Partnering with WCS Canada to Protect Wildlife and Plants in the Yukon through a Spatial Data Atlas and Planning tool

CBI has designed and launched a new Data Basin Gateway (Atlas) for the Wildlife Conservation Society Canada focusing on the Yukon Territory to assist WCS Canada researchers and their conservation partners in the region to develop effective protection of wildlife and plants being impacted by a host of environmental stressors, with special emphasis on climate change. In addition to the branded and curated gateway with relevant datasets, we have co-produced a customized application for stakeholders to view and download  species distribution models (SDM) for 66 endemic plants  designed to predict future changes in their distribution due to climate change. The Atlas houses relevant datasets for conservation planning in the climate-sensitive Yukon region and the tool houses the SDMs, which in combination provide powerful resources for WCS Canada and its partners to effectively plan for resilience.

An example of a map created in the WCS Yukon Data Basin Atlas showing First Nation Territories overlaid on Ross river breeding bird habitat suitability layer

The Yukon Spatial data tool showing projected climate refugia for a Inuvialuit Planning region in the Yukon

The need to plan strategic, effective forest management is urgent in the southern Sierra Nevada, where forests have been ravaged by drought, fire, and catastrophic tree mortality. Multiple, sometimes conflicting, management objectives must be balanced, and multiple agencies need help coordinating their forest restoration actions. A common, readily accessible system evaluating landscape-scale forest condition is needed.

Conservation Biology Institute is working with the Sierra Nevada Conservancy, Sequoia National Forest, Sequoia National Parks, Sequoia Parks Conservancy, Save the Redwoods League, and others to develop forest resilience models and create a toolkit for exploring these data to support the planning of a range of resource management goals. These goals include the protection of sequoia groves, overall forest health, wildfire protection, and endangered species habitat management.  The project is supported by CBI’s data sharing and mapping platform Data Basin.  The project is funded by the Save the  Redwood League and Sequoia National Park through its partner the Sequoia Parks Conservancy, and CAL FIRE Forest Health Research Grant Program.

CBI worked closely with the Department of Land Conservation Development (DLCD) and other project collaborators to carry out an expansive spatial data review and stakeholder engagement process to better understand renewable energy opportunities and constraints in Oregon. It was part of a larger effort called the Oregon Renewable Energy Siting Assessment (ORESA) project, which was funded by the U.S. Department of Defense Office of Economic Adjustment. This larger project included Oregon Department of Energy (ODOE) working closely with Oregon Department of Land Conservation and Development (DLCD) and Oregon State University’s Institute for Natural Resources (INR).

Data Basin was used to support the spatial data review process resulting in a transparent and accurate spatial data library needed for effective renewable energy planning in the state. Approximately 650 datasets were reviewed with most of them still available on Data Basin.  The final Opportunities and Constraints final report was included as part of supporting materials to the larger project.

CBI is supporting the U.S. Forest Service (Region 8) in its efforts toward shared forest stewardship activities. Region 8 contains approximately 244 million acres of forestland, most of which (87%) is privately owned.  The Forest Service manages around 5% of the southern forests within 14 National Forests and two Special Units with other public forests make up the remaining 8%.  Because of the mixed ownership, close collaboration and shared stewardship is of paramount importance.

CBI has created a customized and curated Data Basin Gateway for the U.S. Forest Service (usfssouth.databasin.org) that supports forest stewardship organizations to access data and information to advance collaborative forest management planning. To demonstrate how to use this framework, a pilot state (North Carolina) was chosen (nc.usfssouth.databasin.org). This gateway uses the “All Lands Strategy” concept to showcase example workflows to facilitate more effective forest management and monitoring across North Carolina. CBI and the North Carolina Shared Stewardship team created supporting training materials is the form of video tutorials and how to materials.

CBI worked closely with the Natural Resource Defense Council (NRDC) to integrate relevant spatial datasets to map areas of high value from the standpoint of carbon storage and sequestration, terrestrial ecological value, and aquatic value in support of several NRDC programs, including their 30X30 campaign to protect 30% of nature in the nation by 2030. Click here to learn more about the 30×30 initiative.

Using CBI’s online modeling software called Environmental Evaluation Modeling System (or EEMS), team members were able to construct, review, and modify the models in a rigorous and highly transparent fashion from their individual remote locations. The resulting “living” models can then be used alone or together and in combination with other spatial data (e.g., existing protected areas) to add further context and insight using Data Basin. Data Basin and EEMS were effectively used to help guide NRDC’s important conservation mission.

