Projects By Category: Conservation Planning

Landscape simulation modeling will be used to develop detailed management guidelines for restoring and sustaining whitebark pine under future climates, accounting for the principal stressors that threaten its persistence (exotic disease infections, mountain pine beetles, and fire exclusion polici

Despite extensive knowledge and data surrounding the status and threats to Yellowstone cutthroat trout there is currently no comprehensive framework for prioritizing conservation of populations and metapopulations (i.e., locations) and potential actions that could be taken in these locations to s

FY2014

The Southeast Aquatic Resources Partnership, a partner in the Gulf Coast Prairie Landscape Conservation Cooperative, is advancing instream flow science by developing basic information necessary to support flow standards and water management recommendations for waterways throughout the region.

Grassland-shrubland prairie has been important to the livelihoods of generations of ranchers; to the hunting community because of prized game species; and to endangered species, such as the black-capped vireo, as habitat.

While siltation in the areas between reservoir and riverine ecosystems can damage habitat, there is emerging evidence to suggest certain water management strategies could promote high fish diversity in these areas—but this needs to be further studied.

The Gulf Coastal Plains and Ozarks Landscape Conservation Cooperative Geomatics Working Group developed an on-line platform to serve geospatial data in a consistent manner that also allows end-users to easily discover, access, and integrate existing data and tools without dedicated GIS software o

This project will use more than 10 years of monitoring data to develop biometric habitat models for 9 of the Gulf Coastal Plains and Ozarks Landscape Conservation Cooperative's species endpoints within the open pine woodland and savanna habitat type.

This project will combine existing biotic and abiotic metrics for open pine savannas and woodlands developed by the US Forest Service and NatureServe with metrics developed to assess wildlife habitat value as part of the EGCPJV's desired forest conditions project.

FY2014

FY2014

FY2014

FY2014

FY2014

Delivering adequate water supplies to support expanding human enterprise while maintaining the necessary flow regimes to support desired riparian ecosystems and formally protected wildlife species that depend upon them is increasingly difficult in the arid western United States.

There is a need to understand how alteration of physical processes on the Rio Grande River have impacted aquatic biota and their habitats, and a need to predict potential future effects of climate change on biotic resources in order to prescribe research and management activities that will enhanc

University of Arizona will conduct an ecosystem conservation assessment for the lower San Pedro (LSP) watershed.

Understanding the physiological impacts of climate change on arid lands species is a critical step towards ensuring the resilience and persistence of such species under changing temperature and moisture regimes.

The efficiency and effectiveness of aerial photography by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Midwest Aviation Program has been improved with upgraded components for the Applanix DSS 439 Camera System, including a 60 millimeter lens and gyro-stabilization mount. Both are installed and in use.

Hardware to collect infrared digital imagery during periods of peak vegetative growth to develop a cover map for the Mississippi River floodplain from Minneapolis, Minn. to the Ohio River confluence.

To better understand the motivations of landowners, specifically farmers, to participate in programs that improve wildlife habitat and water quality in the region. The LCC is working with U.S. Geological Survey to evaluate factors influencing landowners’ enrollment in U.S.

In FY12, hydrogeomorphic methodology was being applied along 670 miles of the Missouri River from Decatur, Nebraska to St. Louis, Missouri.

FY2013

FY2013

Northern Arizona University will build upon the U.S. Forest Service Four Forest Restoration Initiative in Northern Arizona to investigate how restoration efforts can affect the water volume available in the snowpack and soil moisture in the Desert LCC.

The project objective is to transfer to California a previously developed prioritization framework that combines intraspecific genetic and morphological variation with traditionally used indices of biodiversity, and test its general utility for conservation prioritization.

Phase 1 (2013): The Northern California Coastal Forest ecoregion is dominated by coast redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) covering 13,300 km2 from just north of the California-Oregon border to Santa Cruz County, California, extending ~60 km inland.

