San Diego County Rare Plant Monitoring Project Coordination

CBI and AECOM Technical Services, Inc. are coordinating and implementing regional rare plant monitoring in San Diego County to determine status, threats, and management actions for 27 highly restricted rare plants. This work is in partnership with the San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG), San Diego Management and Monitoring Program (SDMMP), U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), and San Diego County land managers. Many of these rare plant species are declining due to invasive plants, small population size, or other threats. For some species, status or presence of one or more populations are unknown. Thus, key objectives of the program are to (1) determine current status, (2) document threats and vulnerabilities, and (3) identify appropriate management to ensure long-term species persistence.

CBI worked with project partners to test and refine the Management Strategic Plan (MSP) Inspect and Manage (IMG) rare plant monitoring protocol and data collection methods in 2014 and 2015, and we continue to refine the program, as necessary. Currently, CBI trains land managers and other participants in the IMG protocol method at workshops and in the field, conducts rare plant surveys across the county, compiles and manages survey data, and coordinates with project partners on all project components.

Regional monitoring data identify trends and priorities for management. Monitoring results guide land managers in routine management or provide information so they can apply for regional funding for management actions that exceed routine capacity and budgets. Next steps for the project include assessing rare plant population status and threats through 2021.

The availability and accessibility of accurate information increases the likelihood of efficient allocation of conservation resources to those areas that can maximize protection of biodiversity. This is especially true as conservationists respond to the complex and uncertain ecological changes triggered by climate change. To date, systematic conservation plans have been based on current patterns of biodiversity. However, climate-driven shifts in biomes, species, and ecosystem functions have the potential to make plans based on current patterns of biodiversity less effective. Conservation strategies that lack access to information on the location of areas that maximize resiliency, the methods for climate adaptation conservation planning as well as the pros and cons of the available approaches may misallocate resources by allowing key areas to remain unprotected.

CBI has built AdaptWest – Climate Adaptation Conservation Planning Database for Western North America powered by Data Basin in partnership with project Scientists Carlos Carroll, Josh Lawler and Scott Nielsen. AdaptWest will build on previous work such as the Yale Framework and Reed Noss’s three track approach to conservation planning (Noss and Cooperrider 1994) to provide a coherent  planning framework for climate adaptation conservation.  AdaptWest will include a comprehensive comparison and synthesis of the many planning approaches that have previously been developed, along with detailed explanation of the application of those methods to the majority of western North America. It will describe whether those conservation efforts are complementary or duplicative, develop a spatial database from the results of these analyses and provide users with integrative analyses and tools that can inform climate adaptation conservation planning and prioritization across much of western North America.

This project differs from previous studies in that it seeks to 1) compare a full spectrum of alternative methods over many contrasting regions, and 2) refine understanding of the conceptual relationship between the various methods and their practical relationship in the planning process. The results of this project, including physical habitat data, climate data, and species model based metrics and prioritizations as well as integrated priority mapping, will be available on Data Basin.

CBI is providing scientific and technical support to Greenpeace Canada and AV Terrace Bay as they work together to maintain the ecological integrity of the Kenogami-Ogoki Forests in Ontario, Canada while providing a sustainable wood supply to the AV Terrace Bay mill and protecting cultural values of First Nations peoples.

There are two major, interrelated components of the project. First, CBI is examining a series of important aspects of woodland caribou conservation in the region, which has been a major focus throughout boreal Canada for a number of years as ongoing development is continually eroding woodland caribou habitat resulting in serious declines in some populations. Using data provided by the Ontario government, CBI is attempting to identify key caribou activity areas, regional movement patterns, and crucial habitat.

CBI is also creating a series of risk-based protected areas scenarios by defining areas of high landscape value and high biological value. High biological value is determined by considering representation of native ecosystems, overall forest values, concentrations of rare species, wetlands, and vital woodland caribou habitat.

