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.
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.
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.
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.
This project helps the Central Valley Joint Venture (CVJV) track gains and losses of key bird and waterfowl habitats at a landscape scale. This will allow the CVJV to effectively monitor and evaluate habitats essential to conservation planning for wildlife 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.
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.
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.
The CA Academy of Science and Point Blue Conservation Science conducted a systematic analysis of uncertainty in modeling the future distributions of ~50 California endemic plant species and ~50 California land birds, explicitly partitioning among 5 alternative sources of variation and testing for
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.
The main goal of this project is to ensure that the 2011-13 climate change update to the Baylands Ecosystem Habitat Goals Report (Baylands Goals) and other key, ongoing conservation activities in the San Francisco Bay region use the latest information about the current and future status of San Fr
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 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.
The ShoreZone in the Classroom Curriculum Implementation project built upon the ShoreZone in the Classroom Pilot Networking Trip.
California's native fishes are mostly endemic, with no place to go as climate change increases water temperatures and alters stream flows. Many of the alien fishes, however, are likely to benefit from the effects of climate change.
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,
This project integrates fire risk models, species distribution models (SDMs) and population models with scenarios of future climate and land cover to project how the effects of climate-induced changes to species distributions and land use change will impact threatened species in fire-prone ecosys
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 goal of this project is to create critically needed coastal fog datasets.
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.
The Wildlife Conservation Society will assess the climate change vulnerability of bird species that regularly breed in substantial populations in Alaska using the NatureServe Climate Change Vulnerability Index (CCVI) tool.
The Nature Conservancy (TNC) drew upon its existing Canadian network to coordinate with potential Canadian partners on behalf of the Arctic LCC.
Activity 1. Quantify viability of corridors using temporal sampling: past, present, future. As large-scale wind patterns change, the viability of flyways in the Pacific hemisphere is likely to change.
LCC funding allowed completion of this BLM initiative to develop a North Slope-wide cover type map and create a crosswalk that integrates all component cover type maps that comprise the larger overall North Slope cover type map.
The Aleutian archipelago is an area that is rich in cultural history. Information about cultural sites and artifacts exists in a variety of formats including peer-reviewed publications, agency reports, and other records.
The ALCC has asked the U.S. Institute for Environmental Conflict Resolution (U.S. Institute) to assist them in engaging a third-party neutral facilitator who can work with the steering committee to identify key landscape scale resource management needs common to many of the ALCC partners.
Continuous, long-term monitoring of the food habits of marine birds is a key component in detecting responses to anticipated climate change of both the birds and the prey populations on which they depend.
The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) is supporting a field effort in support of a ShoreZone mapping project along the Chukchi and Beaufort coasts. Funds from the LCC will allow for the inclusion of three additional ShoreStations.
This project takes advantage of an existing helicopter platform on St. Lawrence that will be used to collect ShoreZone imagery of the island.
Over the last 3 years, high-resolution LiDAR elevation data has been acquired for much of the northern coast of Alaska in support of the USGS Coastal and Marine Geology Program's National Assessment of Shoreline Change project.
We propose developing an Alaska node for the iMapInvases database, to be managed and maintained by AKNHP.
This project used historical climate records for Alaska and Western Canada to identify patterns in temperature and precipitation reflecting the distribution of biomes seen across this region today.
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
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The distribution and abundance of fishes across the Alaska Arctic is not well understood. Better information on fish distribution is needed for habitat assessment and modeling activities and is also important for planning industrial activities.
The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) initiated the development of an Arctic Coastal Impressions booklet and photographic exhibit. In the exhibit, there were dozens of spectacular photos of the Arctic coastline.
Widespread changes in lake distribution on the Arctic Coastal Plain (ACP) would affect water availability for humans, fish and other water-dependent species.
In 2010, FWS provided funds, as a contribution to Arctic LCC activities, to support ongoing stream gaging of the Canning and Tamayariak rivers.
The purpose of this project is to provide better information to industry and regulatory agencies regarding the likely locations of polar bear dens.