetus that gets people to take action and implement climate adaptation practices in their operations.

So we'd like to continue with this and we're always discovering new ways to communicate the work that we do as we share our awareness of climate change and information about climate change. We always find [00:05:00] new people that haven't heard of, of what we do, or they haven't heard these solutions, or they've got solutions of their own that they're implementing, and so there's always new ideas, new material to share, new ways to connect with people, and one of the things that we've learned is that it's very important that you, you understand who you're trying to communicate with, so that you can tailor that information to that audience, and it will, it will connect with them, and a most basic sense, we do that by providing videos in English and Spanish, and we use local examples in our ADAPTA video series.

And so we, yeah, we hope to continue with that process.

[00:00:00] My name is Brian Fuchs and I'm a climatologist by training and I'm on the faculty at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, and I work with the National Drought Mitigation Center. And through the last 14 years or so, the National Drought Mitigation Center has worked directly with USDA's Office of the Chief Economist on several different cooperative agreements.

And through that time, the development of the USDA Climate Hubs came on board. So congratulations on 10 years of being around. And during that time, the NDMC has really become big partners with the USDA Climate Hubs. And the reason being is the mission of the hubs and the mission of NDMC are very similar.

The National Drought Mitigation Center, we are a national entity and working on regional problems through the Climate Hubs has been a great opportunity and one that we have really cherished and built [00:01:00] upon over the last 10 years. So with the Southwest Climate Hubs, some of our earlier work, I met Emile and Katie, and we did some stakeholder workshops, and it was a good introduction of knowing what the hubs were trying to do, and what NDMC was trying to do, and how we could put those synergies together.

So in talking with Emile over time, not only had we been dealing with a very significant drought in the Southwest, uh, one that some say was, was historical in nature. And during these discussions, we decided that, you know, the approaches that have been ongoing, especially with the duration of that drought may not be sufficient and meaning that we were seeing stakeholder fatigue, we were seeing that messages were not getting across as accurately as they could.

And so the idea was how can we better work with decision makers and resource managers, as well as information providers like the hub and [00:02:00] NDMC to reach out to these folks and give them an opportunity to come together and learn from each other. And that was really the basis of what the drought learning community came about from was how can we take the information and, and what we are already doing, but interact with the stakeholders and those that are making decisions, the resource managers, all those that are basically what I would call the boots on the ground. How can we come together with them and have them work together with us to do a better job of addressing drought and in the four corners region, again, that drought really was the catalyst of why we wanted to come together with this.

The idea was the whole basis of the drought learning community would be peer to peer learning. And to me, that was most important concept. We had been working in this arena for, for years at the NDMC and this concept never did come up. [00:03:00] We always felt a high level of success by going out into the field meeting with these folks, delivering them information and how to use this information, getting feedback from them of what their needs were, but we kind of left it at that. And so this new approach of a drought learning network and this peer to peer learning was very innovative. It was addressing a problem that that needed attention.

It wasn't putting the responsibility on any one particular group. We were going to look at all of our resources and connections that we had, but we were going to invite those folks who are being impacted the most to participate. So not only did we want them involved with this process, but we wanted them to share their experiences, we wanted people to learn from them. We wanted to build an arena where not only could you go and obtain information, but you could also go and share experiences. And what we also found out during this time is there were [00:04:00] challenges throughout the entire Southwest. Some of these resource managers were encountering things that they'd never seen in their professional careers or even in, in, uh, the near term that they were having to address and having to deal with as well.

And so with this, we felt this approach of having these resource managers and decision makers share both positives and negatives. You know, some of these folks were very innovative and came up with some very good ideas. And so the NDMC, the USDA Climate Hub, and then even NIDUS came in on board, too, came together with, with this concept of, of, hey, we're going to set up this network, we're going to bring people together, but it's really going to be led by those who are, that are involved.

And I think that was another key point, too, is we weren't dictating what we thought decision makers and resource managers should do. We wanted them to come together, discuss the problem, find the solutions. And I think that's where we have had some [00:05:00] success. Again, we're early on in this process. We're only about three or four years in along with a COVID break where some of this was was very challenging, but each time we come together as a group with our annual meetings, I become more and more encouraged that the approach that we're taking is the right one, especially for this area, and especially for an area that is constantly dealing with drought. And in the last decade or so it has been significant drought and unprecedented in some areas so I do think that approach is great, you know.

What can we do next? I think that's always where, where I, uh, sometimes try to, uh, again, think outside of the box. The whole DLN and peer to peer learning concept is definitely outside of the box. We haven't seen too many other examples, but what I'd like to see is this group continue to build. Uh, continue to reach out to people who may not [00:06:00] have been involved yet.

And I think we need to continue to be very open to changes, pivoting on the fly that if something, uh, didn't work out, Hey, let's go another direction. And I think we've already seen that with our working groups. I think the working groups have been a key component of the Drought Learning Network and bringing together these, these peers, because these peers brought up the ideas being addressed in the working groups.

I think the work with indigenous people is great. I think that's something more that we can do. I think reaching out to agricultural stakeholders. And again, where was that fatigue early on and have we helped, uh, reduce that fatigue of us as a stakeholder. And I do like the coordination. It's not coming on either any of the three groups that are overseeing us, but we're sharing that responsibility.

And I, I think we can even continue to do that in the future with more partners, as we see the [00:07:00] DLN effort grow and continue, and, you know, the outcomes to me have been great. Uh, not only have we seen other regions and other, uh, hubs come together and say, Hey, we want to do our own drought learning network, or can we be part of yours, I think that alone has shown the success of this approach.

And it is interesting to see some of the other hubs now trying to go in that direction and you know I wish them success, and not to give up, because this hasn't been an easy process. We have had some very deep discussions and we've always, always have thought about, you know, the decision makers, the stakeholders, resource managers, and what we can do to help them best interact with each other.

And to me that that's kind of been the gold star of this whole process. And I very, I'm very proud to be part of it. I'm very proud to have worked over these last 10 years, not only with the Southwest hub, but all of the hubs and [00:08:00] I foresee in the future that the NDMC and the relationship with all of the USDA Climate Hubs will continue to grow and continue to strengthen and I'm encouraged by all that.

[00:00:00] My name is Brian Kittler, and I lead the Resilient Forest Program for American Forests. We focus on climate informed reforestation. Oftentimes, after climate driven disturbance in forests, such as wildfires on the Pacific coast, and the last several years, following years of intensifying wildfire activity, we've been involved in some projects in California and Oregon that are using the seedlot selection tool to help us determine, you know, are we planting the right Seeds for the future climate that those seedlings are going to grow and become mature trees.

So, in the aftermath of the Camp Fire in Butte County, California, American Forest partnered with Butte County Resource Conservation District, several other partners, and the Bureau of Land Management to develop a climate informed reforestation plan for the Camp Fire, particularly for the areas covered by the Bureau of Land Management.

We wanted to make sure that the restoration strategy, the reforestation strategy, [00:01:00] integrated climate adaptation in a number of different ways, not the least of which is looking at assisted population migration for the sugar pine, the ponderosa pine, and the other tree species that were going to be actively planted through artificial regeneration in our plan.

So we looked at the Seedlot Selection Tool and used that as a tool that would allow us essentially to determine what are going to be those future seed sources for that site, sites within the Camp Fire that had burned at high severity, so that those, those trees would go back and be robust and vigorous and resilient to the future climate, you know, adapted to that future climate.

We looked at various tools out there. And, you know, the best approach that we were most comfortable with was the Seed Lot Selection Tool. And what we actually found, was seed lots and seed sources at lower elevations in the foothills and actually, ironically enough, northward of where the site was, that would be better adapted to the future, the future climate.

We would then actually source [00:02:00] seed from those areas, have them grown out in nurseries and then use those in out plantings that we've been doing with the, with the BLM since the Camp Fire. So it's a real test case in how we are trying to adapt that future forest and those trees to the precipitation regimes that are going to change, the temperature regimes that are changing, and really particularly in some pretty harsh sites following the Camp Fire.

Another example, American Forests has been working with the Fremont Wainima National Forests. In Region 6 of the Forest Service here in Oregon. And we worked with a number of partners to develop a similar post fire restoration strategy that was really looking at over 620, 000 acres of land that had recently burned.

We wanted to understand the availability of seed within that landscape. Currently in seed banks for all the different jurisdictions that were affected by these fires. We wanted to understand how that seed would be best adapted to the future site. And what we learned is that there's really a [00:03:00] scarcity of seed within that landscape.

Enough seed to, to reforest about 30,000 acres and we need about 230,000 acres of reforestation. Partners of ours in the Forest Service, we use the Seedlot Selection Tool to identify some locations on adjacent national forests to the Fremont Wainema National Forest where we actually sourced some seed and are now growing that out and those will be used in our plantings on the Fremont Wainema National Forest.

Another way in which we are utilizing the data and the Seedlot Selection Tool is coming up with solutions for this massive challenge of reforesting the fire affected lands in South Central Oregon. Because there's a scarcity of seed right now in the seed inventories for the U. S. Forest Service and for non federal partners, we're looking at establishing a cooperative seed orchard in Klamath and Lake Counties, and we're going to be utilizing the seedlot selection tool and other tools to make sure that we've got representative genetics and genetics [00:04:00] in the trees that are growing there that will be best adapted to the forest of Klamath and Lake Counties for decades to come.

So at South Central Oregon, we've been working closely with the USDA Pacific Northwest Climate Hub. We utilize some analysis from from the hubs directly in the development of an integrated all lands post fire restoration strategy involving the Forest Service, the state of Oregon, several non, non federal partners and the Klamath Tribes to really identify different, threats related to climate adaptation and to the future restoration of that site.

We utilize the vulnerability assessments coming out of the Climate Hubs in the development of that strategy as well as some, some new analysis that was looking at issues of climate adaptation and future climate regimes and how that would affect future fire behavior, the recovery of that landscape over 10 to 50 years into the future.

[00:00:00] Hello, I'm Dennis Toddy, director of the USDA Midwest Climate Hub housed in Ames, Iowa, and we're here today to talk about a freeze frost climatology that we developed in partnership with the Midwestern Regional Climate Center. This effort is a first of its kind that we have done in the country and it covers the area of the Northern Plains, Upper Midwest and Northeast in trying to help understand what is happening in the way of freeze dates in the spring and the fall and to be able to show people how those are changing over time.

This is the first of its kind that has not been done by any other entity. NOAA has various products that show temperature, precipitation, other information down to a county level, but nothing that shows how the freeze dates are changing over time. So that was the effort we were trying to do. The importance of this is because as our climate warms, we're getting changing freeze dates in the spring and the fall.

For row crop producers, that's an important issue because [00:01:00] people can understand how their season length is changing, how it's varying on the front end and on the back end. It's also critically important for specialty crop growers because we are seeing early dormancy break in a number of different crops and it's critically important to understand how that dormancy break and how last freeze are impacting their production and their risk of critical last freezes.

So I encourage you to go check out this information. And share this with other folks. Thank you very much.

Hi. My name is Karrah Kwasnik and I've been the USDA Northeast Climate Hub's Digital Content Manager since 2014. But more recently, their filmmaker. In 2019, I started production on a documentary film that would come to be called Delmarva The Ground for Change. I then spent a little over two years in post-production with over 74 hours of footage from across three different family-owned farms involved from Maryland and Delaware.

It's no secret that climate change is causing greater environmental and economic challenges, especially for those in agriculture. In the Northeast,heavy rains are becoming more frequent and intense. This is leading to increasing soil erosion and nutrient runoff problems. This kind of weather in the spring and the fall is reducing the number of days that fields can be worked in terms of planting and harvesting. And the frequency for drought is also increasing within the growing season. But many soil health practices can help farms be more resilient to these kinds of weather extremes.

And what's even more exciting is that some of these practices can even contribute towards mitigating climate change. And a lot of farmers know this and are already using these practices. But there are still a lot of farmers who are not using these practices. And so we set out to create a documentary film as a way to give farmers a spotlight, to share their knowledge and perspective in a more relatable and visual way.

Delmarva on the Ground for Change is an important film because it has a focused lens on solution-based practices available at the farm scale. And it's unique because it provides hope concerning the climate crisis while elevating farmer knowledge and perspective. In May of 2022, Delmarva, the Ground for Change held a virtual premiere through USDA and also went on to screen on a handful film festivals.

