Resources

California's terrestrial ecosystems are particularly vulnerable to future changes in the global climate, including increased temperatures, changing precipitation patterns, and changes in human infrastructure and development. Information on the potential effects of climate change on bird communities can help guide effective conservation and inform land management decisions.

As a clear consensus is emerging that suitable habitat for many species will dramatically reduce and/or shift with climate change, attention is turning to adaptation strategies to address these impacts. Assisted colonization is one such strategy that has been predominantly discussed in terms of the costs of introducing potential competitors into new communities and the benefits of reducing extinction risk.

In the Pacific Northwest, coastal wetlands support a wealth of ecosystem services including habitat provision for wildlife and fisheries and flood protection. The tidal marshes, mudflats, and shallow bays of coastal estuaries link marine, freshwater, and terrestrial habitats, and provide economic and recreational benefits to local communities. Climate change effects such as sea-level rise are altering these habitats, but we know little about how these areas will change over the next 50–100 years.

Dr. Frank Casey of the US Geological Survey discussed the challenges faced when attempting to value changes in ecosystem services in response to climate/land use change impacts on California rangelands.

The presentation provides a brief overview of how an economics conceptual framework and tools can be used to value three ecosystem services that California rangelands provide:

Assessing vulnerabilities is a critical step in climate–smart
conservation planning. The Central Valley Landscape
Conservation Project (CVLCP) participants evaluated the
vulnerability of a group of selected priority natural resources
by discussing and answering a series of questions for
sensitivity, exposure, and adaptive capacity at a workshop
held in October of 2015. The vulnerability scores presented
in this summary were calculated based on the expertise
of the CVLCP participants and are accompanied by a

Climate change, when combined with more conventional stress from human exploitation, calls into question the capacity of both existing ecological communities and resource management institutions to experience disturbances while substantially retaining their same functions and identities. In other words, the physical and biological effects of climate change raise fundamental challenges to the resilience of natural ecosystems.

This website provides information on the project's effort to establish a network of environmental monitoring stations within the boundaries of the California LCC. Users of this web portal can view predicted distributional changes in landbird, habitat, and climate under future climate conditions and find out general information on the progress and evolution of the network.

The Greater Farallones NMS Climate Adaptation Plan is the result of a 2-year process to characterize climate impacts and vulnerabilities to Sanctuary resources along the North-central California coast and ocean, and to develop management strategies to respond to and decrease those vulnerabilities, ultimately enhancing resource resilience to climate impacts.

The CA LCC-funded project "A Climate Change Adaptation Strategy for Sierra Nevada Birds " applied the NatureServe Climate Change Vulnerability Index tool to assess vulnerability of 168 bird species that breed in the Sierra Nevada and developed a peer-reviewed Climate Change Adaptation Strategy for Sierra Nevada bird species that are most vulnerable to climate change. “Sierra Nevada Bird Vulnerability Rankings Table” summarizes the vulnerability rankings using the NatureServe Climate Change Vulnerability Index for 168 Sierra Nevada bird species.

Dam removal is often proposed for restoration of anadromous salmonid populations, which are in serious decline in California. However, the benefits of dam removal vary due to differences in affected populations and potential for environmental impacts. Here, we develop an assessment method to examine the relationship between dam removal and salmonid conservation, focusing on dams that act as complete migration barriers.

California Landscape Conservation Cooperative Project on estuarine shoals and vertebrate predators: In this report, we describe the integrated research program supported by the California LCC addressing sea level rise effects on estuarine shoals and the vertebrate predators dependent on these habitats.

The North-central California coast and ocean is a globally significant and extraordinarily productive marine and coastal ecosystem that boasts an array of local, state and federal protected areas and other managed lands. Despite this richness and attention to conservation, this region is still vulnerable to the effects of climate change.

Workshop Goal
This workshop aimed to broaden knowledge about supporting riparian restoration projects that use the principles of climate-smart restoration.

The USGS Coastal Ecosystem Response to Climate Change (CERCC) began in 2008 to deliver sea - level rise ecological response mod- els at a scale relevant for resource managers. Work was originally focused on the San Fran- cisco Bay estuary and then expanded to en- compass other Pacific coast sites. Our goal is to provide site specific measurements and results that land managers, planners, and those concerned with the conservation of near- shore habitats can use to make well - informed climate change adaptation strategies and deci- sions.

Average percent change in multiple ecosystem services from 2010 to 2040 These maps display the average percent change in three rangeland ecosystem services – total ecosystem carbon, critical habitat and water availability – from 2010 to 2040 for three IPCC-SRES scenarios (A1B, A2 and B1) and two climate projections (warm, wet future and hot, dry future). Total ecosystem carbon is total carbon stored in vegetation and soils (up to 20 cm in depth), and was estimated annually from 2006 to 2050 by the U.S.

We propose a statistically robust, logistically feasible, long-term monitoring program for wintering shorebirds in the Central Valley of California to track spatial and temporal population trends resulting from changing climate and habitat conditions. Specifically, we recommend a sampling design and survey protocol. We provide the data storage and analytical framework for population and trend estimates to be made annually as new data come in through the online data portal in the California Avian Data Center (CADC).

Final Report to the California Landscape Conservation Cooperative (funding agency for CADS Phase 1), and interim report to the US Fish & Wildlife Service National Wildlife Refuge System Inventory and Monitoring Initiative.

Strategic plans list eradication and surveillance species for a multi-county region, as agreed upon by local land managers. Most species are based on the Cal-IPC Inventory and maps in CalWeedMapper. The purpose of these plans is to enable land managers to apply for grants for coordinated projects in their region. The emphasis is on species that can be eradicated within five years and species that are just outside the region and have a high probability of invading.

Conservation managers and policy makers require models that can rank the impacts of multiple, interacting threats on biodiversity so that actions can be prioritized. An integrated modelling framework was used to predict the viability of plant populations for five species in southern California’s Mediterranean-type ecosystem. The framework integrates forecasts of land-use change from an urban growth model with projections of future climatically-suitable habitat from climate and species distribution models, which are linked to a stochastic population model.

Priority areas for conservation of tidal marsh birds given current and future environmental conditions. Maps were created using Zonation, a spatial conservation planning software tool that can take into account multiple species and scenarios to create a hierarchical prioritization of the landscape.

Are there places that buffer species from climate change? If so, where are they, and can species get there? California natural resource managers need to develop climate change adaptation strategies to address the responses of species to warming trends, shifting precipitation regimes, and changes in vegetation communities. Climate change refugia -- areas that remain relatively stable as the climate changes -- are important to consider in adaptation planning, but little was known about the nature and distribution of these places.

The Basin Characterization Model (BCM) dataset provides historical and projected climate and hydrology data at a 270 meter resolution, which is relevant for watershed-scale evaluation and planning. These data have formed the basis for multiple research projects and vulnerability assessments applying climate change projections to conservation decision-making, providing a common base-layer and set of assumptions across these projects.

This two and a half day workshop offered five sessions organized around a change adaptation framework. Each session was designed to be a shared learning process that would both test the framework as a tool and help the participants learn how they might use it in their workplaces. Sessions had a combination of speakers and group exercises.

This graphing tool presents climate and hydrology data values from the California Basin Characterization Model dataset plotted over time for 156 hydrologic basins (HUC-8 basins) that comprise hydrologic California. You can select a basin by clicking on it on the map on the left; hover your mouse to see basin names. You can select a data variable and a smoothing period on the right, then click "Draw".