The Seedlot Selection Tool and Climate-Smart Restoration Tool are web-based tools designed to match seedlots with planting sites assuming that seedlots are adapted to the past climates in which they evolved, primarily with respect to temperature and aridity. The tools map the climatic match of seedlots with the past or projected climates of planting sites. The challenge is that future climates are a moving target, which means that seedlots must be adapted to the near-term climates as well as the climates of the mid- to late-21st century. Because climate projections are uncertain, the prudent approach is to aim for the warmest climate that may be expected while ensuring that seedlots moved from warmer to colder locales are not moved so far that they risk cold damage. Uncertainty in climate projections may be mitigated by ensuring genetic diversity through mixing seed sources and having collections from many parents per seed source. Three examples illustrate how to effectively use the web tools: (1) choosing seedlots targeting different future climates for a mid-elevation Douglas-fir site in the Washington Cascades, (2) finding current and future seed sources for restoration of big sagebrush after fires in the Great Basin and Snake River Plain, and (3) planning to ensure that a Douglas-fir seed inventory includes seedlots suitable for future climates in western Oregon and Washington.
Our study indicated that the biological and ecological values of the Klamath-Siskiyou ecoregion can be enhanced by a conservation plan that integrates a broader set of conservation criteria than those considered in current management plans. Most strictly protected reserves in the region (e.g., wilderness areas) were established for scenic and recreational reasons and poorly represent the range of habitats available. The Northwest Forest Plan offered what appeared to be a modest improvement in conservation status, but its long term contribution to conservation remains unknown. Not only were the late successional reserves established under the Plan based on limited criteria, many of them do not appear to be of the highest value. For example, some contain little late-seral forest and are heavily fragmented. Furthermore, these “reserves” have been open to logging, even of old growth, and some are now being proposed for intensive development.
The purpose of this project was to create a GIS-based model that identifies specific focal areas throughout the range of the redwoods. Focal areas were defined as zones that offer the best conservation opportunities for long-term protection and maintenance of the redwood ecosystem based on current conditions. GIS was utilized because of its spatially explicit architecture and advanced analytical capability.
This model was produced for Save-the-Redwoods League as part of their overall Master Plan – an organizational blueprint for protecting the redwood ecosystem. More specifically, this model was intended to help the League target their future proactive conservation planning efforts more effectively as part of their overall conservation mission while supplying a broader organizational tool that could be shared with its conservation partners in the region.
Degradation of water quality is important to the residents and visitors of Tillamook Bay because it has been linked to loss of income due to oyster bed closures, declines in salmonid populations and can result in a decrease of recreational use of the estuary’s resources. Both point and non-point sources of pollution have been targeted for investigation by the Tillamook Bay National Estuary Project (TBNEP), a project designed to bring local stakeholders and citizens together with State and Federal regulators and scientists.
The Sierra Nevada has been an integral part of the heritage of California and has played a profound role in the history of the nation. However, the extensive and varied resource values of the Sierra Nevada, so essential to the lives and well-being of the citizens of the state, are increasingly threatened by conflicting land management objectives resulting from the checkerboard ownership pattern, expanding residential development, and threat of catastrophic fires that are a product of the private-public land ownership patterns in the north-central Sierra. In recognition of threats to the rich legacy of the Sierra Nevada, The Trust for Public Land (TPL) is implementing a conservation vision for this landscape—the Sierra Checkerboard Initiative— to produce a more sustainable landscape in the north-central Sierra. TPL and its partners—the Sierra Forest Legacy (formerly Sierra Nevada Forest Protection Campaign) and the Truckee Donner Land Trust—share a set of common goals and wish to address resource and development issues at a scale not previously undertaken in the region. These issues include watershed protection, wildlife and wilderness values, recreation and open space, adaptation to climate change, sequestration of greenhouse gases, sustainable timber harvest, and appropriate development.
This report summarizes available scientific information establishing the crucial role that Southern Orange County could play in efforts to conserve biodiversity at both global and regional scales. The report outlines a conservation framework for the area, using principles of conservation planning to delineate four core biological resource units. These four resource units must be conserved essentially intact, without further internal fragmentation by development, to continue supporting key species and ecosystem processes. We present this information in support of the Natural Community Conservation Planning (NCCP) program for the Sotuhern Oregon County NCCP subregion.
