Climate-Smart Conservation Strategy Brief

This brief lays out 6 major principles of climate-smart conservation which PRBO is using to support our highest priority: to reduce the negative impacts of accelerating habitat degradation, climate change and other stressors on nature for wildlife and people. 

A Climate Change Vulnerability Assessment of California’s At-Risk Birds

 Similar to other lists of at-risk species, our vulnerability assessment identifies species most in need of conservation action in order to facilitate tailored conservation strategies, optimize and prioritize resource allocation, and build common understanding of impacts and management options. 

San Francisco Bay Sea-Level Rise Website - Online Decision Support Tool for Tidal Marsh Conservation Planning

 PRBO Conservation Science and partners assessed the impacts of sea-level rise and suspended sediment availability on San Francisco Bay’s tidal marshes and bird community.  Results are available via this online decision support tool

This tool helps users to identify areas both vulnerable and resilient to future sea-level rise and to make informed decisions about adaptation planning, restoration potential, and land acquisition to ensure maximum benefits  for wildlife and human communities.

This is a collaborative project of the CA Landscape Conservation Cooperative and the Bay Area Ecosystems Climate Change Consortium.

Our Coast Our Future: Planning for Sea Level Rise and Storm Hazards Along the SF Bay Area's Outer Coast

 Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary, PRBO Conservation Science, U.S. Geological Survey, and the National Park Service (Pacific West Region) have teamed up to help address the affects of sea level rise and storm hazards from Half Moon Bay to Bodega Head. 

The project goal is to provide Bay Area natural resource managers, local governments and others with science-based, decision-support tools to plan for and respond to sea level rise and storm hazards along the region's outer coast.

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Applied California Current Ecosystem Studies (ACCESS)

The Applied California Current Ecosystem Studies (ACCESS) is a partnership of PRBO Conservation Science, Cordell Bank and Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuaries NOAA that supports marine wildlife conservation and healthy marine ecosystems in northern and central California by conducting ocean research to inform resource managers, policy makers and conservation partners in order to advance adaptation to change.

Developing ecosystem indicators of ocean conditions and environmental change

 PRBO is testing the use of common zooplankton species such as copepods and krill to develop indicators of ocean conditions and change, and has provided seabird and copepod indicators to the state of California indicator reports to guide adaptation (CA EPA).

Determining Climate Change Indicators for the North-Central California Coast

 This is a project of USGS Western Ecological Research Center, NOAA’s Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary and the Bay Area Ecosystems Climate Change Consortium.

The indicators will be integrated into a collaborative monitoring plan to help track and address the effects of climate change. This first-of-its-kind effort within the National Marine Sanctuary System will produce a regionally-specific set of indicators to ultimately help inform management decisions.

Pacific Flyway Shorebird Survey

 Providing baseline data and ongoing evaluation of wintering shorebird trends and habitat use to guide management and inform conservation actions in response to current and future land-use and climate-related changes.

Ranching for Watersheds, Carbon and Wildlife

Recent efforts have demonstrated that a prescribed set of ranching, grazing and restoration practices can significantly enhance the water storage, carbon sequestration and wildlife values of rangeland soils in California, with significant economic benefits as well.  Researchers at University of California-Berkeley estimate that applying some of these practices on all of California’s rangelands could sequester the total annual carbon emissions of the entire state.  While implementing such practices on every acre of rangeland may be infeasible, PRBO has begun a program to expand the use of these practices on grazed grasslands throughout the Bay Area and the foothills of the Central Valley. 

Adapting and Implementing Riparian Restoration Designs to Address Climate Change

 PRBO Conservation Science developed a process to adapt horticultural restoration designs to address the effects of predicted climate change and associated uncertainty.    In particular, the designs (1) maximize the number of months that resources (cover, food) would be available for wildlife, (2) increase the capacity of the restoration to rebound from fire and longer and/or more frequent periods of drought, and (3) ensure there is adequate redundancy of design components so that the resulting project will be resilient enough to survive a wide range of climatic predictions. 

PRBO and the Marin Resource Conservation District (Marin County, California) have already implemented two climate change-adapted riparian restoration designs and are making comparisons of feasibility and cost relative to “traditional” designs.  We are also evaluating project performance by examining plant survival and bird response over time.

Restoring the Farallon National Wildlife Refuge to Sustain Seabird Populations

 The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, PRBO Conservation Science, and Island Conservation are partnering together to restore the listed Ashy-Storm Petrel and other native seabird populations on the islands by removing invasive house mice to provide safer breeding habitat for seabirds and other native animals. Once invasive species are removed from islands, island ecosystems can often recover quickly and be more resilient to increasing climate change impacts.

Adapting artificial seabird breeding habitat for Extreme Heat Events at the Farallon National Wildlife Refuge

 PRBO Conservation Science, in partnership with the US Fish and Wildlife Service Farallon National Wildlife Refuge, assessed microclimate differences between natural and artificial seabird breeding habitat and implemented changes to nest boxes to reduce impacts of extreme temperatures on Cassin’s auklets on Southeast Farallon Island. 

Cassin’s Auklets are krill-eating seabirds and indicators of return rates of Central California’s commercially-valuable salmon as well as indicators of environmental change in coastal California. 

Artificial nest boxes are crucial to effective seabird restoration because they create additional habitat to help restore a threatened populations while also facilitating monitoring of individuals.  However, increasing extreme temperature events caused mortality and heat stress on birds using this artificial habitat in 2008 and 2009, during extreme high air temperature events.  New nest box design is being implemented that reduces temperatures to more closely mimic the protection to extreme heat provided by natural nesting boroughs on the island.

Click here to learn more about our research on the Farallon Islands.