The Coyote Valley is a last chance landscape. The Valley, located within one of the world’s top 25 most important biodiversity hotspots, occurs on the south side of San Jose, California and is situated between the Santa Cruz Mountains and Diablo Range. The Santa Clara Valley Open Space Authority, in partnership with CBI, assembled a team of local and regional scientists with the goal of integrating existing scientific information and knowledge to develop a vision and practical plan for achieving a fully functional landscape linkage through the Valley to avoid isolating the two mountain ranges while protecting extremely important valley floor species and habitats. The plan includes restoration of important wetland and uplands habitats, support for numerous rare and sensitive species, and protection of important water and agricultural resources.
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A Regional Conservation Investment Strategy (RCIS) is a voluntary, non-regulatory, and non-binding conservation assessment that includes information and analyses relating to the conservation of focal species, their associated habitats, and the conservation status of the RCIS land base. The RCIS program, which is administered by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, was created by state bill AB 2087. This conservation strategy is intended to guide conservation investments and advance mitigation in RCIS areas. CBI provided scientific and technical support to ICF International, who led the development of a pilot RCIS for the Antelope Valley in LA County. Implementation of this strategy is intended to sustain and enhance focal species and their habitats in the face of climate change and other stressors such as habitat loss and fragmentation.
Environmental information is often not widely available, including for the solar distributed generation energy sector. Additionally, environmental, engineering, cost, and electrical distribution grid data are typically disparate. This easy-to-use pilot screening tool developed in collaboration with Black & Veatch and funded by the California Energy Commission (CEC) integrates engineering, cost, and environmental information for planning and decision making specifically in Lancaster, California. The key benefits of such a tool include expedited project planning, reduced permitting and interconnection screening, and clearer stakeholder understanding of developable DG potential. The tool is designed to foster proactive system planning opportunities and an improved sense of regulatory impacts. This pilot screening tool can be viewed here.
Working with Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, Oregon Department of Transportation, US Fish and Wildlife Service, and other governmental and non-governmental partners, CBI is reviewing the current state of knowledge and is developing a wildlife and habitat connectivity blueprint for the State of Oregon, including the plan for generating a number of useful map-based products and online tools that will address planning at multiple scales across the state. This initial phase is expected to conclude in January 2018 with testing of the blueprint being carried out for a subset of the state (Coast Range and Klamath ecoregions) through different funding.
The Conservation Biology Institute will partner with The US Fish and Wildlife Service, Refuges Lands Division and North Pacific LCC, to develop an interactive web-based mapping tool to support the Willamette Valley Conservation Study (WVCS). This tool will be targeted to conservation partners in the region, as well as the general public. The primary objective of this web-mapping tool is to serve as a communication and data exploration tool for priority areas identified within the WVCS, and will allow users to understand the key characteristics of each priority area and better understand why each area was selected.
This tool will be developed and managed by CBI, alongside and embedded in the North Pacific LCC’s Conservation Planning Atlas (http://wvcs.apps.nplcc.databasin.org/).
CBI is playing a key role in improving the health and resilience of wetland ecosystems in Southern California in a partnership with the Southern California Wetlands Recovery Project (SCWRP). The newly-released Marsh Adaptation Planning Tool provides data access and decision-support technology for SCWRP’s new Regional Strategy 2018, a recovery plan for tidal and non-tidal wetlands from Point Conception to the Mexican border.
Above: The Marsh Adaptation Planning Tool homepage, with access to the Regional Strategy 2018, the spatial data that informed its development, and a special tool for planning projects that will contribute to its Work Plan.
Above: The MAPT’s “Quick-Start Map” that allows the user to explore Southern California’s wetlands. Layers depicting historical and present-day wetlands, important transitions zones, and other features can be turned on and off for quick comparison. The map and its data layers can be downloaded for use in GIS, or saved and used with any other layers in Data Basin.
Above: The Marsh Adaptation Planning Tool’s project planning utility, where project proponents can use Regional Strategy 2018 spatial data, habitat types, and goals and objectives to inform the planning of a project and apply to have it included in the SCWRP Work Plan.
The Micronesia Challenge is a commitment by the Republic of Palau, Guam, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, the Federated State of Micronesia, and the Republic of the Marshall Islands to preserve the marine and terrestrial resources that are crucial to the survival of the Pacific traditions, cultures and livelihoods. The overall goal of the Micronesia Challenge is to effectively conserve at least 30% of the near-shore marine resources and 20% of the terrestrial resources across Micronesia by 2020. The USFS Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) team, regional partners and CBI developed the Micronesia Challenge Regional Terrestrial Monitoring Initiative tool (mcterrestrialmeasures.org) to allow users to visualize the spatial data from the Micronesia Challenge monitoring effort by regional framework indicator(s) that measure the status of managed conservation areas set aside under the program. Forest data were collected between 2003 and 2018 and are now being used to determine the status and trends in forest area, forest health, understory vegetation, biomass, and carbon storage.
CBI has partnered with the Paulson Institute (PI), the Foreign Economic Cooperation Office (FECO) of the Ministry of Environmental Protection of China (MEP), and the State of California to provide FECO with an Environmental Risk Screening Tool that will help guide Chinese international investment projects. The overarching goal of the tool is to significantly reduce negative environmental impacts as the result of Chinese development projects around the world.
The screening tool will include interactive mapping of biodiversity and environmental data against which potential development projects can be evaluated. The tool will include a standard Biodiversity Impact Analysis using a set of internationally recognized datasets (e.g., Key Biodiversity Areas, Critical Natural Habitat, Alliance for Zero Extinction sites, and Protected Areas). The tool will also include regional and country-level biodiversity and environmental data in priority countries. The tool is not available for viewing at present. But here is a powerpoint describing its capabilities.
CBI is expanding on previous work with the Peninsular Florida Landscape Conservation Cooperative (PFLCC) to further develop the PFLCC Simple Viewer to provide greater functionality and flexibility. In March 2017, CBI worked with PFLCC to incorporate PFLCC’s Blueprint version 1.0 into the viewer, and also created new reporting functionality to export on-screen results to PDF. In July 2017, CBI introduced the ability to aggregate multiple watersheds for display of summary information. This is particularly useful for users whose areas of interest and jurisdictions span multiple watersheds.
CBI is currently working on creating a Conservation Actions Tracker that will be added to the PFLCC Conservation Planning Atlas developed by CBI using Data Basin. This Conservation Actions Tracker will to allow users throughout Florida to enter information about conservation actions on the landscape – such as restoration activities – using an intuitive map-oriented interface. Users will also be able to explore any conservation actions in the system, and discover opportunities for collaboration and shared impact.
CBI is in the process of designing a new interactive application to showcase the PFLCC climate change adaptation guide so that users will be able to use interactive maps and data visualization to gain a greater understanding of climate change adaptations within Florida landscapes.
The Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan (DRECP), a major component of California’s renewable energy planning efforts, is designed to provide effective protection and conservation of desert ecosystems while allowing for the appropriate development of renewable energy projects. Approximately 22.5 million acres of federal and non-federal California desert land are in the DRECP Plan Area. The federal portion of plan area was released by the Bureau of Land Management as a Land Use Plan Amendment (LUPA). The project is now transitioning into Phase II, which focuses on county-level planning designed to work in conjunction with the LUPA.
During Phase I of the project, CBI provided science support for this ambitious planning process including a wide range of spatial models and assessments (e.g., species distribution, intactness, conservation value, and climate change). CBI also developed and continues to maintain the DRECP Gateway (launched on September 26, 2014) and various interpretation applications to support the determination of the Final Plan and its implementation. One example of an interpretation application is the DRECP Climate Console, which was designed to allow users to explore climate projections to better understand how climate change could alter ecosystems in the California desert. It provides science-based and actionable climate data to encourage smarter, more comprehensive landscape-level conservation planning efforts and decisions.
During Phase II of the project, CBI is customizing the Gateway to support the adaptive management aspects of the LUPA and to support the county-level planning processes.
To access the gateway, please visit http://drecp.databasin.org/
To access the Climate Console, please visit http://drecp.consbio.webfactional.com/climate
To learn more about the DRECP, please visit www.drecp.org or visit the Data Basin Guide and Case Study about DRECP at http://databasin.org/articles/1408e0eed6754d68a06047aaa0e64c2b