May 25, 2016

SERCH LIGHTS alerts growers to climate change impacts

If you’re a farmer, rancher or working land manager in the southeastern United States, the USDA Southeast Regional Climate Hub (SERCH) can be a valuable resource in delivering timely and applicable climate information and tools.

Located in Raleigh, North Carolina, on the campus of North Carolina State University, SERCH is led by the Forest Service. One of SERCH’s science-based, adaptive management tools is SERCH LIGHTS, an email subscriber alert service that provides relevant climate variability and change information.

The products are spread across a variety of websites and manually monitoring them for updates is a time-consuming task.  SERCH LIGHTS streamlines and organizes these datasets making it available to anyone in the lower 48 states.

For example, the SERCH LIGHTS drought alert goes out to subscribers only when drought conditions are forecast to change in the coming month for their location.  The email alert also includes a summary of the change along with links to tools and resources that land managers can use to respond and mitigate potential impacts.

SERCH scientists and data analysts are developing new SERCH LIGHTS alerts focused on climate threats such as agricultural and forest pests, heat stress on livestock, and El Niño impacts on seasonal precipitation and temperature.  SERCH is prioritizing the most important topics and working to find the spatial and time scales that will be most useful for informing adaptive management responses, and we want your input in this process.  This short feedback form includes a few questions about which threats would be most useful in your work, as well as an opportunity to suggest additional climate threats.  If you want to receive SERCH LIGHTS email alerts for any of these climate-related threats, the form has an option to subscribe as well.

For more information, contact SERCH Director Steve McNulty at [email protected] or 919-515-9489.

—  Jennifer Moore Myers, USDA Southeast Regional Climate Hub

Source: USDA