This project will develop a foundation for monitoring environmental change by identifying where and what to monitor in order to evaluate climate-change impacts. Phase 1 focused on landbirds, however a framework will be developed that recommends standardized monitoring for other taxa and environmental attributes.

Phase 1 & 2 (2010, 2012): This project will develop a sampling design and monitoring protocol for wintering shorebirds in the Central Valley and in the San Francisco Bay Estuary and develop an LCC-specific online shorebird monitoring portal publicly available at the California Avian Data Center. The three objectives in Phase II of this project are: 1) Complete the shorebird monitoring plan for the CA LCC by developing a sampling design and monitoring protocol for wintering shorebirds in coastal southern California and northern Mexico.

Phases 1-3 (2010-2012): This project will develop landscape change scenarios based upon water availability and precipitation and temperature patterns projected from downscaled models and investigate impacts of these changes on habitats and ecology of waterfowl, shorebirds, and other waterbirds in the Central Valley. This project will provide critical information and support to understand and incorporate likely impacts of climatic change in conservation planning.
 

Phase 1 (2011): This project will use species distribution modeling, population genetics, and geospatial analysis of historical vs. modern vertebrate populations to identify climate change refugia and population connectivity across the Sierra Nevada. It is hypothesized that climate change refugia will increase persistence and stability of populations and, as a result, maintain higher genetic diversity. This work will help managers assess the need to include connectivity and refugia in climate change adaptation strategies.

Phase 1 (2011): This project uses bottom-up modeling at a parcel scale to measure the effects of sea-level rise (SLR) on coastal ecosystems and tidal salt marshes. At selected tidal marshes, the project team will measure several parameters that will be incorporated into ArcGIS models creating comparable datasets across the Pacific coast tidal gradient with a focus on 2-4 sites in the California LCC (e.g. San Diego, San Francisco Bay Refuges).

The project objective is to transfer to California a previously developed prioritization framework that combines intraspecific genetic and morphological variation with traditionally used indices of biodiversity, and test its general utility for conservation prioritization. This project will integrate existing data on intraspecific variation of multiple species in the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreational Area with climate data and space-borne measurements of the environment to identify areas with high intraspecific variation.

Phase 1 (2011): Integrating Science into Decisions: Climate Change/Land Use Change Scenarios and Outreach for Habitat Threat Assessments on California Rangelands

The goal of this project is to create critically needed coastal fog datasets.

This project will use the NatureServe Climate Change Vulnerability Index tool to assess vulnerability of 140 bird species that breed in the Sierra Nevada and will develop a peer-reviewed Climate Change Adaptation Strategy for Sierra Nevada bird species that are most vulnerable to climate change. The Strategy will provide recommendations for actions that managers can take now and in the future to bolster resilience to climate change.
 
This project was highlighted in the March 2014 ESTUARY News (file unavailable).

This project integrates fire risk models, species distribution models (SDMs) and population models with scenarios of future climate and land cover to project how the effects of climate-induced changes to species distributions and land use change will impact threatened species in fire-prone ecosystems. This project also identifies and prioritizes potential management responses to climate change (e.g. assisted colonization, fire management, land protection, dispersal corridors).
 
Anticipated products include: