Projects By Category: Decision Support

Landscape Conservation Cooperatives use a collaborative approach to identify landscape-scale conservation solutions. LCCs work across jurisdictional and political boundaries to work with partners to: meet unfilled conservation needs, develop decision support tools, share data and knowledge and facilitate and foster partnerships.

As part of a shared science strategy, LCCs coordinate closely with the National Climate Change and Wildlife Center and the eight regional Climate Science Centers as well as Migratory Bird Joint Ventures and National Fish Habitat Partnerships across North America.

  • North Pacific

Practitioners struggle with how to identify, prioritize, and implement climate adaptation actions
that can effectively reduce vulnerability; these decisions may be more easily made and successfully

  • North Pacific

The Jamestown SKlallam and Port Gamble SKlallam tribes, and many other tribes in the Pacific
Northwest, rely on ESA listed fish species for subsistence as well as cultural and economic practices.

  • North Pacific

Background: Yellow-cedar (Callitropsis nootkatensis) is an economically and culturally important tree of the North Pacific coastal rainforest, ranging from northern California through Southeast Alaska.

  • North Pacific

The forum will have two major goals:. First, to share the successes and learnings of past LCC investments on the subjects of Traditional Ecological Knowledge, subsistence resources, and climate adaptation plans.

  • North Pacific

The Lower Columbia River and adjacent coastal regions of Oregon and Washington contain a rich diversity of natural and cultural resources managed by a complex array of tribal sovereign nations, federal/state/local agencies, non-government conservation organizations, landowners, stakeholders and o

  • Eastern Tallgrass Prairie and Big Rivers
  • Desert
  • Appalachian
  • Plains and Prairie Potholes
  • Gulf Coastal Plains and Ozarks

This multi-LCC project is designed to evaluate delivery of existing courses offered through the National Conservation Training Center (NCTC) as “pilots” to enhance expertise needed within the regional context of LCC and Climate Science Center (CSC) communities.

  • Great Northern

Stream temperature data will be compiled from federal and provincial government agencies, as well as other data holders in British Columbia which will be housed in an interagency database.

  • Great Northern

The White House Council for Environmental Quality has identified two national watersheds to pilot large-scale drought resiliency implementation.

  • Great Northern

In May 2014, the GNLCC Steering Committee approved two pilot projects explore approaches to landscape-scale coordination to enhance science-based management across the GNLCC.

  • Great Northern

Assemble three sets of downscaled climate data (historic) and projections (future) developed by the USGS and the Climate Impacts Group at University of Washington; evaluate data documentation and formatting, and edit or repair as needed; deliver all climate data in a userfriendly format from mirr

  • Great Northern

The Washington Connected Landscapes Project will provide a framework to address the interacting impacts of habitat fragmentation and climate change on ecological systems and wildlife species within the Great Northern Landscape Conservation Cooperative (GNLCC) boundary.

  • Great Northern

Sagebrush (Artemisia spp.)-dominated shrublands are one of the most widespread ecosystems in western North America but also among the most imperiled due to interactions among land use, fire, and exotic plants.

  • Great Northern

LC MAP, the Landscape Conservation Management and Analysis Portal, allows GNLCC partners to discover, use, develop, manage, and distribute datasets that address LCC priority issues.

  • Great Northern

We propose an international partnership to facilitate the identification of habitat connectivity conservation opportunities and implementation of connectivity projects in the transboundary area of Washington and British Columbia.

  • Pacific Islands

Project Summary

  • Pacific Islands

The objective of this project is to identify areas where herbivore management interventions would be the most effective in promoting coral reef recovery and resiliency following the recent coral bleaching.

  • Pacific Islands

Develop an island-wide mangrove adaption and management plan that will incorporate the findings from the comprehensive island-wide mangrove vulnerability assessment that is currently being funded through awards to MCT from the United States DOI Office of Insular Affairs and Fish and Wildlife Serv

  • Pacific Islands

Hawaiian forest birds are imperiled, with fewer than half the original > 40 species remaining extant.

  • Pacific Islands

Conservation efforts in isolated archipelagos such as Hawai’i often focus on habitat-based conservation and restoration efforts that benefit multiple species. Unfortunately, identifying locations where such efforts are safer from climatic shifts is still challenging.

  • North Atlantic

With support from the North Atlantic LCC and Hurricane Sandy Disaster Mitigation funds the North Atlantic Aquatic Connectivity Collaborative (www.streamcontinuity.org) has developed a regional crossing assessment protocol and database, scoring systems

  • North Atlantic

The North Atlantic Region of the United States and Canada boasts diverse habitats, from coasts to mountains, that support endemic and rare plant species. However, recent conservation actions and prioritization efforts in this region have neglected to include plants.

  • Plains and Prairie Potholes

Cottonwood forests are in decline becasue of losses from land use conversion and reduced regeneration from river regulation.

  • Eastern Tallgrass Prairie and Big Rivers
  • Gulf Coastal Plains and Ozarks
  • Plains and Prairie Potholes
  • Upper Midwest and Great Lakes
  • Appalachian

Estimates of nutrient loading to the Gulf of Mexico indicate that nine states within the Mississippi River Basin are responsible for approximately 75% of all nitrogen and phosphorus delivered to the Gulf.

