The USDA Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) works with private landowners to advance conservation on their lands. This voluntary program currently comprises over 23 million acres making it an extremely important component of conservation in America, particularly in locations with limited public conservation lands. Management actions taken on enrolled lands include augmenting native vegetation for pollinators, providing habitat for grassland plants and animals, increasing biodiversity, reducing soil erosion, and improving water quality.

CBI is working with USDA to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of the program as it strives to expand enrollment in the coming years. Working in several pilot states (Mississippi, Kansas, Colorado, Washington, Nebraska, and the Dakotas), CBI is focusing on the following tasks:

• Create an online service open to the public that assists landowners to identify plant mixes most appropriate for their locations and management goals and vendors where seeds/seedlings can be acquired.
• For agency and CRP contract holders, create an online service that helps manage emergency haying/grazing requests.
• Develop and implement technology and protocols (e.g., phone field assessment app) that will involve contract holders more in the implementation of their agreements, which will provide important monitoring for improved program evaluation.
• Improve mapping and monitoring of forests and grasslands as they relate to CRP goals and objectives using the latest remote sensing technology, machine learning, and high-end processing resources.
• Conduct spatial analyses to help the program prioritize areas for more targeted enrollment.
• For agency users, provide an online service that allows for rapid and meaningful assessments of conservation management outcomes on CRP lands.

CBI Takes a Field Trip!

CBI headed to Jamestown, North Dakota, to speak with producers and USDA county staff regarding the USDA Mobile App, a tool designed for self-reporting, assessment, and communication surrounding CRP fields. We tested the app on over 35 fields to incorporate feedback from on-the-ground users, train remote sensing data, and test the effectiveness and ease-of-use of the tool. We coordinated with USGS, as well, testing this app on several of their pollinator plots, in conjunction with another CBI project.

Additionally, CBI traveled to Bismark and spoke with state NRCS staff, in order to hone and edit management questions and expand the usefulness of the app for reporting requirements and data gathering. Our experience was invaluable, as truthful reactions and deliberate responses from those who will eventually be using the tool, are critical in creating something that will be utilized and, ultimately, successful.

A Framework Resource Management Plan (F-RMP) for the Montecito Ranch Preserve was developed jointly by Jessie Vinje, CBI, Michael White, Endangered Habitats Conservancy (EHC), Steve Montgomery, ECORP Consulting, Inc., and the San Diego Management and Monitoring Program (SDMMP) in coordination with the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW), and the U.S. Department of Defense.  The F-RMP aligns preserve-level management and monitoring with the regional Management and Monitoring Strategic Plan (MSP Roadmap) for conserved lands in western San Diego County (SDMMP and TNC 2017).  The MSP Roadmap provides regional and preserve-level goals and objectives for prioritized species, vegetation communities, and threats, and includes recommendations from regional planning documents. Together with its partners, CBI developed the F-RMP over 2.5-years by compiling and reviewing existing documents, literature, and spatial datasets, conducting rapid assessment surveys for biological resources, and meeting with species and regional experts.

The Preserve is a 955-acre perpetually conserved property located in west-central San Diego County near the town of Ramona.  The Preserve is contiguous with the County of San Diego’s Ramona Grasslands County Preserve (Ramona Grasslands) and is located within the original Rancho Valle de Pamo (also called Rancho Santa Maria) Spanish land grant and on historical Kumeyaay land. 

Montecito Ranch lies within the North County Multiple Species Conservation Plan (NCMSCP), a draft NCCP area, but was originally slated for development.  EHC acquired the 955-acre ranch on June 10,2020, with funding from Section 6 of the Federal Endangered Species Act (ESA) of 1973, as amended.  Specifically, two habitat conservation plan land acquisition grants associated with the County of San Diego Multiple Species Conservation Program (MSCP) were awarded funding for the acquisition of land that complements the MSCP and benefits covered listed and unlisted species.  The California Wildlife Conservation Board (WCB) provided funding including the requisite non-federal matching funds for Section 6 grants and the U.S. Department of Defense provided 50% of the acquisition cost through its Readiness and Environmental Protection Integration (REPI) program, leveraged additional acquisition funding.

Montecito Ranch supports the federally threatened coastal California gnatcatcher (Polioptila californica californica), federally endangered San Diego fairy shrimp (Branchinecta sandiegoensis) and federally endangered Stephens’ kangaroo rat (Dipodomys stephensi) in addition to providing foraging and wintering habitat for raptors including golden eagle (Aquila chrysaetos canadensis) and other birds, and habitat for reptiles, amphibians, and mammals including American badger (Taxidea taxus).  The Preserve supports vernal pools including the rare southern tarplant (Centromadia parryi subsp. australis), oak woodlands including the rare Engelmann oak (Quercus engelmannii), grasslands, coastal sage scrub, and chaparral habitats.