And while this film is also publicly available on USDA’s YouTube channel, none of these exciting events we're serving farmers at the community level. So we partnered with the University of Delaware Cooperative Extension to use the film as a tool to facilitate deeper conversations around soil health and climate smart farming. Together, over the past year or so, we've helped over 15 organizations host their own film screening events of Delmarva and the Ground for Change. Through these screening events that are often followed by a panel discussion with farming, soil or conservation experts,we are able to increase awareness around how farmers can be part of the climate solution from the ground up.

[00:00:00] Howdy, my name is Jacob Shaffer, currently with the USDA NRCS here in Weatherford, Texas, and I served on a work detail as the Tribal Environmental Support Specialist for the Southern Plains Climate Hub from January to September 2023. The climate problem that we faced was the ongoing droughts on tribal land, needed some extra water for fire, potable water, livestock, irrigation.

And so I pitched the idea to the Climate Hub as well as to the Bureau of Indian Affairs on a rainwater partners project where we would capture rainwater from powwow pavilions, barns, other facilities, and collect it, treat it, and either use it as potable water or to uh, use as extra water for fire protection, irrigation and livestock. 2023 was pretty, pretty bad year as far as drought goes. It was received pretty well among the tribal nations. So we started here in Texas with the Alabama Kishawda Tribe of Texas [00:01:00] down in Livingston and had a meeting with their council and the BIA and myself and presented kind of our ideas and they accepted it.

And so we went to BIA and BIA approved it as well to get, to fund the first project of a 65,000 gallon facility off their 200 foot by 200 foot pavilion. And that's currently been installed just within the last few months. And then from there, it's spread up to Oklahoma with the Caddo Nation, Caw Nation, Caw Paw Nation, Absentee Shawnee, and the Wichita Affiliated.

So it's, it's taken off more than what we anticipated. We also were able to work with the Southwest Climate Hub and had some programs over there with the Santa Ana Pueblo in Albuquerque, and they were interested as well as working with BIA to get some water facilities over in that area. Water harvesting has been used as water conservation practice for thousands of years.

And so this just to help mitigate again, the [00:02:00] drought effects, it not only addressed the water quantity and quality effects, but also was able to outreach to tribal nations, work with other partner agencies, such as BIA, EPA, NRCS, FSA, RD, and even some 1890s college programs, while also building relationships among tribal partners.

And everyone involved has benefited from the cohesiveness and energy that everybody's brought to the table. Not only is this spread in the Southern Plains, but we've, we've had tribes as far as South Dakota express interest, Arizona, New Mexico, Louisiana. We also hosted several workshops in the Southern Plains.

To date, we've reached, I believe, over seven states. We've had six funded BIA water harvesting projects, had 10 program workshops, and reached over 1,800 clientele during this short work detail with the Climate Hub. And we were also able to help change [00:03:00] policy with the BIA and EPA as well.

[00:00:00] My name is Julie Elliott. I retired from the Natural Resources Conservation Service after 32 years serving as a Rangeland Management Specialist in Eastern Colorado. First became aware of Grass-Cast in 2017 when the Northern Plains Climate Hub had a special session with the NRCS Range Specialist after a Colorado section meeting of the Society for Range Management.

Because of my involvement in planning the 2020 Society for Range Management meeting in Denver, I got to know Windy Kelley, who is the coordinator for the Northern Plains Climate Hub. She shared with me a call for proposals for a liaison position between NRCS and the Climate Hubs. We collaborated with Dannele Peck, who's director of the Northern Plains Climate Hub, to draft a project proposal centered primarily on Grass-Cast and drought management education.

That proposal was accepted by NRCS, and I started the position in January of 2021. Grass-Cast addresses the challenges grazers face of predicting how much grass there might be [00:01:00] in the coming growing season. Grass-Cast takes the soil's information, the plant community's growing there, and recent weather to create a soil water profile.

It then adds in future weather scenarios to create a total production prediction. But, because we never know what kind of weather we're going to have. Grass-Cast uses three different weather scenarios. What if we actually have above average precipitation? How much grass might we expect then? What if we have near normal precipitation?

What might total production look like in that case? And what if the spigot shuts off and we have less than normal precipitation? How much grass production might we expect then? Grass-Cast then creates three different maps based on each of these weather scenarios to help grazers anticipate how much total production might be possible compared to the long term average.

