Central Valley biodiversity is highly vulnerable to numerous stressors including continuing land use changes, increasing temperatures, drought, and loss of important habitats. This project, in partnership with natural resource managers and scientists, identifies climate-smart conservation actions that will maximize the adaptive capacity of priority species, habitats, and ecosystems to support an ecologically connected Central Valley landscape. 

This project will conduct a vulnerability assessment, develop climate‐smart adaptation strategies and actions, and generate implementation plans for focal habitats of the South and Central Coast regions of the CALCC, with a specific focus on four Southern California National Forests (Angeles, San Bernardino, Cleveland, Los Padres). This effort will provide information and tools for USFS planning and management (e.g., NEPA analyses, Forest Plan Revisions, Climate Change Performance Scorecard – “Scorecard”) and other natural

Wetland heterogeneity along the Southern California coast combined with the variety of infrastructure constraints and other anthropogenic stressors makes it difficult for managers to know which tools to use and how to best apply them to inform restoration and management for their specific circumstance. This project develops a method for managers to assess climate change vulnerabilities at specific wetland locations.

When restored, this floodplain corridor on the Upper Pajaro River will connect 2 million acres of core habitat in adjacent uplands and link exceptionally rich natural communities in three climatically diverse coastal mountain ranges. This project will develop a suite of climate-smart restoration practices in the Central Coast Ecoregion and pilot those practices on the Upper Pajaro River as a case study.

Resource managers realize the immediate threats of climate change to the resilience, health, and ecosystem services of the special coastal and ocean places they protect, yet the resources to develop appropriate management options to prepare for and respond to a changing environment are limited.