Projects By Product: Applications and Tools

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.

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.

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

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

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).

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.

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 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 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.

Why Rangelands: The Central Valley of California, the surrounding foothills and the interior Coast Range include over 18 million acres of grassland. Most of this land is privately owned and managed for livestock production.

Unifying state-based stream classifications into a single consistent system, principal investigators at The Nature Conservancy developed a hierarchical classification system and map for stream and river systems for the Appalachian LCC that represents the region’s natural flowing-water aquatic hab

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.