Resources

Systematic conservation planning is well suited to address the many large-scale biodiversity conservation challenges facing the Appalachian region. However, broad, well-connected landscapes will be required to sustain many of the natural resources important to this area into the future. If these landscapes are to be resilient to impending change, it will likely require an orchestrated and collaborative effort reaching across jurisdictional and political boundaries.

The Western Gulf Coast provides important habitat for migratory and resident waterfowl. The mottled duck(*Anas fulvigula*) relies on this region for all of its life-cycle events. Its relatively small population, limited worldwide range, and generally declining population trajectory has earned it a “Red” status on the Audubon WatchList and is a species of concern among state and federal agencies.

Identifying distributions of submerged aquatic vegetation (SAV) across the northern Gulf of Mexico (NGOM) coastal landscape necessitates describing ecological processes in estuarine gradients. SAV assemblages are ecological indicators of aquatic ecosystem health; spatial and temporal distributions are strongly correlated to environmental conditions. Many wildlife species, including waterfowl, are dependent on SAV and seeds in NGOM coastal marshes for food and habitat.

A workshop was held for the Eastern Mojave Conservation Collaborative at Clark County Wetlands Park in Las Vegas, NV, on April 10-11, 2018.

The Northeast United States and Atlantic Canada share many of the same types of forests, wetlands, and natural communities, and from a wildlife perspective the region is one contiguous forest. However, resources are classified and mapped differently on the two sides of the border, creating challenges for habitat evaluation, species modeling, and predicting the effects of climate change.

This report describes an effort of a team of 60 scientists led by The Nature Conservancy (TNC) to identify the places where nature’s own natural resilience is the highest. Thanks to the land’s diverse topography, bedrock, and soil, these climate-resilient sites are more likely to sustain native plants, animals, and natural processes into the future, becoming natural strongholds for diversity.

Hydrography represents stream centerlines and off centerlines with greater than 30 hectare flow accumulation for the Northeast region.



This dataset was developed as part of the Designing Sustainable Landscapes project led by Professor Kevin McGarigal of the University of Massachusetts and sponsored by the North Atlantic Landscape Conservation Cooperative; for more information about the entire project see: http://www.umass.edu/landeco/research/dsl/dsl.html

This dataset represents a shaded relief, or hillshade, for the Northern U.S. and Canada. This shaded relief raster was created from a 30 meter Digital Elevation Model (DEM) using the ArcMap geoprocessing tool "hillshade".



The DEM consists of two mosaiced datasets:



1. U.S. Geological Survey's (USGS) 30 meter National Elevation Dataset (NED) , ~1 arc-second data that is updated over large areas by integrating the 10 meter or better source data(where available), re-sampled to 1 arc-second.

Pollinator decline and conservation is a complex and challenging issue with the potential to tax the capacity of individual state agencies; a collaborative approach among states and federal agencies has a higher likelihood success in meeting this emerging conservation challenge. Bumble bees have been identified as a particularly imperiled group of important pollinators. To aid the collaborative pollinator conservation effort, this report compiles the most up-to-date information related to bumble bees: threats, best practices for land management, and monitoring protocols into one location.

The ETPBR LCC Steering Committee (SC) consisted of 20-30 representatives from state, federal, tribal, and NGO entities. In December 2012, the LCC Steering Committee began drafting a strategic plan to provide a foundation and structure to carry out the mission and vision of the LCC and its partners. The SC met twice a year from 2012 to 2016 in various locations around the Midwest. Staff worked with the committee and project investigators to compile information for a set of descriptive flyers, posters, presentations, and annual updates.

Abstract



Context Conservation planning is increasingly using ‘‘coarse filters’’ based on the idea of conserving ‘‘nature’s stage’’. One such approach is based on ecosystems and the concept of ecological integrity, although myriad ways exist to measure ecological integrity.

These datasets are part of a suite of products from the Nature’s Network project. Nature’s Network is a collaborative effort to identify shared priorities for conservation in the Northeast, considering the value of fish and wildlife species and the natural areas they inhabit.

These datasets depict three zones of uncertainty in the predicted future distribution of 28 representative species based on climate suitability, given the projected climate in 2080 (averaged across RPC 4.5 and 8.5 climate scenarios). The “Zone of Persistence” represents those areas where the species is expected to continue to occur through 2080. The “Zone of Contraction” represents those areas that are currently suitable from a climate perspective but where the 2080 climate is projected to be no longer suitable.

ABSTRACT

This project integrated a map-based interface into the Alaska Department of Fish and Game's Community Subsistence Information System to provide for simple navigation, and representation of the availability of information by type, time series, and location.

The intent of this project was to create a directory of academic climate change scientists that focus on the North Pacific Coast of North America—including California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, British Columbia, and Alaska. The University of Washington developed the California, Oregon, Washington, and Idaho portion of the directory and Alaska Coastal Rainforest Center developed the British Columbia and Alaska portion of the directory. Funding was provided by the North Pacific Landscape Conservation Cooperative (NPLCC) and the Northwest Climate Science Center (NWCSC).

Existing stream temperature data will be compiled from numerous federal, state, tribal, and private sources to develop an integrated regional database. Spatial statistical models for river networks will be applied to these data to develop an accurate model that predicts stream temperature for all fish-bearing streams in the US portion of the NPLCC. Differences between model outputs for historic and future climate scenarios will be used to assess spatial variation in the vulnerability of sensitive fish species across the NPLCC.

Existing stream temperature data will be compiled from numerous federal, state, tribal, and private sources to develop an integrated regional database. Spatial statistical models for river networks will be applied to these data to develop an accurate model that predicts stream temperature for all fish-bearing streams in the US portion of the NPLCC. Differences between model outputs for historic and future climate scenarios will be used to assess spatial variation in the vulnerability of sensitive fish species across the NPLCC.

The primary objective of the research is to develop a rule-based decision support system to predict the relative vulnerability of nearshore species to climate change. The approach is designed to be applicable to fishes and invertebrates with limited data by predicting risk from readily avialable data, including species' biogeographic distributions and natural history attributes.

Wetlands are globally important ecosystems that provide critical services for natural communities and human society, such as water storage and filtration, wildlife habitat, agriculture, recreation, nutrient cycling, and carbon sequestration. They are also considered to be among the most sensitive ecosystems to climate change, which will exacerbate the already threatened nature of wetlands due to changes in land-use.

This report provides a first-ever compilation of what is known—and not known—about climate change effects on freshwater aquatic and riparian ecosystems in the geographic extent of the North Pacific Landscape Conservation Cooperative (NPLCC). The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service funded this report to help inform members of the newly established NPLCC as they assess priorities and begin operations. Production of this report was guided by University of Washington’s Climate Impacts Group and information was drawn from more than 250 documents and more than 100 interviews.

This final progress report describes the completion of the objectives of U.S. FWS Agreement Number F11AP00032 (Agreement) – Moving from Impacts to Action: Expert Focus Groups for Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation Strategies in Marine and Freshwater Ecosystems of the North Pacific LCC – and Modification No. 001 to said Agreement – Identifying and Synthesizing Climate Change Effects, Adaptation Approaches, and Science Opportunities in the North Pacific Landscape Conservation Cooperative’s (NPLCC) Terrestrial Ecosystems. 

Polar bears along Alaska's Beaufort Sea frequently give birth to young in land-based snow dens.
These dens are established in November, typically in deep snowdrifts that have developed in the
lee of cut-banks found along streams, rivers, and the coast. Durner et al. (2001, 2006) indicated
that, for 24 known land den sites, the local slopes ranged from 15 to 50° and were 1.3 to 34 m
high. The dens faced all directions but east. They published a distribution map based on habitat

Average historical annual total precipitation, projected total precipitation (inches), and relative change in total precipitation (% change from baseline) for Northern Alaska. GIF formatted animation and PNG images. Maps created using the SNAP 5-GCM composite (AR5-RCP 6.0) and CRU TS3.1.01 datasets.