  • Desert

In response to the rapid and dramatic hydroecological deterioration of the Rio Grande through Big Bend, the Big Bend Conservation Cooperative (BBCC), a multi-disciplinary group of natural resource agencies, research institutions, and conservation organizations have been organizing and implementin

  • Gulf Coast Prairie

This project will use existing climate change scenarios and sea-level rise projections to create a Climate Change Adaptation Plan in collaboration with the Chitimacha Tribe of Louisiana.

  • Plains and Prairie Potholes

Rural America has changed dramatically over the last century, from having over half the population living in rural settings to only 20 percent residing in a rural area today, and outmigration of younger populations from rural communities remains a constant issue for local governing officials.

  • Eastern Tallgrass Prairie and Big Rivers
  • Appalachian
  • Plains and Prairie Potholes
  • Gulf Coastal Plains and Ozarks

How did this multi-LCC initiative develop?

  • Upper Midwest and Great Lakes

Researchers downscaled projections of maximum and minimum temperature and precipitation across a large extent east of the Rocky Mountains to the Atlantic Coast.  The data is probabilistic in nature, providing flexibility in incorporating climate information into impact assessments.  Statistical t

  • Upper Midwest and Great Lakes

    As a major threat to global biodiversity, climate change will alter where and how we manage conservation lands (e.g., parks, refuges, wildlife management areas, natural areas).

  • Upper Midwest and Great Lakes

Capacity to prioritize barrier removals in the Great Lakes basin is currently limited by lack of data on the passability of road crossings and dams for both unwanted invasive species and desirable native migratory fishes.

  • Upper Midwest and Great Lakes

An experienced team of wetland ecologists, geographers, and software engineers used a geodesign process to develop and host a web-based geospatial application that will support the identification and restoration of potential coastal wetlands (i.e., areas that could be restored to coastal wetlands

  • Gulf Coast Prairie

Habitat loss and degradation due to urban expansion and other human activities have raised concerns for the Western Gulf Coast Mottled Duck population. This species relies on tidal, palustrine, and agricultural wetlands as well as grasslands for all of its life cycle needs.

  • Gulf Coast Prairie

Alligator Gar, *Atractosteus spatula*, is an iconic species native to lowland floodplain river systems where they play an important role as top predators and by linking landscapes through their movement. Alligator Gar is also an important native fisheries species in the Trinity River.

  • Eastern Tallgrass Prairie and Big Rivers
  • Appalachian
  • Plains and Prairie Potholes
  • Gulf Coastal Plains and Ozarks
  • Upper Midwest and Great Lakes

The multi-LCC Mississippi River Basin/Gulf Hypoxia Initiative is a joint effort to find the nexus of water quality, wildlife, and people in the Mississippi River Basin.

  • Eastern Tallgrass Prairie and Big Rivers
  • Plains and Prairie Potholes

The best hope for recovering and maintaining ecosystem function and services for the tallgrass prairie ecosystem is reconstruction.

  • Eastern Tallgrass Prairie and Big Rivers
  • Upper Midwest and Great Lakes

Monarch butterfly and other pollinators are in trouble. Monarch butterfly habitat— including milkweed host plants and nectar food sources—has declined drastically throughout most of the United States.

  • Western Alaska

Research on coastal change in Western Alaska has increased rapidly in recent years, making it challenging to track existing projects, understand their cumulative insights, gauge remaining research gaps, and prioritize future research.

  • Western Alaska

Water temperature plays a critical role in the health of pre-smolt salmon life stages, and changes in water temperature may be a strong driving factor on growth and survival of juvenile Chinook salmon.

  • Western Alaska

Southwest Alaska is one of the fastest warming regions on Earth and its aquatic resources are at distinct risk from changing climate.

  • Western Alaska

Viable sockeye salmon populations are critical to the economy, culture, and freshwater ecosystems of Bristol Bay in Western Alaska, and it is unclear how populations might respond to warming temperatures during the critical life history stages of spawning and embryo incubation.

  • Western Alaska

This project evaluated the potential impacts of storm surges and relative sea level rise on nesting geese and eider species that commonly breed on the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta (Y-K Delta).

  • Western Alaska

The project will complete an extensive mapping of coastal change along the entire coastline of the Western Alaska Landscape Conservation Cooperative (LCC). The work will provide important baseline information on the distribution and magnitude of landscape changes over the past 41 years.

  • Western Alaska

Alaska’s freshwater resources, vitally important for salmon and other species, are vulnerable to changes resulting from climate change.

  • Western Alaska
  • Arctic

This project is focused on establishing a statewide framework to improve the hydrography mapping and stewardship in Alaska.

  • Western Alaska

Water temperature is one of the most significant factors in the health of stream ecosystems.

  • Western Alaska

Streams, rivers, and lakes of the Kodiak Archipelago, Alaska, provide essential spawning and rearing habitat for millions of Pacific salmon collectively regarded as a foundation of the regional ecosystem and economy.

  • Western Alaska

This project supports the technical development of a mobile application for identifying and reporting invasive plant species in Alaska.