Resources

Climate impacts potentially affect all levels of park planning and management. Climate adaptation planning seeks to identify and proactively prepare for potential climate change impacts on management sectors. Taking a proactive approach can help reduce future risks, capitalize on new opportunities, and minimize losses due to climate change.

The Washington Connected Landscapes Project is a highly leveraged effort to provide scientific analyses and tools necessary to conserve wildlife habitat connectivity.

This report summarizes the results from a climate change adaptation workshop focused on the Willamette Valley, OR. The objective of the workshop was to collaborate with landscape managers to apply results from the Pacific Northwest climate change vulnerability assessment (PNWCCVA) to on-the-ground ecological management objectives. Specifically, we sought to address the following questions:
1) How can model results and datasets be applied to assist with management decisions?

This report provides an assessment of climate change-related challenges, needs, and opportunities to advance landscape-scale conservation, climate change adaptation, and sustainable resource management in the North Pacific Landscape Conservation Cooperative (NPLCC) region. The NPLCC funded this report to inform NPLCC members, specifically the Science and Traditional Ecological Knowledge (S-TEK) Subcommittee, as they assess priorities and develop their 2013-2016 Strategy for Science and Traditional Ecological Knowledge.

The overarching goal of the project was to develop overlapping conceptual models of environmental and community health indicators in reference to climate forecasts. The sensitivity of species and habitats to climate were cross-walked with recently developed Coast Salish community health indicators (e.g. ceremonial use, knowledge exchange, and physiological well-being) in order to demonstrate how Indigenous Knowledge can be used in conjunction with established landscape-level conservation indicators (e.g. shellfish and water-quality) and employed to identify resource management priorities.

This project acquired, federated and curated approximately one million new observations to the Avian Knowledge Network. These new observations, in addition to millions of existing records, were used to model the distribution and abundance of 26 species of land birds in the southern portion of the North Pacific Landscape Conservation Cooperative (NPLCC) region including CA, OR and WA. The models were based on climate and modeled vegetation.

Central Council Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska (Central Council) assisted the Organized Village of Kasaan (OVK) in their NPLCC grant, Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Climate Change project. A survey was developed and used to interview traditional gathers on the time of year they did subsistence gathering.

The Cascadia Parner Forum fosters a network of natural resource practitioners working with the NPLCC and GNLCC to guild the adaptive capacity of the landscape and species living within it. This project supported three complementary transboundary climate adaptation and habitat connectivity activities in the Cascadia region: 1) Transboundary Climate Analysis by the Washington Wildlife Habitat Connectivity Working Group, 2) WildLinks workshop, and 3) Cascadia Partner Forum.

Project Summary 

Protecting and restoring ecological connectivity is a leading climate adaptation strategy for
biodiversity conservation (Heller & Zavaleta 2009, Lawler 2009), because species are expected
to have difficulty tracking shifting climates across fragmented landscapes (Thomas et al. 2004).
Connectivity conservation is thus a primary focus of numerous large-scale climate adaptation
initiatives (e.g., U.S. Department of Interior’s Landscape Conservation Cooperatives), and a core

A conservation and restoration priorities tool was developed that provides online access to regional information including: climate change projections, watershed condition, freshwater and terrestrial species, forest ecosystem information and invasive species information.

The Alaska Coastal Rainforest Center (ACRC) lead a second workshop to develop cross-boundary geospatial and climate data sets in support of regional conservation applications in the coastal temperate rainforest zone of Southeast Alaska and British Columbia.

contains an excel format and shapefile format of the vegetation survey data collected within Humboldt Bay during the summer of 2012.

Overview Land and resource managers in the North Pacific Landscape Conservation Cooperative (NPLCC) currently lack conservation planning tools that can directly feed into the planning, design, delivery, and monitoring of ecosystems across all levels of biodiversity from genes to ecosystems. The North Pacific Forest Landscape Corridor and Connectivity Project utilized a landscape connectivity simulator (UNICOR) and a genetic simulation program (CDPOP) to model the functional (dispersal and genetic) connectivity in the North Pacific Landscape.

This assessment is based on review of available literature and examination of historical air photos that date to the 1940’s, topography developed from LiDAR (light detection and ranging) data obtained in 2007, limited field mapping of beach, dune and fluvial stratigraphy, discussions with other coastal dune geomorphologists, and reconnaissance site visits to the project area and environs. Radiocarbon dating drew from the work of Tushingham et al. (no date), Meyer et al. (2011), Bicknell and Austin (1991) and unpublished data developed by park staff.

The Alaska Coastal Rainforest Center (ACRC) lead a second workshop to develop cross-boundary geospatial and climate data sets in support of regional conservation applications in the coastal temperate rainforest zone of Southeast Alaska and British Columbia.

Climate change has significant effects on critical ecosystem functions such as carbon and water cycling. Vegetation and especially forest ecosystems play an important role in the carbon and hydrological cycles. Vegetation models that include detailed belowground processes require accurate soil data to decrease uncertainty and increase realism in their simulations. The MC2 DGVM uses three modules to simulate biogeography, biogeochemistry and fire effects, all three of which use soil data either directly or indirectly.

Chugachmiut is a tribal consortium representing the seven tribes of the Chugach Region of Alaska (Chenega Bay, Eyak, Nanwalek, Port Graham, Qutekcak, Tatitlek, and Valdez). The Native people of this region rely heavily on subsistence gathered food for sustenance and nourishment. Studies by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game show that a significant portion of the total foods consumed, 375 pounds per person per year, are from subsistence hunting and gathering.

Coast redwoods (Sequoia sempervirens) and their many associated species create an iconic ecosystem, yet the impacts of stressors, including a variety of land use practices and climate change, threaten their continued persistence on the landscape. In September 2013, we held a workshop with researchers, managers, and other redwoods experts to explore the likely impacts of climate change and develop some initial strategies for adaptation.

Chugachmiut is a tribal consortium representing the seven tribes of the Chugach Region of Alaska (Chenega Bay, Eyak, Nanwalek, Port Graham, Qutekcak, Tatitlek, and Valdez). The Native people of this region rely heavily on subsistence gathered food for sustenance and nourishment. Studies by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game show that a significant portion of the total foods consumed, 375 pounds per person per year, are from subsistence hunting and gathering.

For hundreds of years, Pacific lamprey and Pacific eulachon have been important traditional foods for Native American tribes of the Columbia River Basin and coastal areas of Oregon and Washington. These fish have large ranges – spending part of their lives in the ocean and part in freshwater streams – and they require specific environmental conditions to survive, migrate, and reproduce. For these reasons, Pacific lamprey and Pacific eulachon are likely threatened by a variety of climate change impacts to both their ocean and freshwater habitats.

This project builds upon existing data and collaborations to incorporate climate change and economic considerations into a decision support framework for prioritizing restoration of passage. Planned outcomes will help guide on-the-ground decisions in terms of adapting to anticipated climate effects, allocating limited resources for restoration, and providing tools that can be adapted across the NPLCC and beyond.

This project will create a targeted and easily understandable guide to tools that support landscape-level planning in the face of climate change for NPLCC partners. The guide will build on previous NPLCC research on decision support needs with an emphasis on tools currently in use in the region. A survey of NPLCC partners will discover who is currently using or planning to use tools in the region, tools they are using, how well these tools are meeting their needs, and regional and outside experts engaged in tool use.