The North-central California coast and ocean is a globally significant, extraordinarily diverse and productive marine and coastal ecosystem that is home to abundant wildlife, valuable fisheries, two national marine sanctuaries, two national parks, and a national wildlife refuge.

This project will conduct a vulnerability assessment, develop climate-smart adaptation strategies and actions, and generate implementation plans for focal habitats of the South and Central Coast regions of the CALCC, with a specific focus on four Southern California National Forests (Angeles, San

Despite the existence of high quality scientific information, there are significant barriers to the application of available tools to real-world decisions regarding how to best restore and manage coastal wetlands in consideration of climate change effects.

Project Objectives
In collaboration with the staff, members and partners of the Caribbean
Landscape Conservation Cooperative (CLCC), SustainaMetrix conducted
a process to assemble the foundation of an ecosystem governance

A combination of citizen science inventories and expert assessments will be used to collect critical baseline information on known spring and seep resources using the Spring Ecosystem Inventory and Assessment Protocols and adapting them as needed for the unique arid Sky Island ecosystems.

Rainwater Harvesting and Stormwater Research is a priority research area identified by the Arizona Governor's Blue Ribbon Panel on Water Sustainability, which recommended that universities take the lead to identify regulatory barriers, cost and benefits, water quality issues and avenues for incre

In practice, there are a number of challenges associated with formal consideration of the environment in water planning in large parts of the Desert LCC region.

In the desert southwest biodiversity is facing a changing landscape due to human population growth, expansion of energy development, and from the persistent effects of climate change among other threats.

This project completed a Conservation Lands Network for biodiversity preservation which includes an on-line decision support tool, a GIS database, a computer software for finer scale planning, and a report card template. Project results may be found at The Conservation Lands Network website.

This project developed a foundation for monitoring environmental change by identifying where and what to monitor in order to evaluate climate-change impacts.

This project used species distribution modeling, population genetics, and geospatial analysis of historical vs. modern vertebrate populations to identify climate change refugia and population connectivity across the Sierra Nevada.

The California Invasive Plant Council (Cal-IPC) developed a “risk mapping” approach that combines comprehensive distribution maps with maps of current and future suitable range to show where each (invasive) species is likely to spread.

California's native fishes are mostly endemic, with no place to go as climate change increases water temperatures and alters stream flows. Many of the alien fishes, however, are likely to benefit from the effects of climate change.

This project integrates fire risk models, species distribution models (SDMs) and population models with scenarios of future climate and land cover to project how the effects of climate-induced changes to species distributions and land use change will impact threatened species in fire-prone ecosys

The Shorebird Demographic Network is an international collaboration designed to evaluate how climate mediated changes in the arctic ecosystem are affecting shorebird distribution, ecology, and demography. The main purpose of the network is to monitor demographic parameters (e.g.

This project used species distribution modeling to assess the risk to habitat change under various climate change scenarios for rare plants.

This project is analyzing downscaled climate model data to assess the geography of climate change at scales relevant to actual conservation actions.

The occurrence of Potentially Toxic Elements (PTEs) in the Arctic and sub-Arctic is of major concern for the sensitive ecosystems and the humans and aquatic flora and fauna in this region.

The Appalachian LCC is currently engaged in an effort to develop a draft regional conservation plan for the Cooperative using an interactive and iterative spatial prioritization framework.

The Wildlife Conservation Society will assess the climate change vulnerability of bird species that regularly breed in substantial populations in Alaska using the NatureServe Climate Change Vulnerability Index (CCVI) tool.

The Nature Conservancy (TNC) drew upon its existing Canadian network to coordinate with potential Canadian partners on behalf of the Arctic LCC.

The ALCC has asked the U.S. Institute for Environmental Conflict Resolution (U.S. Institute) to assist them in engaging a third-party neutral facilitator who can work with the steering committee to identify key landscape scale resource management needs common to many of the ALCC partners.

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) is supporting a field effort in support of a ShoreZone mapping project along the Chukchi and Beaufort coasts. Funds from the LCC will allow for the inclusion of three additional ShoreStations.