The Stephens’ kangaroo rat (Dipodomys stephensi) is an endangered mammal of grassland habitats in southern California. CBI is helping to conserve the species using satellite technology and advanced mapping techniques.
Kangaroo rats (or Krats, as biologists often call them) are seed-eating rodents restricted to arid regions of southwestern North America. The 20 or so Krat species are biologically similar to jerboas of the Mideast–and like mideastern jerboas and the kangaroos of Australia, they use their large hind limbs to bound efficiently and elusively through open habitats, especially deserts and grasslands. Being mostly nocturnal, Krats also have huge eyes for night vision and keen ears for hearing predators, like owls and foxes.
Stephens’ kangaroo rat (or biological shorthand, SKR) occupies open, undeveloped grasslands in western Riverside and San Diego counties in southern California. Because much of their habitat has been paved over and fragmented by development, the SKR was listed as Endangered under the the US Endangered Species Act and Threatened under the California ESA in the 1980s. Numerous ecological reserves have since been established to conserve remaining populations. Unfortunately, these scattered Krat reserves are not consistently managed, monitored, or even understood by the responsible resource management agencies, largely because it is difficult to map and track suitable habitat conditions over space and time. Traditional habitat variables, such as vegetation and soil types, are not nuanced enough to reflect the on-ground conditions that SKR need, and management and monitoring approaches differ amongst the reserves.
CBI is helping remedy this situation by using satellite imagery and innovative habitat modeling techniques to develop reliable statistical models to map habitat suitability across the species’ geographic range. In partnership with the US Fish and Wildlife Service, the Riverside County Habitat Conservation Agency (RCHCA), and species experts, we are developing a coordinated approach to mapping SKR habitat suitability to manage and monitor the species in a more scientifically consistent and justified manner. Specifically, we are using European Sentinel-2 satellite imagery, in concert with other reliable geographic data, to develop habitat suitability maps that can be routinely updated over time across the species range as conditions change. The resulting models will be used to inform management and monitoring efforts to conserve and recover this charismatic endangered species.
Primary forests make up approximately one-third of the world’s remaining forests. Globally, they are grossly under-represented in protected areas and subject to industrial-scale logging and “sustainable forest management” that otherwise fragment intact areas. They face unprecedented threats from logging, mining, energy development, and climate change. British Columbia contains two globally important temperate rainforests with substantial primary and intact forest landscapes distributed from the coast (i.e. Great Bear Rainforest – GBR) inland (i.e., Inland Rainforest). Geos Institute proposes to map and assess conservation importance of the primary forests in these regions as a scientific basis for an international campaign aimed at protecting these globally important rainforests. CBI will support Geos Institute and partners in Canada to help map the area accurately, provide scientific input, and also do a carbon flux model for these primary rainforests.
Scientists at The Wilderness Society (TWS), under the direction of Dr. Greg Aplet, are developing a collaborative conservation strategy that is especially pertinent during the new era of accelerated Climate Change. In short, the strategy is for society to designate a portfolio of three management strategies, zoned in large, contiguous areas across the landscape:
• Restoration zones where we try to repair the landscape and restore natural ecological patterns and processes that then can adapt to change
• Innovation zones in which the landscape is devoted to innovative management that anticipates climate change and guides ecological change to prepare for it; and,
• Observation zones in which the landscape is left to change on its own time to serve as a scientific “control” and to hedge against the unintended consequences of active management elsewhere.
The large contiguous areas are essential to minimize the deleterious edge effects that happen when the negative aspects of one zone bleed into the neighboring zone. The problem and the strategy are detailed more in a short article in the Pinchot Letter.
Given this strategy, a whole host of questions arise about where and how these zones should be mapped on the landscape. TWS has contracted Conservation Biology Institute (CBI) to help address these spatial challenges. The answers are context specific, so we are building a spatial decision support system (SDSS) to aid with these questions for any given landscape. A good SDSS combines information and human values in a systematic manner to provide maps, charts, and reports in a variety of easy-to-use formats, including within a web-browser. The CBI/TWS partnership is building a prototype SDSS now, using the Sierra Nevada mountains in California as a pilot study area. The SDSS is to be transparent, and customizable to the politics and ecology of a given region. Hence, we are building it on top of the Environmental Evaluation Modeling System (EEMS) using ArcGIS models and scripts, and the products are viewable to project advisors via Data Basin and EEMS Explorer (the EEMS graphical user interface in Data Basin).
Some of the methods and specifications for the foundation of the SDSS are as follows:
• A region of study is divided into a large set of spatially explicit reporting units (or planning units) that cover the region in entirety.
• The end user can choose from a variety of nested regions of study (such as the Sierra Nevada Forest Plan Reference Region, the Southern Sierra Nevada, or Sierra National Forest).
