CDFW Conservation Lecture Series Archive

An increased demand for renewable energy, sparked by both public consciousness and recent government mandates, makes it imperative that the impacts to wildlife of associated activities be investigated and mitigated when possible. Migratory birds represent a particularly vulnerable group to renewable energy development, due to their potential exposure to facilities (both wind and solar) along migratory routes. Prof. Harrigan will describe newly-developed genetic identification methods for migratory birds in a hotspot of renewable energy development (the California Desert Southwest) that can allow us to better understand the effects to migratory birds of renewable energy activities, and that can help inform future management and siting strategies. 

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Habitat restoration and the management of invasive species are important strategies for conserving biodiversity, especially in recently burned areas which are especially vulnerable to invasion. To help managers prioritize restoration locations, Conservation Biology Institute, Santa Barbara Botanic Garden, and United States Forest Service collaborated to create a new, replicable tool and approach for better combining field data with decision science. Because the data needs for this approach are high, especially in scaling it up to all fires, we experimented with tapping into the vast potential of community scientists (i.e. citizen scientists) and compared the resulting data with those collected by professionals. We then converted the research grade point data into population polygons, and combined with region-wide GIS data in a logic model that includes three criteria branches (sub-models): invasive species, erosion risk, and natural species regeneration capacity. For the invasive species branch, we programmed the Weed Heuristics Invasive Population Prioritization for Eradication Tool (WHIPPET) into an extension of the Environmental Evaluation Modeling System (EEMS), along with some additional, optional criteria, then looped it so it analyzes every species in a single model run and combines their results together. We also evaluated the community science contributions compared to professional expert contributions, and evaluated the decision support system with an expert-opinion based field assessment.

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Conservation efforts and other land management decisions are often intended to result in multiple benefits, but real or perceived trade-offs between goals, such as ecological and economic benefits, can contribute to conflict. To support knowledge-sharing across sectors and more informed decision-making, and with funding from the Proposition 1 Delta Water Quality and Ecosystem Restoration Program administered by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (Grant Agreement Number–Q1996022), we developed a flexible framework for evaluating multidimensional impacts of future landscape change in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. With input from local agencies and conservation organizations, we identified two major drivers of landscape change to evaluate: meeting habitat restoration objectives and continued expansion of perennial crops. We developed three scenarios representing the forecasted change resulting by 2050 from each driver independently, as well as a combination of the two, and we integrated multiple data sources and models to forecast the net impact of each scenario on metrics representing multiple categories of benefits: agricultural livelihoods, water quality, climate change resilience, and biodiversity support. We found that each scenario produced a mix of benefits and trade-offs, and the direction and magnitude of the projected impacts on each metric varied across scenarios. Our results provide a multidimensional understanding of the potential impacts of these scenarios to support more informed conservation and policy decision-making, while our framework is designed to be flexibly updated to incorporate additional metrics, data, and models, and to evaluate new scenarios. 

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