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.

In November 2002, two science-based conservation organizations, the Conservation Biology Institute (Corvallis, Oregon) and World Wildlife Fund (Ashland, Oregon), conducted an ecological assessment of the mid and lower reaches of the Klamath, including its tributaries and the Upper Sacramento River that flows into the mid Klamath.

Ecosystem health was assessed using computer mapping (Geographic Information Systems – GIS) and satellite interpretation technologies across 870 watersheds; 655 within the mid and lower Klamath and 215 within the Upper Sacramento River. We used a series of indicators or surrogates to assess watershed condition on a relative basis, including road density, stream-road intersections, logging in the basin over a three-decade period, and mining activities.

Because this is the first subbasin assessment of relative ecological condition of the mid and lower Klamath River, this executive summary will focus mainly on the Klamath findings as they are particularly relevant to policy and legislative efforts to manage water uses and restore ecosystem health throughout the Klamath River. In addition, according to monitoring stations of the United States Geological Service, the Klamath is in worse shape today than it was in 2002, the year that 34,000 to 68,000 salmon and trout died from disease in the lower Klamath River due primarily to low water flows and high water temperatures.

As more people move into remote areas throughout western forests and rangelands, it is increasingly important for scientists, land managers, policy makers, and the public to understand the natural fire dynamics of these systems. Over the last decade, wildfires have burned on average approximately 4.2 million acres each year with lows of 2.3 million acres in 1993, 1995, and 1998 and a decadal high of 8.4 million acres in 2000 (NIFC 2004). There is growing concern about the number of severe fires throughout the West and their impact on human communities and local economies. Some argue that the buildup of fuels to unnatural levels is primarily the result of decades of fire suppression while others argue that prolonged and more frequent droughts are most responsible. While both positions are defensible, it is unwise to oversimplify the situation as natural fire regimes and the human impacts on these regimes can be quite complex and highly variable from place to place (Turner et al. 2003).

The purpose of this study was to develop an approach to mapping fire hazard at an intermediate spatial scale for the Oregon portion of the Illionis River Basin and to demonstrate how such an approach can be used to identify and prioritize fire management activities that would have the greatest chance of minimizing human losses from fire while protecting the many conservation values of the region. The Illinois River Basin was chosen because the rural communities in this basin were among the most threatened by the Biscuit fire of 2002.

Detailed information for the Biscuit Fire can be found at the official US Forest Service Biscuit Fire website.

This report was prepared to provide an independent examination of the post-fire management options being considered for the Biscuit Fire (2002) within the Siskiyou National Forest in southwestern Oregon. This report has three main objectives:

  1. summarize the ecological setting and impact of the Biscuit Fire
  2. review the scientific literature on post-fire management (including salvage logging)
  3. conduct a GIS-based mapping analysis that examines the ecological and administrative constraints to post-fire management of the Biscuit Fire

Detailed information for the Biscuit Fire can be found at the official US Forest Service Biscuit Fire website.

CBI staff worked on a comprehensive analysis of inventoried roadless areas within six ecoregions of the Pacific Northwest encompassing the range of the northern spotted owl (Strix occidentalis caurina) east and west of the Cascade Mountains in Washington, Oregon, and northern California revealed that roadless areas contributed to:

This document is a synthesis of the literature on roadless importance, drawing primarily on the published studies presented in the bibliography and available from the World Wildlife Fund and the Conservation Biology Institute. The authors of this document have spent nearly a decade compiling databases and conducting satellite imagery and computer mapping assessments that document the importance of roadless areas and the extent of forest fragmentation across the nation. This document provides a scientific foundation in support of lasting protections for roadless areas.

The primary objective of this study was to perform an enduring features conservation gap analysis for a pilot region within the U.S. (northern Rocky Mountains) that applied the same methodology as WWF Canada, resulting in a consistent crossboundary conservation assessment for the region for the first time. The Rocky Mountains were chosen over other crossboundary areas because this region is under increasing pressure from human enterprise on both sides of the border, yet it still maintains a full compliment of species including large carnivores. The conservation actions taken over the next decade will largely determine whether this portion of the Rocky Mountains continues to function in a way that supports the many species and natural processes which have made it world famous: there is much at stake.

The greater study area as taken from the Carnivore Strategy included the Rocky Mountains in BC and Alberta and the U.S. northern Rocky Mountains (approximately 690,000 square kilometers). This GIS-based research project concentrated mostly on the U.S. side of the border, as we attempted to duplicate the Canadian methodology on similar, but different, electronic datasets. The region was first subdivided into 50 ecosections (or natural regions), 32 of which were exclusively contained within the U.S. or straddled the Canada – U.S. border. Enduring features were then mapped and representation evaluated for each of the 32 ecosections. Finally, these results were added to the Canadian work for regional summarization. In addition to the enduring features gap analysis, enhancements to the methodology were examined for the U.S. portion of the study area using larger scale datasets. A physical units mapping procedure was developed and examples compared to the coarser scale enduring features analysis. Finally, a number of separate analyses (e.g., road density analysis) were performed for the U.S. portion of the study area that can now be used to support continuing conservation research in the region.

CBI investigated the effects of climate and vegetation on the distribution of martens (Martes caurina) and fishers (Martes pennanti) in the Sierra Nevada in California under current and projected future conditions to inform conservation efforts for these species and to investigate how different modeling methods and resolutions may affect predictions about species’ responses to climate change. Martens and fishers are closely related forest carnivores of conservation concern in California, where both reach their southernmost distributions. The species have contiguous elevation ranges, with the smaller marten occupying high subalpine forests that experience deep and persistent snow, and the larger fisher occupying mid-elevation forests that experience less snow and warmer temperatures.

The goals of this project were to:

  1. add robust, downscaled, climate-change effects assessments to CBI’S Sierra Nevada Carnivores project, which is a comprehensive, science-based effort to map areas important to sustaining rare carnivore populations and improving forest management.
  2. compare alternative analytical approaches and resolutions for assessing climate impacts on vegetation and sensitive species.

Because martens and fishers require similar forest structural conditions (dense forests with large trees and abundant dead wood) but different climate regimes (cooler, moister, and snowier conditions for martens; warmer, drier and less snowy conditions for fishers) they offer a unique opportunity to investigate how our changing climate may affect the species directly as well as via changes in vegetation. Also, because they compete with one another for food, and fishers will kill martens when they meet, this system offers an opportunity to investigate how species interactions may also affect future populations.

Specific study tasks:

  1. Examine how the current distributions of martens and fishers are influenced by vegetation characteristics (e.g., forest composition and structure), climate (e.g., temperature, precipitation, snow depth and duration), physical variables (e.g., elevation, % slope) and presence or absence of the other species.
  2. Project the potential future distribution of both species under climate change based on results of Task 1 and using alternative emissions scenarios and general circulation models at different resolutions.
  3. Use the results to support conservation and forest management plans to ensure long-term sustainability of marten and fisher populations in the face of climate change and increasingly severe fire regimes.

Click here for Methods, Outcomes, Interpretation and Related Data

National interest in roadless area conservation dates back to the 1970s when the Forest Service was directed by Congress to inventory roadless areas in response to the public’s growing desire to protect wild landscapes primarily through wilderness designations. In 2001, President Clinton enacted the Roadless Conservation Rule to protect 58.5 million acres of inventoried roadless areas on Forest Service lands, including nearly 2 million acres in Oregon. However, on May 13, 2005 the Bush administration issued a revised rule that established a process for governors to propose locally supported regulations for conserving roadless area within their states. While some states, including Oregon, have legally challenged this rule change, State governments will continue to play a vital role in providing recommendations to the Forest Service concerning the protection of federal roadless areas. This report provides new information on the importance of roadless areas in Oregon that places these areas among the most ecologically valued in the nation, thereby providing a scientific foundation for protecting all of Oregon’s roadless lands regardless of the method to achieve this outcome.