• The SDSS is to provide spatially explicit scenarios, each based on a set of parameter values and assumptions.
• For each scenario, each reporting unit in the study region is assigned to one of the three zones. This is to provide decision support, not decision making.
• Reporting units are selected for one zone or another based on both the composition of the unit as well as its spatial context.
Some of the details about the allocation algorithm are as follows:
• Many composition criteria can be considered; for now, there are 13 relating to the suitability and influence of pre-existing land designations, one regarding fire management, and 3 regarding ecological condition. For instance, Wilderness Areas are more suitable for the observation zone than the other two zones.
• A representation algorithm makes sure that reporting units allocated to each zone are distributed among one or several elevation bands, and several sub regions. (More geographic classes, such as habitat type, are pending.)
• A preliminary contiguity algorithm ensures that the allocations for each zone are clumped thereby minimizing fragmentation and deleterious edge effects.
• Addition of a CBI algorithm is pending that will further improve connectivity between core areas of each zone, thereby facilitating species movement within a zone during a changing climate.
The SDSS is currently in the Prototype stage that will undergo an evaluation and another round of development before release to partners. If anyone is interested in providing input, advice, and/or reviews on the work in progress at some point, or simply joining the announcement list, please contact Dr. Greg Aplet or Dr. John Gallo. Please contact Dr. Gallo regarding potential collaborations customizing the SDSS code and methodology for other types of multi-objective allocation projects.
The U.S. Forest Service, Oregon State University, and Conservation Biology Institute have collaboratively developed the Seedlot Selection Tool to help forest managers match tree seed collections (called seedlots) with planting sites to help ensure the resilience of forests in a changing climate.
The Seedlot Selection Tool (or SST) is a free web-based decision-support tool that can be used to map planting locations based on either current climate data or a range of possible future climates across the conterminous U.S. and Mexico. Users can select a tree species, a climate scenario and relevant climate variables for the species, and other parameters to identify sources of seedlots appropriate for planting on a particular site or planting sites that are appropriate for planting seedlings from a particular seedlot. A valuable planning and educational tool, the SST helps explore possible future conditions, assess risk, and plan potential responses as part of a decision about which seedlot seedlings will be best adapted to a particular planting site in the future.
Seedlot Selection Tool Guidebook for US Forest Service Region 6 Silviculturists
Seedlot Selection Tool Video Tutorial for US Forest Service Region 6 Silviculturists
The SST was spearheaded by Glenn Howe at Oregon State University and Brad St. Clair at the USFS Pacific Northwest Research Station and developed by Nikolas Stevenson-Molnar, Brendan Ward, and Dominique Bachelet at CBI. Recently the USDA Climate Hub and USFS Region 6 staff worked with CBI to develop a step-by-step Guidebook and Video Tutorial for the Seedlot Selection Tool for Region 6 Silviculturists. These materials are useful to anyone who wants to learn about the use of this resource.
You may access the SST and detailed instructions at https://seedlotselectiontool.org/sst/.
Please see the USDA Climate Hub Seedlot Selection Tool Web Page for more information about the Guidebook and Tutorial Video.
Support for the SST came from the USFS, OSU, CBI, and the USDA Northwest Climate Hub.
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 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:
- 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.
- 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:
- 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.
- 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.
- 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
This project is providing spatially explicit scientific foundations for forest management recommendations to sustain and enhance populations of four imperiled carnivores in the Sierra Nevada of California: marten (Martes americana), fisher (Martes pennanti), wolverine (Gulo gulo), and Sierra Nevada red fox (Vulpes vulpes necator). The recommendations focus on enhancing resiliency of existing populations over the next 15-20 years, and assessing strategies for adaptation to climate change in the longer term.
Products include maps depicting habitat value and distribution for each species, lands important to maintaining population connectivity and movement potential between habitat areas, and lands important to accommodating shifts in distribution under climate change. These maps will serve as foundations for spatially explicit conservation, management, and restoration recommendations, which can be incorporated into National Forest Management Plans and other land use and management plans.
This project will produce decision-support maps and tools to support an Interagency Fisher Biology Team in developing and implementing a Conservation Strategy for the west coast fisher Distinct Population Segment (DPS)–a Candidate for listing under that Endangered Species Act that stretches from southern British Columbia through Oregon, Washington, and California. The Interagency Fisher Team includes representatives of the US Fish and Wildlife Service, US Forest Service, and other Federal, State, and Provincial agencies with an interest in species conservation and forest management.
CBI will prepare maps, analyses, and other decision-support tools, including habitat value, habitat connectivity, and population distribution maps for the DPS under current conditions, and an assessment of climate-change effects on fisher habitat and populations in the future. These types of spatially explicit decision-support tools are needed to inform conservation planning and adaptive management to sustain and restore habitat value and fisher populations within the fisher DPS.
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.