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)
Both land and water resources are essential to agriculture in the San Joaquin Valley and other Mediterranean climates in California. These resources are under pressure from a variety of factors that have the potential to significantly affect the food production capacity of a region that contributes importantly to the food security of the state, nation and the world. The most significant challenges appear to be climate change, especially its impact on water supplies, environmental factors such as in-stream water needs, soil impairment, and urban development.
American Farmland Trust has partnered with the Conservation Biology Institute to undertake a spatial analysis to identify agricultural areas that are most at risk due to these challenges. Understanding how and where water supply shortages, soil impairment, urban growth or climatic changes may impact agriculture will contribute to the discussion of strategies for agricultural adaptation and conservation in the Valley.
This project will build on the successful effort led by CBI to identify areas where large-scale solar energy projects sited in the Valley would pose the least conflict to agricultural and environmental values (A Path Forward). As with the solar project, spatial analysis will occur at a broad Valley wide level, but with a finer grained analysis of at least two counties. A number of scenarios, representing different assumptions about physical and policy trends, will be done to further enrich our understanding of the future prospects of Valley agriculture. Input from technical experts and regional stakeholders will be sought throughout the process to help determine how to rank resource values and risks, and to help formulate future scenarios. We are now actively recruiting stakeholders to participate in the process.
The ultimate goal of the project is to encourage and inform a purposeful regional conversation about strategies that will be needed to meet the land and water resource management challenges and, thus, assure a productive and prosperous future for San Joaquin Valley agriculture.
Supported by the California Wildlife Conservation Board, CBI will be working closely with the Strategic Growth Council, UC Davis, and other agency staff to conduct a Regional Conservation Assessment (RCA) for two pilot areas in the state – Mojave Desert and Modoc Plateau – and build an easy-to-use, online assessment tool to evaluate potential conservation investments based on a set of standards developed by the Integrated Regional Conservation and Development program (IRCAD). RCAs are designed to provide a standardized and current assessment of the biological values and ecological conditions within each ecoregion in California serving as the important context to carry out more effective and ecologically sensitive development in the state. This project builds upon existing investment through the California Energy Commission’s statewide renewable energy planning efforts.
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.
*Click here for the full report.
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.