Western Alaska LCC

Themes:

  • Coastal Systems
  • Freshwater Systems
  • Terrestrial Systems
  • Note: projects that are cross-system efforts are always encouraged

FY15 / FY16 / FY17 / FY18 / FY19 / FY20 / FY21
Terrestrial Systems / Planning Phase / Funding Year / Funding Year / Terrestrial Projects Completed
Coastal Systems / Planning Phase / Funding Year / Funding Year / Coastal Projects Completed
Freshwater Systems / Planning Phase / Funding Year / Funding Year
Terrestrial Systems / Planning Phase

During the planning phase for each Theme, priority topics, resources, and strategic activities to focus on during the next two-year program are identified. Topic development involves consideration of three components:

1. The priority information needs of decision-makers and priority outcomes of interest related to the theme. Specifically, the LCC should place priority on those topics and associated activities that allow the decision-makers to better understand the potential impacts of climate change, and their decisions, on the common outcomes of interest (Figure 3). Ideally, the needs should include both near- and long-term elements.

2. The associated priority science needs - major sources of uncertainty regarding impacts of landscape scale stressors, focusing on climate change, on priority outcomes of interest, or activities necessary to improve understanding of these impacts and meet the information needs of the decision-makers.

3. Strategic opportunities for leveraging and promoting collaborative partnerships in addressing the science and information needs – among partners operating within the LCC, with local communities, with neighboring LCCs, the Alaska CSC or other statewide entities and organizations, etc.

Operating Plan - Freshwater Systems Theme (FY14-15)

Goal I. Overarching goal of the Water Temperature Monitoring Network: Promote a better practical understanding of three main drivers of change in freshwater ecosystems and habitats at landscape to regional scales.

Categories of drivers of change:

1. Climate change

2. Physical and ecological processes (e.g., shifts in river courses or succession, respectively)

3. Human-induced changes (e.g., land-use change)

Sub-goals likely focus on impacts of water temperature changes related to:

1. Harvest management

2. Eco-tourism management (bear viewing, sport fishing etc.)

3. Water quality

4. Wetland sustainability

5. Ecological integrity

NW Boreal LCC

The Strategic Plan is organized into four Themes:

I. Working Together

II. Informing Landscape Conservation

III. Communication

IV. LCC Management

By December 2016, NW Boreal LCC will:

  • Identify landscape conservation goals for the LCC
  • Identify conservation priorities

Prioritized Information Needs by Category

  • Baseline
  • Monitoring
  • Understanding Relationships
  • Assess the vulnerability of forest species and communities to climate change, including vulnerability of species throughout food webs
  • Impact of climate change on vegetation composition and on subsistence resources
  • Investigate the effects of fire on ecosystems processes (e.g., severity, frequency, and timing) including the following: permafrost dynamics, water temperature and quality (turbidity, sedimentation, etc.), fish and wildlife habitats and populations, stand dynamics and vegetation change, changes in carbon storage and plant biomass, and subsistence and other consumptive uses of fish and wildlife
  • Projecting Future System States
  • Project changes in plant species, community composition/biomes, and ecosystem processes as a result of climate change
  • Project future vulnerability to land-use change, including projected changes to human access and resource exploitation (e.g. recreation, mining, timber extraction), and effects of cumulative disturbances in a changing climate on ecosystems, cultural resources, and focal species (e.g. , habitat fragmentation, location/spread of invasives)
  • Investigate how changes in temperature and precipitation regimes may affect vegetative productivity via temperature-induced drought stress, longer growing seasons, less water availability (higher evapotranspiration)
  • Adaptation Planning and Best Management Practices
  • Best management practices for protecting/informing landscape scale conservation, ecosystem function(e.g., wildlife corridors, road placement, buffers)
  • Develop management protocols for potential future invasive species
  • Develop inclusive decision-making processes for managing new or expanding land uses

Great Northern LCC

GNLCC Conservation Framework and Science Plan / Definition / Open Standards for the Practice of Conservation (Salafsky et al. 2008)
Goal / Any set of actions to achieve defined conservation goals and objectives; described as a chain linking targets, direct threats, contributing factors, and conservation actions
/ Conservation Project
Conservation Target / Species, community, ecosystem, or process
/ Focal Conservation Target
Stressor/Impact / Ultimate factors (usually social, economic, political, cultural) that enable direct threat; may be negative effect (commodity demand) or opportunity (planning goal)
/ Contributing Factor
Conservation Action / Intervention designed to reach an objective or goal; can be applied to contributing factor, direct threat, or to conservation target
/ Conservation Action
Attribute of a conservation target’s ecology; a degraded condition or “symptom”
/ Stress
Threat / The proximate human activity causing degradation of target. Threat may be historical, current, or likely to occur in future
/ Direct Threat

Goals: 4 Identified

Conservation Targets: 31 total selected in 2013

Taxa: 16 selected

Ecosystems/Habitats: 11 selected

Ecosystem Processes:

  • Aquatic connectivity
  • Connectivity
  • Natural fire regimes
  • Insects and forest pathogens

Stressors:

  • Land-use
  • Climate change
  • Invasive Species

Conservation Goal / Sage Steppe Ecotype & Forum / Rocky Mountain Ecotype & Forum / Columbia Basin Ecotype & Forum / Cascadia Ecotype & Forum
Large Intact Blocks / Greater-sage grouse
Pygmy rabbit
Sage Shrub/grasslands / Grizzly bear
Wolverine
Canada lynx / Salmon
Rivers
Sage shrub/grasslands / Wolverine
Canada lynx
Salmon
Woodland
Sub alpine
Connectivity / Permeability / Pronghorn
Mule deer
Sage shrub/grasslands
Riparian
Connectivity / Whitebark pine
Bull trout
Cutthroat trout
Trumpeter swan
Lewis’ woodpecker
Mule Deer
Grizzly bear
Wolverine
Canada lynx
Riparian
Alpine / Salmon
Steelhead
Lewis’ woodpecker
White-headed woodpecker
Mule deer
Riparian
River
Dry, fire adapted forest
Aquatic connectivity
Connectivity / Whitebark pine
Salmon
Steelhead
White-headed woodpecker
Mule deer
Riparian
Alpine
Aquatic Integrity / Wetlands
Rivers
Pothole Lakes / Cutthroat Trout
Bull Trout
Wetlands
Alpine Lakes / Salmon
Steelhead
Rivers
Wetlands / Salmon
Steelhead
Rivers
Wetlands
Disturbance within Future Range of Variability / Greater sage-grouse
Burrowing Owl
Natural fire regime
Insects and forest
pathogens / Whitebark pine
Lewis’ woodpecker
Woodland
Sub alpine
Fire Regime
Natural fire regime
Insects and forest pathogens / White-headed woodpecker
Lewis’ woodpecker
Wetlands
Watershed Uplands
Dry, fire adapted
forest
Natural fire regime
Insects and forest
pathogens / Whitebark pine
White-headed woodpecker
Dry, fire adapted forest
Woodland
Sub alpine
Natural fire regime
Insects and forest
pathogens

Landscape Integrity Index(will identify priority conservation threats in GNLCC, refine spatial data describing those threats and apply threat-and target-specific estimates of intensity to characterize the GNLCC landscape):

  • Level 1 –Residential and Commercial Development
  • 1.1 Housing and Urban Areas
  • 1.2 Commercial and Industrial Areas
  • 1.3 Tourism and Recreational Areas
  • Level 2 – Agriculture and Aquiculture
  • 2.1 Annul and Perennial Nontimber Crops
  • 2.2 Wood and Pulp Plantations
  • 2.3 Livestock Farming and Ranching
  • Level 3 – Energy Production and Mining
  • 3.1 Oil and Gas Drilling
  • 3.2 Mining and Quarrying
  • 3.3 Renewable Energy

Goal 1: Maintain Large Intact Blocks

Conservation Targets
Level 1 Threats / Level 2 Threats / Grizzly Bear / Connectivity
  1. Residential and Commercial Development
/ 1.1 Housing and Urban Areas / X / X
1.2 Commercial & Industrial Areas / X / X
1.3 Tourism & Recreation Areas / X
5. Biological resource use / 5.3 Logging and wood harvesting / X / X
5.4 Fishing & harvesting aquatic resources / X
7. Natural system modifications / 7.1 Fire & fire suppression / X
7.2 Dams & water management/use / X / X
11. Climate change & severe weather / 11.1 Habitat shifting & alteration / X
11.2 Droughts / X / X
11.3 Temperature extremes / X
11.4 Storms and flooding / X / X

Goal 1: Maintain Large Intact Blocks

Conservation Targets
Level 1 Actions / Level 2 Actions / Grizzly Bear / Connectivity
1. Land/water protection / 1.1 Site/area protection / X / X
1.2 Resource & habitat protection / X / X
  1. Land/water management
/ 2.1 Site/area management / X / X
2.2 Invasive/problem species control / X
2.3 Habitat & natural process restoration / X / X
  1. Species management
/ 3.1 Species management / X
3.2 Species recovery / X
3.3 Species reintroduction / X / X
ETC.

Cascadia Partner Forum Priority Topics:

  1. Habitat connectivity
  2. Water
  3. Iconic species: Wolverine and Sockeye salmon
  4. Access management

Great Basin LCC

Priority Topics:

  • Adaptation to changes in water availability, temperature, climate variability, and extreme climatic events - Climate-related effects in the Great Basin are the source of dramatic changes on the landscape including extreme growing season temperatures, changes in the level and timing of water availability, and substantially altered ecosystem conditions which impact ecological resources and human use.
  • Adaptation to changes in ecosystem structure, processes, function, and interactions - Climate change, habitat disruption from development, grazing, ground and surface water use, introduction of invasive species, disease and altered fire regimes all interact to change the landscape of the Great Basin.

Second-order Priority Topics (Ecosystem-based)

Ecosystem Categories
Climate-related Drivers / Alpine/ Subalpine / Forests & Woodlands / Shrublands / Rivers/
Streams/ Riparian / Lakes & reservoirs / Groundwater issues, wetlands, springs, playas
Surface water/groundwater interactions / X / X / X
Surface water availability / X / X
Fire (wildfire/ prescribed fire) / X / X
Invasive species / X / X
Insects, diseases, pathogens / X

Focal Topics and Activities:

  • Criteria for Focal Topics –
  • Timely – address pressing landscape-scale ecological opportunities and challenges
  • Achievable - with tasks scaled to available resources
  • Effective - enhance partnerships and outreach to further science needs
  • Relevant - address the LCC mission, goals and objectives
  • Unique - fill gaps in understanding and fill needs not otherwise addressed
  • Regionally Coordinated - align with goals and activities of LCC-partner organizations
  • Leveraged - help leverage future partner efforts within the LCC boundaries
  • Nationally Coordinated – complement the National Strategy

Categories of Potential Activities:

  • Knowledge Discovery - The LCC supports identifying and addressing gaps in data and understanding,conducting analysis to better understand ecosystem processes and interactions, developing new decision support tools, and developing and testing of new methods, tools and techniques for habitat conservation and restoration. Activities may be performed by the LCC directly or through support of unique projects.
  • Program Implementation - Implementation includes the strategic support of tools and trainings to advance restoration and conservation. Support may include in-kind staff resources and leveraging partners’ conservation investments. The LCC supports work in which it is uniquely positioned to meet unfulfilled conservation needs.
  • Information Stewardship and Synthesis - The LCC has a role in locating, assembling and analyzing previously existing data in novel ways to inform conservation. It supports the synthesis of information from multiple scientific disciplines, promotes development of science-based tools, and underwrites efforts to summarize the current state of scientific knowledge to inform natural and cultural resource managers.
  • Network Building - The LCC serves as a bridge between organizations with different mandates and resources, creating efficiencies and enhancing collaboration. Activities may support or contribute to sharing information and tools for science and conservation and comprehensive efforts between organizations to help the public understand ecological and cultural issues of the Great Basin.
  • Conservation Planning -The LCC will conduct or support adaptation planning efforts to assist management decisions related to uncertainties of future change. It will also contribute to other ecoregion-based conservation planning and design efforts that address priority species and habitats. Planning also includes working with tribes, and local and state governments, to better understand conditions and apply best practices for climate change adaptation.

California LCC

Conservation Goals:

•Conserve resilient, adaptable and self-sustaining aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems that maintain California’s biodiversity.

•Promote landscape-scale connectivity and ecological and physical processes that function within current and future ranges of variability to support diverse and thriving ecosystems.

•Ameliorate the impacts of climate change and other co-occurring stressors to ecosystems and species.

Key Science-Management Strategies

•Identify key science needs and improve delivery of usable scientific information to enable effective implementation of conservation strategies.

•Identify and facilitate efficient ways to engage partner collaboration.

•Support and promote place-based projects in ecoregions that demonstrate and advance conservation at a landscape scale. (Note: “Place-based” projects demonstrate or advance climate-smart conservation in a specific geographic location such as an Ecoregion or a landscape within an Ecoregion)

•Promote, support and coordinate cross-sectoral understanding of ecosystem processes and services to advance climate-smart conservation at a landscape scale.

Identified Actions:

  • Science Information Delivery and Exchange - Information that is accessible, relevant and useful to support resource manager decision making.
  • Decision-Support - Methods, tools and processes (e.g., vulnerability assessment, conservation design) that are relevant and useful to support resource manager decision making.
  • Climate-Smart Principles Strategies and Actions - New and promising conservation practices and “on-the-ground” tools for achieving clearly defined goals within a changing climate.

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