SCGIS – A Spatial Planning Tool for Biodiversity Conservation under Climate Change

The Cascadia Partner Forum (CPF) is a network of natural resource practitioners in Washington and British Columbia. A primary goal of the partnership is to provide an regional-scale organizational framework to conserve Cascadia’s biodiversity, which is under threat from an expanding human footprint and a changing climate. The partner forum has developed a climate adaptation strategy that seeks to foster greater coordination across land manager boundaries and provide a timely and up-to-date regional perspective to inform local land-use decisions. A key component of this strategy is a spatial planning tool that will monitor regional habitat conditions, project future habitat conditions given projections of climate change and land-use, and prioritize the landscape for conservation. The tool uses the Google Earth Engine platform and associated Google Cloud technologies to provide automated and dynamically updated models of landcover, habitat conditions, habitat connectivity, as well as natural and anthropogenic disturbances. Andrew Shirk (University of Washington Climate Impacts Group), a member of the Cascadia Partner Forum and the lead developer of this tool, will discuss the tool’s technologies, how it is being applied to Cascadia, and how it can be applied to other regions at up to global scales.  

CBI presents this webinar in partnership with the Society for Conservation GIS (SCGIS). To learn more about this organization, please visit https://www.scgis.org/.