Upon development of the scenarios, CBI will facilitate a discussion to review the trade-offs of the different scenarios between AV Terrace Bay and Greenpeace Canada, using Data Basin to support the discussion given the spatially explicit nature of the effort. In the end, the hope is to forge a land management agreement between the two parties that will allow for sustained economic development of the forest resources while protecting the ecological integrity of the region (including woodland caribou viability) and cultural values of the local First Nations peoples.

CBI is working with Utah’s Division of Wildlife Resources (DWR) and The Bureau of Land Management to develop decision support models to inform current conservation initiatives in Utah and throughout the Colorado Plateau ecoregion. Based on previous REA (Rapid Ecoregional Assessment) work, CBI is updating the existing terrestrial landscape and aquatic intactness models for the Colorado Plateau ecoregion as well as updating habitat profiles for a number of identified conservation elements of interest (largely native species and communities). CBI is extending the models to cover the entire state of Utah as well as fine-tuning the models to be more effective at answering different management questions over smaller geographic areas.

CBI is also updating a previously created climate stress logic model with the most recent climate data from the 5^th Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report as well as carryout some new analyses. For example, mapping potential climate refugia – areas where plants and animals may find shelter from changes in climatic conditions. CBI is also examining past and future climate variability to model climate velocity, which is the speed along the Earth’s surface needed to maintain constant climate conditions with the rationale being that species survival may depend as much on keeping pace with moving climate as the climate’s ultimate persistence. Results of the climate modeling will illustrate at the landscape level the degree to which locations in the landscape will be impacted by climate stress over the next century and help estimate the likelihood that certain species will survive shifting suitable habitat conditions.

Click here to see the console.

The Conservation Biology Institute, in collaboration with Ted Weller (USFS – Pacific Southwest Research Station) is expanding the functionality of Data Basin to create a clearinghouse for migratory bat detection data.  This new functionality will allow users to: (1) import location-aware spreadsheet data into Data Basin; (2) dynamically visualize these locations and their attributes (such as number of bats of a particular species) within the interactive map; and, (3) explore charts of time series records across one or more locations. Additional tools under development will allow aggregation into a single master dataset, support form-based imports to more easily capture site and detector information from researchers during upload, and support export of records into spatial and non-spatial outputs.

More information about the exciting implications of this project can be found within an article on The Wildlife Society website.

Working as a subcontractor to Dynamac Corporation, the Conservation Biology Institute provided the scientific leadership and technical support for two BLM Rapid Ecoregional Assessment (REAs).  The Sonoran Desert ecoregion was completed in the spring of 2012.  A series of conservation elements were chosen for the eocregion and over 40 management questions addressed.  Most questions pertained to a listed set of change agents, including urban and agriculture development, energy (including renewables), fire, invasive species, recreation, and climate change.  For each conservation element, conceptual models were created and, for each specific management question, an accompanying GIS-based process model was created that outlined the data and steps necessary to generate an answer to the question.  Part of the project required an exhaustive acquisition and review of available spatial data – hundreds the ecoregion.  Extensive and sophisticated modeling had to be applied to multiple topics including target species habitat, natural ecological systems, climate change, invasive species, wildfire, and landscape integrity.  Also, some custom analytical software had to be generated throughout the course of the project.

Project review was conducted using Data Basin and final results reside in a private group space on this web-based data management and mapping system.  To inquire about access to the data and map-based results, please contact Karen Prentice at BLM Headquarters (kprentice@blm.gov).

To download the report and find out more information, Click Here.

Working as a subcontractor to Dynamac Corporation, the Conservation Biology Institute provided the scientific leadership and technical support for two BLM Rapid Ecoregional Assessment (REAs).  The Colorado Plateau ecoregion was completed in the spring of 2012.  A series of conservation elements were chosen for the eocregion and over 40 management questions addressed.  Most questions pertained to a listed set of change agents, including urban and agriculture development, energy (including renewables), fire, invasive species, recreation, and climate change.  For each conservation element, conceptual models were created and, for each specific management question, an accompanying GIS-based process model was created that outlined the data and steps necessary to generate an answer to the question.  Part of the project required an exhaustive acquisition and review of available spatial data – hundreds the ecoregion.  Extensive and sophisticated modeling had to be applied to multiple topics including target species habitat, natural ecological systems, climate change, invasive species, wildfire, and landscape integrity.  Also, some custom analytical software had to be generated throughout the course of the project.

