The Pacific Region National Wildlife Refuge System developed a strategic approach to identify region-wide land/habitat conservation priorities. This approach was piloted in the Columbia Plateau Ecoregion and resulted in a high-level landscape-scale conservation design.
Projects By Product: Datasets or Database
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.
The Heart of the Rockies Initiative (HOTR), on behalf of its 24 land conservation non-governmental partners, and its federal and state agency partners, seeks a second year of science support to incorporate emerging data on landscape integrity and connectivity, crucial habitats, and climate change
This project, part of a broader effort called the Gulf Coast Vulnerability Assessment, involved identifying gaps in data and integrating datasets and corresponding metadata required for a Gulf of Mexico-wide assessment of conditions and variables affecting barrier island vulnerability.
This project, part of a broader effort called the Gulf Coast Vulnerability Assessment, involved identifying gaps in data and integrating datasets and corresponding metadata required for a Gulf of Mexico-wide assessment of conditions and variables affecting barrier island vulnerability.
Comprehensive geospatial data covering the area of the Gulf Coast Prairie Landscape Conservation Cooperative is needed to better inform and improve countless conservation efforts and help partners convey a shared vision and priorities for this area in geospatial terms.
Sea level rise caused by climate change is an ongoing phenomenon and a concern both locally and worldwide.
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.
Explore climate change impacts on vegetation across the Desert and Southern Rockies LCCs using historical monitoring data collected from 23 sites across the Sonoran, Chihuahuan, Mojave and Colorado Plateau deserts for 30-50 years.
Freshwater systems are critically imperiled and continue to be threatened by human encroachment and water development.
Texas Tech University will conduct quantitative and predictive analysis of the connectivity of isolated desert "wetlands", that include tinajas, the name for eroded pools in bedrock, for 20 wildlife species over the Sonoran desert ecoregion.
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.
Provide decision support through develpoment of models and DSTs that inform conservation delivery for easements and habitat management within the LCA that address population and habitat objectives for surrogate species.
The Bird Conservancy of the Rockies will use, combine and optimize an array of remote sensing techniques to identify the most efficient process that characterizes grasslands and level of shrub component in those grasslands.
Creating a detailed vegetation classification and digital map for Squaw Creek National Wildlife Refuge to use for habitat management decisions and tracking land use changes.
Rocky Mountain Research Station scientists initiated a study in the 1990s on avian distribution and habitat associations within the Sky Islands.
Researchers with U.S.
The importance of riparian ecosystems in semiarid and arid regions has generated interest in understanding processes that drive the distribution and abundance of dominant riparian plants.
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.
Projected water deficits mean that land and water managers must be proactive in their management of rivers and shallow aquifers, if they want to maintain the ecosystems dependent upon them.
Ecosystem services provided by floodplains include removal of nitrogen, phosphorus, and sediments, and sequestration of carbon. Effectiveness of floodplains in providing these services is dependent on the extent and location of connection between floodplain and river.
A strong data foundation is needed to inform science-based decisions for fisheries management at a watershed level.
In February 2014, taking action to implement a 2012 U.S.-Mexico agreement on the Colorado River known as Minute 319, International Boundary and Water Commissioners (IBWC) Edward Drusina and Roberto Fernando Salmon Castelo announced plans to move forward with a one-time pulse flow (a release of wa
FY2013
Cheatgrass die-offs are unexplained instances of stand failure observed in areas of Nevada and Utah, where cheatgrass fails to grow even though it has been a dominant component of plant communities in the past. The goals of this project are to:
Overgrazing and fire suppression have led to a loss of deep soils and vegetative cover in the 420,000 acre Alamosa Creek watershed in southwestern New Mexico.
Our approach will include sampling a wide range of habitats and environmental conditions throughout the middle and lower Pecos River basin, across an 18 month time-span to account for seasonal and phenological events.
Assessing the vulnerability of species or ecosystems to climate change and formulating appropriate management responses requires predictions of the exposure and sensitivity of the species or ecosystems to projected changes.
University of Arizona will conduct an ecosystem conservation assessment for the lower San Pedro (LSP) watershed.
Museum of Northern Arizona, Inc. will leverage tools previously developed by the Springs Stewardship Initiative to help resource managers in the southwestern U.S.
Topock Marsh is a large wetland adjacent to the Colorado River and main feature of Havasu National Wildlife Refuge (Havasu NWR) in southern Arizona. In 2010, U.S.
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.
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.
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 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.
To be successful, natural resource managers need to synthesize diverse information on the effects of management actions, climate change and other stressors on wildlife populations at appropriate scales.
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.
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.
The Navajo Nation covers over 70,000 km2 in the Four Corners area of Utah, Arizona and New Mexico.
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 developed a foundation for monitoring environmental change by identifying where and what to monitor in order to evaluate climate-change impacts.
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.