WyACT will establish novel and innovative capacity in Wyoming for addressing the ecological and socioeconomic consequences of climate driven changes in water resources. The project will substantially augment capabilities for refining and applying local- and regional-scale models collaboratively developed with stakeholders that address scenarios related to abrupt shifts in water availability. Sustained elements of the project will include establishment of the Laboratory for Regional Earth System Modeling with five new faculty hires at the University of Wyoming and the Center for Climate, Water and People. We plan to launch observational infrastructure and stakeholder engagement activities in each of the three watersheds (Snake, Wind, Green) during this 5-year project. In September 2022, we launched these efforts through a pilot workshop centered at the UW-NPS Research Station at the AMK Ranch in Grand Teton National Park. The central goal of the project is to enable communities, including tribal collaborators and the region’s growing Latino/Latina community, to anticipate and prepare for significant and lasting changes in water availability.
Map of proposed research locations in the headwaters of three major US river systems in western Wyoming. Yellow circles represent the communities where socio-economic, community resilience and co-production research activities are planned across the three river drainages and numbers represent the observation areas for studying precipitation and snowpack, watershed and vegetation dynamics, small and large lake ecosystem dynamics, and field education activities. These study locations were chosen to represent important climatic, ecological, hydrological and socio-economic contrasts relevant to applying and testing integrated models. [WRIR = Wind River Indian Reservation; NPS = National Park Service]