Terrestrial | Technology | Science | Publications & Reports

Applying both landscape genomic and ecological niche model predictions to inform conservation strategies of a California foundational oak species

Ryan C. Buck, H. Scott Butterfield, Elizabeth H. T. Hiroyasu, , Jeanette Howard, Zachary Principe, M. Brooke Rose, Victoria L. Sork

Oaks are a foundational species across the globe, supporting the survival of thousands of plant and animal species. In the last drought in California, there was significant oak dieback and, coupled with reduced recruitment and regeneration and continued climate-induced stress there was real concern about the future of oaks and oak woodland systems. To address that, The Nature Conservancy partnered with UCLA to use an emerging technology, genomics, to assess current and projected future climate resiliency of blue oak, one of the two most prolific oak species across California. In this paper, we used genomics along with niche modeling to identify those areas in California and across TNC’s conservation estate most resilient to future climate change – in the Central Coast, specifically the southern part of the San Andreas Corridor and at TNCs Las Piletas Ranch Preserve – as well as those areas under the most threat – along the Sierra Nevada Basin including at TNCs Randall and Dye Creek Preserves – and to provide potential strategies for seed transfer and restoration to help these foundational species survive. We showed that in areas threatened by future climates, we can increase resiliency by using seed sources pre-adapted to future climates. TNC is now using these data to inform what we protect, how we manage our oak landscapes, and how we can increase the likelihood of restoration success.