Conservation Biology Institute is a partner in a new $1 million grant from a new interdisciplinary NSF program to foster building an “open knowledge network.” The inspiration for this type of network comes from Tim Berners-Lee’s (best known founder of the World-wide Web) vision for the “semantic web,” which applies tags with relationships to information on the Internet, allowing computers to do basic reasoning for improving search results and answering questions. Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa, and Google’s Assistant all use these technologies.

Dr. John Gallo co-wrote the proposal and leads CBI’s participation in the team of 13 researchers and practitioners from 10 other institutions. The team is focused on improving access and contributions to tools for analyzing geographic data called spatial decision support systems. “The proliferation of online mapping technologies has greatly increased access to and utility of these kinds of tools, and a logical next step is increasing our ability to find the appropriate data and tools for your problem and link these together for more complex analyses,” says Principal Investigator Sean Gordon of Portland State University. Through engaging stakeholders in three applied case studies (the management of wildland fire, water quality, and biodiversity conservation), the interdisciplinary project team will develop and test participatory and automated methods for finding and sharing decision-relevant information using semantic web technologies.

The new NSF Convergence Accelerator program is named for its focus on bringing together interdisciplinary teams to address one of NSF’s 10 big ideas, specifically “Harnessing the Data Revolution“, also known as building an Open Knowledge Network. Eighteen other of these phase 1 grants were made, covering areas from molecular manufacturing to tracking potentially disruptive solar phenomena. The “accelerator” part comes from the short time frame. “The application required a 3-week turn around, which is very quick for a NSF grant,” Gordon said. “Our success was largely due to having formed the Spatial Decision Support Consortium, a professional networking group four years ago, so we had ideas and people ready to go.” Each phase 1 project is eligible to submit a phase 2 proposal for up to $5 million by next March, and the process will include giving a short “pitch” talk to a panel of experts and potential funders, much like a venture capital approach.

*Learn more about this ongoing project here.

Wind energy developed in federal ocean waters off California’s coastline is poised to play an important role in diversifying the portfolio of resources that will help California achieve its 100% renewable and zero-carbon energy goals. Since 2016, the state has coordinated with other governmental partners, including the BOEM-California Renewable Energy Intergovernmental Task Force, to identify areas in federal waters off the state’s coast suitable for potential offshore wind energy development. To support this effort, the Conservation Biology Institute (CBI) is using data from the California Offshore Wind Energy Gateway to produce a robust set of spatial models, designed to synthesize information to help stakeholders and decision-makers assess the suitability of offshore wind energy development in federal waters off the coast of California. These models, created using the Environmental Evaluation Modeling System (EEMS), provide a transparent and data-driven means for assessing a range of considerations at a given location, such as existing energy potential, deployment feasibility, ocean uses, fisheries, and marine life occurrence. Together, these models can be used to inform planning processes for offshore wind energy development to maximize renewable power generation and to avoid or minimize impacts to existing ocean uses and the environment.

The California Offshore Wind Energy Modeling Platform, powered by EEMS Online technology, provides an interface where stakeholders and decision-makers can interact with and explore the models and their data sources to help support decision-making processes.

The project’s technical report, executive summary, and presentation slides are available under “Project Files”, on the right side of this page. A California Energy Commission webinar recording with a project overview can be found here.

Conservation Biology Institute is working in partnership with Riverside County Habitat Conservation Agency, Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance Academy, and others to develop and implement a rangewide conservation plan for the Stephens’ kangaroo rat (Dipodomys stephensi, SKR), a tiny rodent native to Southern California’s shrinking grassland habitats.

The SKR Rangewide Management and Monitoring Plan, developed in collaboration with species managers, researchers, and land owners, complements existing management plans rather than replaces them, recognizing that each location has unique management priorities. Coordinating across local conservation efforts will facilitate collaborative conservation action across the species’ entire range.

The SKR Plan recommends management actions to improve habitat and ameliorate threats from human activities and climate change and provides  a standardized monitoring protocol to track the species’ population status and trends. CBI has developed a customized field data collection application using ArcGIS Field Maps, and our SKR data management team supports the field monitoring effort and ensures long-term integrity of the data in partnership with USFWS’ Ecosphere Program.