Project review was conducted using Data Basin and final results reside in a private group space on this web-based data management and mapping system.  To inquire about access to the data and map-based results, please contact Karen Prentice at BLM Headquarters (kprentice@blm.gov).

To download the full report and find our more information on the Colorado Plateau REA, click here.

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.

Island foxes (Urocyon littoralis) inhabit the six largest Channel Islands off the coast of southern California, with a separate subspecies recognized on each island: San Miguel Island fox (U. l. littoralis), San Nicolas Island fox (U. l. dickeyi), San Clemente Island fox (U. l. clementae), Santa Catalina Island fox (U. l. catalinae), Santa Rosa Island fox (U. l. santarosae), and Santa Cruz Island fox (U. l. santacruzae). Due to their limited geographic distribution and small population sizes, foxes on all six islands have been listed as Threatened by the State of California, and all subspecies except those on San Nicolas and San Clemente have been listed as Endangered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service due to recent precipitous population declines and high risk of extinction.

Due to the persistent high risk of this island species, robust monitoring of fox populations and their threats is a key component of recovery and long-term management. In response to a request from the Recovery Coordination Group of the Island Fox Integrated Recovery Team, the Conservation Biology Institute was commissioned by The Nature Conservancy, with additional funding from the Catalina Island Conservancy, to develop a monitoring framework for five subspecies of island fox on San Miguel, San Nicolas, Santa Catalina, Santa Rosa, and Santa Cruz islands. A monitoring framework previously developed for the U.S. Navy for San Clemente Island foxes (Framework Monitoring Plan for the San Clemente Island Fox, 2006), in addition to years of monitoring and research on all six islands, provided the foundation for the current multi-island monitoring framework. This document thus represents the first comprehensive synthesis of monitoring data, objectives, and protocols across multiple Channel Islands with foxes.

This report describes the considerations and approaches used to identify specific monitoring objectives, determine parameters to address these objectives, and develop protocols to measure these parameters. It presents illustrative island-specific examples of monitoring scenarios designed to address current monitoring objectives, but with different levels of effort and resulting precision. Recommendations are offered as guidelines with some built-in flexibility to account for on-the-ground feasibility. It is expected that island managers will tailor and adapt protocols for on-the-ground use, based on their resources and priorities, understanding that there is generally a trade-off between monitoring intensity and information value, and that future advances in our knowledge of fox ecology and in the development of field and analytical techniques may result in adaptation of this framework monitoring protocol.

CBI led the development of a science-based adaptive habitat management plan for the approximately 3,000-acre Ramona Grasslands Open Space Preserve in central San Diego County.  The Ramona Grasslands are a regionally important conservation area, supporting a variety of target resources, including vernal pools and rare vernal pool species, Stephens’ kangaroo rat, wintering and breeding raptors, riparian habitats and arroyo southwestern toads, and native grasslands.  The Ramona Grasslands are grazed by cattle, which maintain habitat suitability for some species but adversely affect other natural resources.  CBI initially partnered with The Nature Conservancy to develop a Framework Management Plan for the Grasslands, which laid out a scientific basis for implementing management activities, describe experimental manipulations to increase our understanding of the dynamics of the system, and to develop a biological monitoring program to assess changes in resource states.

CBI then worked with the County of San Diego Department of Parks and Recreation and their contractors to develop a detailed description of baseline conditions in the Ramona Grasslands and specific management and monitoring recommendations (Area Specific Management Directives) that were derived from the Framework Management Plan.  Development of the management plan was preceded by a 2-year baseline field monitoring program that was coordinated by CBI.  The Area Specific Management Directives proposed an adaptive grazing strategy to balance resource needs and optimize habitat quality across the preserve.  Monitoring activities proposed by the management plan included surveys of grassland, vernal pool, and riparian plants; characterization of stream channel geomorphology and water quality; and avian, small mammal, amphibian, and fairy shrimp surveys.