Over the past few decades, population growth has mushroomed in Orange County, as in the rest of Southern California, with the development of new communities and the infrastructure to support them. This growth has come at the expense of natural habitats and species in an area recognized as part of a global hotspot of biodiversity. The loss of habitat to development created a growing list of threatened and endangered species in Southern California, presenting challenges to federal, state, and local agencies responsible for natural resource protection, as well as to developers and land use planners trying to maintain a healthy economy. To respond to this dilemma, in 1991 the California legislature passed the Natural Community Conservation Planning (NCCP) Act to encourage a collaborative process for regional planning. As a result of the NCCP, natural open space reserves have been set aside in the coastal and central portions of Orange County which, when combined with National Forest lands, total approximately 163,000 acres of conserved habitat—majestic peaks, chaparral and oak-studded canyons, rolling scrub- and grassland covered hills, and the remnants of formerly extensive coastal lagoons and estuaries—lands that not only contribute to the preservation of biodiversity, but to the quality of life enjoyed by all Southern Californians. The legacy of this regional planning process continues, with the goal of protecting a green network of natural lands for wildlife habitat and open space recreation across jurisdictional boundaries in Southern California.
This report combines the results of two tasks funded under a local assistance grant from the California Department of Fish and Game (CDFG) for Multiple Species Conservation Program (MSCP) wildlife corridor monitoring: (1) the second consecutive year of monitoring for locations in the cities of Poway and San Diego, surveyed by San Diego State University (SDSU) graduate students (contract Task D) and (2) the first year of monitoring for new transect locations established by the Conservation Biology Institute (CBI) and San Diego Tracking Team (SDTT) (contract Task A). CBI directed both studies. Transects at some of the Poway-San Diego monitoring stations established in 2000 (CBI 2002b) were not re-surveyed, while monitoring protocols were altered slightly based on recommendations from CBI (2002b). Specifically, in addition to the data collected at baited track stations, the presence or absence of wildlife, as evidenced by all types of sign, was recorded along the entire length of the transect to compare the methods. These sign surveys along the track station transects are thus similar to surveys conducted by the SDTT.
There is increasing interest in the effects of urbanization on natural systems. Among the variety of observed effects, urbanization has long been recognized as affecting hydrological characteristics of streams and rivers. Given the close coupling of stream hydrologic characteristics and riparian plant species ecology, we examined the effects of watershed urbanization on riparian vegetation communities via alterations in the hydrologic regime of a coastal southern California riparian system. These coastal river systems in southern California have received little attention in the literature.
It has been commonly reported that gray wolves (Canis lupus) as well as other predators like panthers (Felis concolor) and lynx (Lynx canadensis) once lived throughout the northeastern U.S. including what is today the Adirondack Park. Extirpation of these summit predators closely followed European settlement (see Schneider 1997). As a result of an active bounty system, the last wolf was believed to have been killed in Upstate New York during the mid 1890s.
In recent years, gray wolf recovery (both natural and human-directed) has been successful in a number of locations throughout North America — most successfully in the Upper Great Lakes region of the U.S. (see Fuller 1995). A second population of gray wolves in the eastern U.S. outside the Minnesota population has been expressed as a goal for gray wolf recovery in the U.S. by federal agencies (see U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service 1992), and the Northeast has been identified as a potential region to support a viable population of wolves. In addition to northern sections of Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont, the AP has been identified as potentially supportive of gray wolves (see Mladenoff and Sickley 1998).
This study was by the Adirondack Park Citizens Action Committee organized by Defenders of Wildlife to examine the issue of gray wolf recovery in the Adirondack Park (from now on referred to as simply AP). By combining what has been learned about wolf biology from numerous field studies with geographic information systems (GIS), we addressed the issue of gray wolf reintroduction feasibility in the AP. In addition to developing wolf habitat suitability and connectivity models, we examined the important genetics questions pertinent to wolves in the AP.