Projects By Status: Completed

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.

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.

Despite growing interest in ecosystem services and multi-functional landscapes, there are still relatively few examples of projects that assess the delivery of multiple goods and services and evaluate how multi-objective conservation strategies can improve outcomes relative to single-objective or

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.

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.

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

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.

The substantially natural hydrography of the upper Gila River supports one of the highest levels of aquatic and riparian biodiversity in the region, including the largest complement of native fishes and some of the best remaining riparian habitat in the lower Colorado River Basin.

Southern Nevada Water Authority will add new modeling and analytical capabilities to tools developed as part of a previous WaterSMART Climate Analysis Tools Grant that assessed impacts of climate change on water quality and sediment transport in Lake Mead.

Seven Landscape Conservation Cooperatives (LCCs) are working together to identify key scientific uncertainties associated with design and management of a sustainable ecosystem/floodplain landscape that provides multiple benefits for agricultural productivity, water quality, and wildlife conservat

Museum of Northern Arizona, Inc. will leverage tools previously developed by the Springs Stewardship Initiative to help resource managers in the southwestern U.S.

An Iowa State University research team in collaboration with Neal Smith National Wildlife Refuge and other partners has discovered that strategically adding a little bit of prairie back onto the agricultural landscape can result in many benefits – for water and soil quality, habitat for wildlife

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.

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

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.

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.

The Midwestern Region is dominated by intensive agricultural production, primarily corn and soybeans. Economic pressures result in optimizing acreage planted and may place pressure on producers to resign not enroll in conservation programs.

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.

Freshwater systems are critically imperiled and continue to be threatened by human encroachment and water development.

The focus of the first Midwest Urban Conservation Workshop was to understand the challenges stakeholders are facing, define the needs for collaboration and best management practices, establish a platform for conversation focusing on learning from each other and creating an opportunity for collabo

Rocky Mountain Research Station scientists initiated a study in the 1990s on avian distribution and habitat associations within the Sky Islands.

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.

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

Sediment and nutrient runoff contributes to loss of agricultural productivity, degradation of local streams, and hypoxia in the Gulf of Mexico. The North Fork Maquoketa Basin has been identified as a major contributor of sediment and nutrients.

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:

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.

As part of the Genoa National Fish Hatchery Native Freshwater Mussel Restoration Program, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service researchers utilized advanced technology in mobile rearing to evaluate how different water sources support growth and survival of young freshwater mussels.

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.

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.

A strong data foundation is needed to inform science-based decisions for fisheries management at a watershed level.

Construct enclosures at Columbia Mine to house approximately 60 turtles (translocated animals) that were collected off of the right-of-way for sections 2 and 4 of I-69.

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.

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

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.

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

This project supports a collaborative, multi-stakeholder effort led by the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) to develop a largescale vulnerability assessment and associated adaptation strategies for focal resources of the Sierra Nevada.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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).

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.