This work builds upon a habitat suitability model developed in 2019 by Conservation Biology Institute using Sentinel-2 satellite imagery and being updated in time to support the 2024 monitoring season. These updatable landscape-scale habitat maps are the foundation for statistically-defensible monitoring and play a key role in planning coordinated conservation of the species.

This work is funded by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. For more information about this effort, please contact Wayne Spencer at wdspencer@consbio.org or Brian Shomo at bshomo@wrcog.us.

Please see the SKR Rangewide Management and Monitoring Website for The SKR Rangewide Management and Monitoring Plan and Protocol, as well as other documents, maps, and data from this project.

Stephens’ kangaroo rat (Dipodomys stephensi, SKR). Photo by Moose Peterson.

Conservation Biology Institute (CBI) and American Farmland Trust (AFT), the organization behind the national movement No Farms No Food®, continue to build off their previous work on the San Joaquin Land and Water Strategy. With the support from a Conservation Innovation Grant by the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service, this phase of work focused on identifying priority areas for groundwater recharge in Madera and Stanislaus counties as well as the greater San Joaquin Valley.

CBI and AFT have compiled informative datasets related to soils, crop types, water infrastructure, and conservation areas in the San Joaquin Valley. These will be located in a San Joaquin Valley Gateway Gallery and mapping tool (with an associated manual) to aid in identifying optimal projects with the greatest potential to increase infiltration and conserve water. These datasets will provide a broad context that will allow for multiple benefits where possible such as locating conservation easements near currently protected areas in the productive farmland regions of Madera and Stanislaus counties, California.

The Project Prioritization Tool (PPT) is a conservation decision-making tool to increase the adoption of water infiltration practices, improve groundwater recharge, and protect agricultural land in the San Joaquin Valley (SJV). This PPT manual was developed by AFT and the Conservation Biology Institute (CBI) based on the data analysis of the San Joaquin Land and Water Strategy report.

CBI is collaborating with the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest and the Klamath National Forest in their effort to conserve the Alaska yellow Cedar in its southern range, located in Southern Oregon and Northern California, where it faces extreme extinction risk due to climate change. Concerted conservation efforts are needed to develop and implement conservation and reforestation strategies, in order to manage forest tree species for sustainability in the future. CBI will help coordinate the collection of seeds from trees from 8 sites, tag and geo-reference each tree, gather information on the general health of these stands, and submit the seeds to the national seedbank in Fort Collins. In addition, current-year needles will be also collected from each seed tree for later genetic/genomics analysis by Richard Cronn and team at the Pacific Northwest Research Station of the USFS.

Alaska Yellow Cedar (Callitropsis nootkatensis) has an extensive range from Alaska to Northern California (Fig. 1). It is declining in the northern part of its range due to a combination of factors associated with climate change and is a rare species in the southern part of its range in California and Southern Oregon. These southern populations are relics that occur in isolated stands in sub-alpine zones in cool wet sites at higher elevation > 5000 ft (Fig 2). The species is currently under review for listing as a threatened or endangered species.

Update 12/18

CBI finished cone collections in September, 2018, from six populations across three sites in Southern Oregon and three sites in Northern California. Access to other sites was restricted due to the Klondike Fire burning in Southern Oregon. This completes the first systematic collection of mature cones from these southern populations.

We have recieved word from the US Forest Service, Bend Seed Extractory, located in Bend Oregon, that they have successfully extracted viable seeds. The next step is to send them to the National Seed Laboratory in Dry Branch, Georgia, USA. Once there, these seeds will be entered into the the national germplasm bank making these the very first entries for these relic southern populations.

Needle tissue that was collected from 10 trees at each site will be genetically analyzed by researchers at the USFS Forest Science lab in Corvallis.This analysis will help determine if these populations are genetically distinct sub-populations from their northern counterparts which will help guide conservation of this species.

The Rogue River-Siskiyou National forest office is planning to use some of these seeds to grow seedlings to test for certain traits such as disease resistance and drought tolerance. The hope is that seeds collected from these southern populations may be used for restoration plantings in the northern regions.

In the north, Alaska Yellow Cedar is a valuable timber species but has been declining as a result of the climate crisis.

Conservation of these southern populations may prove to be critical for the longterm management of northern Alaska Yellow Cedars on public and private lands.

Fig 1. Range map for Alaska yellow cedar.

Source: http://tidcf.nrcan.gc.ca/en/trees/factsheet/376

Figure 2. Current known yellow cedar locations in the Siskyou Mountains (CBI 2017)