California’s Central Valley supports over 20 endemic, special-status species associated with vernal pools and seasonal wetlands, yet loss of 90% of the original extent of these habitats has resulted in highly-fragmented, remnant pools of varying habitat quality. Managers need science support to inform conservation priorities and possible enhancement of remaining pools, particularly since projected increases in temperature and decreases in precipitation may dry ponds to an extent that reduces or precludes their habitat value.

The Pacific Flyway Shorebird Survey is a coordinated multi-partner research and monitoring program led by Point Blue Conservation Science designed to guide the management and conservation of wintering shorebirds in the Pacific Flyway, a migration corridor stretching from Alaska to Chile. The first phase of the effort has focused on California's Central Valley, San Francisco Bay Area, and the coastal regions of California and northern Baja California, Mexico. These regions provide critical habitat for large populations of migrating and wintering shorebirds in the Pacific Flyway.

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.

This project will help the Central Valley Joint Venture (CVJV) track gains and losses of key bird and waterfowl habitats at a landscape scale. This will allow the CVJV to effectively monitor and evaluate habitats essential to conservation planning for wildlife species. This work is important for identifying, assembling, and analyzing data for key habitats of concern and will provide a foundation for future monitoring.

This project researched the expected variation in avian demographic responses to environmental change across a gradient of species and landscapes from the San Francisco Bay to the Central Valley of California. Project partners used two avian taxa, waterfowl and songbirds, as case studies for the integration of long-term demographic data with climate change variables.

Climate change and rangeland scientists, ranchers, and land managers have worked together to develop six scenarios to address a primary management question: How can we maintain viable ranchland and their ecosystem services in light of future integrated threats? The scenarios represent alternative futures of climate/land use/hydrological change for the California Rangeland Conservation Coalition focus area (the Central Valley, surrounding foothills, and most of the southern Inner Coast Range of California).