Projects

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

This case study project is on the Upper Pajaro River, which crosses a 9,000-acre natural floodplain in the Central Coast.

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.

Goal: Identify actions that will maximize the adaptive capacity of priority species, habitat, and ecosystems to support an ecologically connected Central Valley landscape.

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

Despite the lack of surface flows, the Colorado River riparian corridor in Mexico has proven to be ecologically resilient. Floods in the 1980s and 90s in the region brought back large swaths of native riparian habitat, which still persist today in some areas along the river.

Accurate estimation of evapotranspiration (ET) is essential for assessments of water balance and hydrologic responses to forest restoration treatments in uplands adjacent to the Desert LCC.

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.

Perennial streams in the Desert LCC support riparian trees such as cottonwood (Populus spp) and box elder (Acer negundo) that are critical components of habitat for riparian obligate birds and other wildlife species (Webb et al. 2007).

Riparian vegetation provides crucial habitat for wildlife and is a high conservation priority for land managers throughout the Southwest but a central scientific challenge is to generate quantitative predictions of how changes in water availability will affect the amount and quality of riparian w

The Desert LCC identified the need for a Protected Areas spatial database that showed land ownership, management designations and conservation status for lands in the United States and Mexico.

Riparian ecosystems are among the most productive and diverse ecosystems in desert biomes. In the Sonoran, Chihuahuan, and Mojave deserts of the United States and Mexico, riparian ecosystems support regional biodiversity and provide many ecosystem services to human communities.

The Navajo Nation covers over 70,000 km2 in the Four Corners area of Utah, Arizona and New Mexico.

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.

Freshwater fishes are globally among the most imperiled major biodiversity groups and they are especially endangered in the North American deserts of the vast binational Desert LCC.

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.

In regulated rivers of the southwest, reduced flooding and the invasion of tamarisk contributes to accumulation of greater fuel loads and increased riparian fire frequency.

University of California Riverside’s Center for Conservation Biology will create a sustainable resource monitoring framework that will provide empirical data identifying if and how climate change is changing the composition and vitality of Joshua Tree National Park.

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.

Our proposal addresses Funding Category Ill by evaluating natural resource management practices and adaptation opportunities. More specifically, our project addresses Science Need #6 to improve monitoring and inventory of watersheds and ecosystems (including invasive species).

We assessed change in the seasonal timing of insect emergence from tundra ponds near Barrow, Alaska over a four-decade timespan, and explored factors that regulate this significant ecological phenomenon.

This project provides a better understanding how linkages among surface-water availability, connectivity, and temperature mediate habitat and trophic dynamics of the Fish Creek Watershed (FCW).

Water availability, distribution, quality and quantity are critical habitat elements for fish and other water-dependent species. Furthermore, the availability of water is also a pre-requisite for a number of human activities.

Understanding snow conditions is key to developing a better understanding of hydrologic, biological, and ecosystem processes at work in northern Alaska.

Contemporary observations suggest that water may disappear entirely from portions of some North Slope stream-beds during periods of drought or low flow. Climate models project even drier summers in the future.

If current trends continue, Brooks Range glaciers will disappear over the next century, affecting stream flow regimes, riparian areas, and deltas. In turn, changes in stream habitat will impact local fisheries and the subsistence users who depend on them.

The ShoreZone in the Classroom Curriculum Implementation project built upon the ShoreZone in the Classroom Pilot Networking Trip.

The Integrated Ecosystem Model for Alaska project (IEM) uses down-scaled climate models as the drivers of ecosystem change to produce forecasts of future fire, vegetation, permafrost and hydrology regimes at a resolution of 1km.

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.

The Imiq Hydroclimate Database houses hydrologic, climatologic, and soils data collected in Alaska and Western Canada from the early 1900s to the present.

The USGS and Arctic National Wildlife Refuge Staff operate and maintain a streamgage at Hulahula River near Kaktovik, Alaska.

Arey Lagoon and Island, situated on the Beaufort Sea coast just west of Barter Island and within the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), was selected as a focus site for an in-depth study of coastal processes on a regional to local scale.

There is currently have a very poor understanding of how climate change will affect food web structure and mercury accumulation in lakes on the Arctic Coastal Plain of Alaska. In this study, researchers are addressing this knowledge gap by adopting a space-for-time approach.

Arctic wetlands, where millions of local and migratory birds nest, are composed of a mosaic of ice wedge polygons, non-patterned tundra, and large vegetated drained thaw lake basins.

Information on the nature and distribution of permafrost is critical to assessing the response of Arctic ecosystems to climate change, because thawing permafrost under a warming climate will cause thaw settlement and affect micro-topography, surface water redistribution and groundwater movement,

The Arctic LCC has developed a Project Tracking System(PTS) to electronically manage the metadata and data associated with projects. The PTS is used to track projects throughout all stages of development, from receipt of proposals through delivery of final products.

To elucidate these potential “bottom up” effects of climate changes to Arctic ungulates and evaluate the trophic mismatch hypothesis, the Arctic Landscape Conservation Cooperative (ALCC), the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), the U.S.

The Arctic LCC has partnered with USGS to complete a feasibility study that will review current and past efforts to monitor thermokarst at broad spatial and temporal scales, compare relevance, cost, and strengths/weaknesses of the various approaches and techniques.

BioMap Alaska is a citizen science observation and information management tool. BioMap Alaska engages residents of coastal communities to voluntarily report observations and local knowledge of marine life.

The Bureau of Land Management- Arctic Field Office has a requirement for coordinating research and
monitoring projects related to the effectiveness of stipulations and surface resource impacts in the

This project evaluates the effects of global climate change and sea level rise on estuarine intertidal habitat in the San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Flyway migratory waterbirds that rely on this habitat.

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.

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 assessed the potential effects of climate change on tidal marsh habitats and bird populations, identified priority sites for tidal marsh conservation and restoration, and developed a web-based mapping tool for managers to interactively display and query results.

This project uses bottom-up modeling at a parcel scale to measure the effects of sea-level rise (SLR) on coastal ecosystems and tidal salt marshes.

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.

This project designed a monitoring program and protocol to detect the effects of climate change on tidal marsh bird population abundance and distribution.