The Wildfire Resilience Planner: Strategic Planning at the Landscape Scale

Sonoma Water, Conservation Biology Institute (CBI), Ag Innovations, Pepperwood Preserve, Tukman Geospatial, Digital Mapping Solutions have created the Sonoma County Wildfire Resilience Planner, an online decision support tool for prioritizing locations to reduce wildfire fuels to protect lives and property, community infrastructure, ecosystem services, and biodiversity. The tool encourages collaborative planning of projects on public and private land, helping to leverage individual efforts for a unified and strategic approach to fuels management. The Wildfire Resilience Planner is available for use at https://sonoma.resilienceplanner.org/. For more information or to provide feedback, please contact Molly Oshun, Molly.Oshun@scwa.ca.gov or Deanne DiPietro, deanne.dipietro@consbio.org.

Above: the Sonoma County Wildfire Resilience Planner provides the user with the spatial data and analysis tools to identify high-priority locations for wildland fuels management.

The USFS Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) team, regional partners and CBI developed the Micronesia Challenge Regional Terrestrial Monitoring Initiative tool (mcterrestrialmeasures.org) to allow users to visualize the spatial data from the Micronesia Challenge monitoring effort by regional framework indicator(s) that measure the status of managed conservation areas set aside under the program. Forest data were collected between 2003 and 2018 and are now being used to determine the status and trends in forest area, forest health, understory vegetation, biomass, and carbon storage.

The Micronesia Challenge is a commitment by the Republic of Palau, Guam, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, the Federated State of Micronesia, and the Republic of the Marshall Islands to preserve the marine and terrestrial resources that are crucial to the survival of the Pacific traditions, cultures and livelihoods. The overall goal of the Micronesia Challenge is to effectively conserve at least 30% of the near-shore marine resources and 20% of the terrestrial resources across Micronesia by 2020.

The Healthy Soils Program (HSP), which is managed by the California Department of Food and Agriculture (DFA), provides financial support to California growers and ranchers to implement conservation management practices on their land that help sequester carbon, reduce atmospheric greenhouse gases, and improve overall soil health. CBI’s web tool was developed to assist Healthy Soils Program applicants to submit funding proposals and help agency staff make awards more efficiently.

The California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) Alternative Manure Management Program (AMMP) provides financial incentives for the implementation of non-digester manure management practices on dairy and livestock operations in California, which will result in reduced greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. This web application primarily provides tools for potential applicants to map out their project site’s current practices and proposed alternative manure management practices which are supported by AMMP. The tool also assesses the proposed project’s estimated GHG reductions (following the AMMP Quantification Methodology and accompanying Benefits Calculator Tool developed by the California Air Resources Board).

The CDFA AMMP Project Planning Tool provides California dairy and livestock operators an opportunity to easily visualize an alternative manure management practice that reduces carbon emissions, using simple ways of mapping proposed operations on the farm. The Tool increases access for potential applicants to create maps describing their current and proposed manure management, thus improving their AMMP grant applications, and our ability to review projects efficiently. The CBI team did an amazing job communicating with us regularly, offering suggestions, and helping put our ideas and the rather complex elements of our grant program together into a really beautiful and user-friendly tool.

Alyssa Louie – Senior Environmental Scientist, California Department of Food and Agriculture

RePlan is a core component of the California Strategic Growth Council’s (SGC) Integrated Regional Conservation and Development (IRCAD) initiative. This online tool supports the development and implementation of a sustainable and balanced vision for regional conservation and economic development. RePlan integrates the latest environmental, social, and economic data with analytic and reporting tools to allow users to identify optimal locations for implementing California’s conservation, resource management and development objectives. This tool helps to align regional planning and management activities in light of State and regional conservation, development, equity and resilience goals.

It was built to to assist with planning energy development throughout the state. The CEIPA helps improve planning efficiency and avoid environmental risks based on the best available terrestrial and offshore datasets. This is an easy-to-use application allowing users to filter and locate areas that meet specified criteria of interest.

The Marsh Adaptation Planning Tool (MAPT) supports the  The Regional Strategy 2018 of the Southern California Wetlands Recovery Project.  This new mapping tool – developed by CBI – illustrates and quantifies the ecological state and future potential of wetland zones. The WRP and its partners will use the MAPT to develop, evaluate, and prioritize restoration projects.

The Columbia Plateau in eastern Washington supports productive farmland and rangeland as well as native shrub-steppe habitat of which only 40% remains intact. The region also contains some of the most sought after land in the state for utility scale solar energy development, which is an important component of its future energy portfolio that strives to produce 80% of the state’s electricity from renewable sources by 2030 and 100% carbon-free by 2040. 

CBI has been chosen by the Washington State University Energy Program to provide the science and mapping component in support of a voluntary, collaborative effort that brings stakeholders together in order to identify areas of least-conflict between solar energy development and other important ecological, economic, and social values in order to meet the state’s carbon-free energy goals. CBI’s contribution to this process is based on the successful pilot to this approach in the San Joaquin Valley in California. The project will include a new Data Basin gateway, which is a customized site for accessing the science and mapping resources for this project.

See the recent brochure published by Washington State University for more information.