From Frog to Forest Conservation: Identifying Climate-Refugia for At-Risk Species in the Southern Sierra Nevada Forest

Abstract:

Incorporating climate change impacts into habitat restoration and species conservation continues to be difficult for natural resource managers for many reasons, including: 1) To date, stressors such as urbanization, agriculture, catastrophic fires, drought, and invasive species have the largest impact on the demographics and persistence of relatively short-lived, at-risk species; and 2) Most agencies’ statutory requirements, missions, and funding allocations are not aligned with climate change adaptation/mitigation or managing for decadal scales. Efforts to bridge the gap between managing for the current priorities and long-term climatic changes are needed. To accomplish this, short-term conservation efforts can be combined with climate adaptation frameworks such as climate refugia design to increase resilience to current stressors and future climatic changes. This work interfaces with on-going regional and national research to operationalize climate change refugia conservation into state and federal management actions by assembling scientists and decision-makers in a collaborative conservation planning and implementation effort.

Several species in the Southern Sierra Nevada are at-risk, such as Foothill-Yellow-Legged Frog, Western Pond Turtle, California Spotted Owls, and Pacific Fisher, and require some immediate actions to protect the remaining populations. At the same time, climate change impacts such as heat stress, declining snowpack, and catastrophic fires pose an additional risk to their long-term persistence in these forests. To address these multiple management needs and objectives, this project incorporates the latest science and practice of decision-analysis with novel conservation science. Here we present preliminary results of this collaborative approach and the resulting conservation design. We will emphasize how to achieve these multiple spatial and temporal management objectives and present early results of a spatial design for habitat conservation and restoration that maximizes short-term conservation needs and long-term climate resilience.