With these three different future weather scenarios, Grass-Cast is only available on the Great Plains and the Southwest, New Mexico and Arizona, [00:02:00] which is a large front. But compared to the whole United States, it's relatively small area of influence. And because Grass-Cast is a relatively new tool, most of the potential users don't know about it.

With a very limited staff and many demands, the education and promotion of the tool is challenging. I became the face and voice of Grass-Cast in 2021 and 2022, participating in many drought related webinars and meetings. Grass cast is a model, and it cannot know the actual conditions on the ground, but if two or all three scenarios above, near, or below normal precipitation lean in the same direction, it can really help a grazer A grazing advisor, such as an NRCS professional, or an extension, or a land manager, anticipate how much grass there might be and make changes on the range before it shows up, well, before cattle prices tank, before hay prices go sky high.

And before there's damage on the [00:03:00] rangeland, that's the real value of Grass-Cast is being able to look into the future and see what might be coming so you can take those preemptive steps instead of waiting until it's blaring you in the face and you're also facing all these financial troubles. The Grass-Cast team is always looking for more long term production data to refine the model in the current coverage area and for potential expansion.

[00:00:00] Sarah LeRoy: My name is Sarah LeRoy, and I work for the US Geological Survey as the research coordinator for the Southwest Climate Adaptation Science Center or Southwest CSC. Prior to working with the U-S-G-S, I was at the University of Arizona, working as a research scientist and also as the communications coordinator for the Southwest CSC.

I have partnered with the USDA Southwest Climate Hub on various projects and activities for over five years. But I'm going to focus on our collaboration to produce a podcast called Come Rain or Shine. This podcast originated out of a need to translate the science that both the Climate Adaptation Science Centers and Climate Hub support into action.

The Southwest CASC and Southwest Climate Hub both support climate adaptation science and communicate about this research with partners through mediums such as newsletters, social media, fact sheets, and webinars. These methods of outreach are excellent and inform [00:01:00] various audiences about the research and work being conducted by our organizations, but we each still felt there was a gap in our outreach and in reaching some audiences that can create action on the ground as we say in our podcast introduction.

We believe that sharing some of the most innovative, forward thinking, and creative climate science and adaptation will strengthen our collective ability to respond to even the most challenging impacts of climate change in one of the hottest and driest regions of the world. In order to help fill this gap, we each decided to create a podcast.

In an effort to leverage existing resources, we decided to collaborate and launch the Come Rain or Shine podcast together. We first began the podcast in 2020 at a time when meeting in person was not possible, and the podcast gave us another means of engaging with our partners and sharing our science.

Since then, we have produced almost 50 episodes, about one per month for the last [00:02:00] three and a half years. Emile Elias, Director of the Southwest Climate Hub, and myself co-host the podcast where we talk about climate adaptation research being conducted by the casts in the hubs, as well as other projects and efforts going on in the Southwest US that are related to climate adaptation. Our team also includes Skye Aney and Reanna Burnett, both with the Southwest Climate Hub, who work their magic every month to coordinate, edit, and produce each episode. This podcast would not exist without their amazing talents. To date, the podcast has had almost 9,000 downloads, with listeners from all over the world.

Listenership has grown over the years, and people seem to really enjoy hearing climate adaptation stories. Emile and I receive feedback from listeners at conferences and in emails informing us that they just love listening to the podcast. They tell us that they listen when they travel [00:03:00] for work while cleaning their house, on road trips, or even doing yard work.

The great thing about the podcast is that people don't need to be tied to a desk or a computer to learn about the remarkable and innovative work being conducted in the Southwest aimed at adapting to climate change. We ultimately hope that the podcast is having an impact in the region. We have discussed conducting an evaluation to learn who is listening and how they are using the information that they learn.

We always welcome feedback from listeners and especially ideas for what topics to discuss and for how to improve the quality of the podcast. This podcast has been such a rewarding collaboration for the Southwest CSC, and we have a ton of fun producing it. I can't believe that it's already been three and a half years since we started it.

Time has really just flown by. We hope our listeners have as much fun listening to each episode as we have producing them. And I just want to thank the Southwest Climate Hub for being willing to try something [00:04:00] new and to go on this podcasting adventure together.