The goal of this project is to tap into recent advances in habitat mapping, threat assessment, and climate change projections to co-produce a scientifically sound multi-county habitat connectivity roadmap for the region spanning from the Mayacamas Mountains to the new Berryessa Snow Mountain National Monument in concert with local land managers.

Has prescribed fire removed enough small trees so that remaining trees have sufficient moisture to survive the extended drought? The answer to this question has profound implications for forest management over the coming decades as drought stress on our forests is expected to increase rapidly.

The severe drought extending from 2012 to 2015 across much of California provides a remarkable natural experiment to test whether prescribed fire creates conditions where forests are resistant to drought.

The project will develop a vulnerability assessment of Sierra Nevada meadows and develop a decision framework that provides guidance on where to focus restoration and conservation actions based on meadow vulnerability assessment results. This framework can then be incorporated into existing meadow prioritizations to allow practitioners to more rigorously consider climate impacts and adaptation options.

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.

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. The goal of this work is to work with the Central Valley Joint Venture to adapt the scenario modeling project results and modeling tool so they can be used to incorporate climate, urbanization, and water supply management impacts on waterbird habitats into its conservation planning.