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 5th 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.

As the Earth’s climate changes, many plant and animal species are reacting by shifting their geographic ranges. As a result, resource managers are now faced with the challenge of developing and implementing strategies that will support wildlife adaptation to climate change. The sheer magnitude and diversity of models and data that can be applied to climate impact analyses and adaptation strategies can often be confusing to many users.

Recognizing a need for clarity within this field, the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Sciences convened a working group of the nation’s leading conservation biologists, modelers, and policy makers to develop a guidance tool for integrating natural adaptation strategies into the context of natural resource planning and policymaking. The tool, The Yale Mapping Framework (www.databasin.org/yale), assists resource managers in selecting the assessment and modeling strategies that are most relevant to their specific needs, helping to guide choices among the many tools, data, and methods that planners may use to implement their adaptation approaches in the face of a changing climate.

Avoidance of airspace over various sensitive areas (including many designated protected areas) is mandated by public law, including Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) regulations and Department of Defense (DoD) Service Branch regulations.  Until now, aviators used a variety of sources to help them identify these areas. Sectional charts, Flight Information Publications (FLIP), Notice to Airman (NOTAMS), and the Managed Areas Database (MAD) are among the resources available to aviators for pre-flight planning and in-flight avoidance.  Because of the cumbersome nature of this approach and the lack of a national standard, numerous errors have been made resulting in civil and fiscal penalties and numerous public complaints.

The purpose of the Protected Areas Database Aviation (or PAD Aviation) is to provide military and civil aviators with current, geo-referenced data that identifies areas sensitive or potentially sensitive to aircraft over-flight using a draft national standard.  PAD Aviation is a customized protected areas database derived from the PAD-US 1.1 (CBI Edition) that streamlines the geometry for rapid response with onboard navigation equipment and contains pertinent attributes unique for aviators.  For example, easy-to-use recommended altitude or avoidance information for individual protected areas.

The Forest Intactness Database was the result of a collaborative effort between the Conservation Biology Institute, theWorld Wildlife Fund U.S., and the World Resources Institute’sGlobal Forest Watch. Using primarily Landsat TM based National Land Cover Data (NLCD) and 1:100,000 scale USGS road data sets, we assessed relative forest intactness for 39 forested ecoregions of the coterminous United States.

Forest intactness was mapped within “landunits” that were defined by highways and urban areas that contained more than 50,000 people. For each landunit, road density was calculated as well as a suite of class and landscape level fragmentation metrics using FRAGSTATS, a spatial analysis software program. For each landunit, road density, class area, percentage of landscape, total core area index, and mean nearest neighbor results were assigned ordinal scores from which a cumulative score was calculated to create an overall relative forest intactness score. By assigning all landunits with a quantitative measurement of relative forest intactness based on a uniform dataset, this study:

(1) Identified remaining relatively intact forest

(2) Identified landunits that may make good restoration candidates from a regional context

(3) Examined forest fragmentation due to roads which has been omitted from other recent national assessments.

The Conservation Biology Institute, through a grant from the David and Lucille Packard Foundation, is working with BLM, CDFG, and USFWS to develop a science-based regional planning framework for the high wind resource region of the eastern Tehachapi Mountains and southeastern Sierra.  The project is intended to facilitate decision-making on a regional basis, per the recent federal guidance policies, through spatially-explicit and transparent decision-support tools for wind energy development and conservation.

We assembled available spatial datasets related to biodiversity and landscape intactness, developed logic and associated thresholds, and ranked sections of land (640 acres/1 Sq. mile), according to ecological value, biological potential, and level of disturbance. CBI has created web-based tools for visualizing the results, which are transparent, flexible, and supportive of agency needs.  The results are being used to map priority areas for conservation and where renewable energy projects and associated infrastructure may be compatible with conservation goals.

Implemented for the Southern Sierra/Western Mojave, the approach and decision-support tool have widespread applicability, including:

The title of this project was formerly “Wind, Wings & Wilderness”

Click here for the final project report.

CBI staff verified a new population of the endangered Stephens’ kangaroo rat in the Santa Maria Valley, San Diego County, California, by trapping and reconnaissance surveys and performed numerous adaptive management and monitoring tasks to help sustain this isolated population. Tasks included: