In California, a day’s drive can take a visitor from record-setting desert heat to glaciated peaks to temperate rainforests with the world’s tallest trees. This astounding climatic and landscape diversity has helped create a biodiversity hotspot. California is also an economic hotspot – the 6th largest economy in the world – and is home to nearly 40 million people. The demand for land for new development and farms, along with accelerating climate change, puts tremendous stress on ecosystems, and the benefits they provide.
The state’s legacy of conservation has created a network of natural and working lands that benefit people by supplying clean water, capturing carbon, and directly contributing to the state’s economic and cultural vitality through recreation, tourism, and agricultural production. Conservancy scientists work across the spectrum of ecosystem types and human land uses, to advance conservation goals that also contribute to the well-being of people in those places.
Nearly half of California is protected in some land status that prevents most kinds of intensive human land… >>
A third of California is privately-owned forestland, woodland or grassland. From redwood forests on the north coast to… >>
California is the leading agricultural state in the country and it’s agriculture generates more than $45 billion annually.… >>
With California’s population on track to reach 50 million people, the demand for energy, water, and land will… >>
Christopher J. Lortie, Maria Florencia Miguel, Alessandro Filazzola, Harry Scott Butterfield
Climate change, drought, and water scarcity are driving major land transformations in dryland ecosystems globally. Historically these ecosystems have been disproportionately degraded due to widespread agricultural conversion. Because of these pressures, there are significant opportunities for rewilding and restoration of these dryland ecosystems. This global…
D. Richard Cameron, Carrie A. Schloss, David M. Theobald, Scott A. Morrison
Protecting or restoring habitat connectivity in landscapes undergoing rapid environmental change requires multiple conservation and restoration strategies. These strategies have different risk profiles, costs, and require various types of expertise to conduct. This diversity in landscape context and strategic approach requires more nuance than traditional…
Carrie Schloss, Dick Cameron, Elizabeth McGovern
As declines in biodiversity are further exacerbated by changing climate conditions, it is critical to ensure that plants and animals are resilient to the effects of climate change. This means protecting the places plants and animals are already thriving, important movement routes, and ensuring that…
Hyeyeong Choe, Annika T.H. Keeley, D. Richard Cameron, Melanie Gogol-Prokurat, Lee Hannah, Patrick R. Roehrdanz, Carrie A. Schloss, James H. Thorne
Planning for connectivity conservation often relies on modeled movement routes. However, these pathways can be sensitive to the conservation objective, modeling approach, analysis tool, and assumptions. The authors compared four different approaches to planning for connectivity for climate adaptation in California. Three or more models…
Carrie Schloss, Liz O’Donoghue, Dan Rademacher, Patric Huber, Jodi McGraw, Kim Becerril, Janine Knapp
Every year, infrastructure agencies and developers spend hundreds of millions of dollars to mitigate for impacts to sensitive species and habitats. These mitigation sites are often piecemeal projects, which can result in islands of mitigation. Regional advance mitigation programs seek to change this paradigm so…
Carrie Schloss, Dick Cameron, Charlotte Stanley, Megan Webb
In October 2020, Governor Newsom signed an executive order committing to protect 30% of California by 2030. This could put California on a trajectory to stem the biodiversity crisis. But, where this touches down matters. This storymap makes the case for conducting a planning process…
Carrie A. Schloss, D. Richard Cameron, Brad H. McRae, David M. Theobald, and Aaron Jones
Plant and animal species are already shifting their ranges in response to a changing climate. Maintaining connectivity between present habitat and suitable habitat in the future will become increasingly important to ensure lasting protection for biodiversity. Connectivity that facilitates climate adaptation requires pathways with "stepping…
The Nature Conservancy, AECOM
With increase in devasting storms and wildfires due to climate change, we need solutions to help mitigate the impact. Traditionally, “gray” or “hard” infrastructure solutions that rely on engineering projects using concrete and steel have dominated efforts to manage risk and mitigate hazard impacts…
Roland Geyer, Jenna Gavigan, Alexis M. Jackson, Vienna R. Saccomanno, Sangwon Suh, Mary G. Gleason
Synthetic microfibers are the most prevalent type of microplastic and apparel washing is a major source of microfiber pollution. Using California as a case study to estimate the magnitude of microfiber emissions and evaluate mitigation approaches, the authors estimate that in 2019 over 4,850,000 pounds (2.2…
Kate Longley-Wood, Mary Engels , Kevin D. Lafferty, John P. McLaughlin, Alex Wegmann
Native forests on tropical islands have been displaced by non-native species, leading to calls for their transformation. Simultaneously, there is increasing recognition that tropical forests can help sequester carbon that would otherwise enter the atmosphere. At Palmyra Atoll, efforts are underway to transform the rainforest…
The Oren Pollak Memorial Research Fund was established in 2000 in memory of Dr. Oren Pollak, a leading grassland ecologist and restoration pioneer, as well as an ardent champion and mentor for grassland ecology students. As The Nature Conservancy’s lead ecologist in California in the…
Brynn Pewtherer, Scott Morrison
The Nature Conservancy deploys science to help overcome major challenges facing people and nature. In today’s fast-paced world, turning threats to nature into opportunities for conservation requires agility. The Conservation Science Catalyst Fund enables our science team to mobilize quickly — and produce the information…
Case study by: K.D. Holl, G.H. Golet
Advancing conservation requires understanding the constraints imposed on natural systems by human societies. This understanding typically comes from engagement with local stakeholders, as opposed to from scholastic training. A recent textbook on restoration ecology by Karen Holl seeks to alleviate this problem by providing real-world…
O.J. Robinson, V. Ruiz-Gutierrez, M.D. Reynolds, G.H. Golet, M. Strimas-Mackey and D. Fink
Information on species’ habitat associations and distributions, across wide spatial and temporal scales, is fundamental for guiding conservation. Yet these data are often in short supply. In recent years citizen science data, such as that derived from eBird, has increasingly become available to fill…
Case study by: Khara Strum (Audubon California), Kristin Sesser (Point Blue Conservation Science), Greg Golet (TNC)
This case study communicates lessons learned by TNC and partners from years of research and monitoring of habitat enhancement projects in Sacramento Valley rice agriculture. It is a contribution to the Shorebird Management Manual that was developed by Manomet with guidance from shorebird…
Moses Katkowski, H. Scott Butterfield, John Knapp, Kelly Easterday, Laura Riege, Mark Reynolds
This 5-year action plan describes the vision for invasive plant species mapping, monitoring and treatment at the Jack and Laura Dangermond Preserve in Sourthern California. The plan is adaptive and will updated as new species, management approaches (including new and emerging technologies), and monitoring results…
Maria C Viteri, Mary Allison Stegner, Elizabeth A. Hadly
Biodiversity monitoring is a core part of conservation practice, however all sampling methods include biases. In particular, small mammal live-trapping, the field standard, produces highly skewed results and is both invasive and labor-intensive. The identification of small mammal bones from pellets produced by raptors, or…
Kelsey Jessup, Sophie S. Parker, John M. Randall, Brian S. Cohen, Rowan Roderick-Jones, Shona Ganguly, Jill Sourial
This paper presents results from Planting Stormwater Solutions, part of TNC’s Urban Conservation work in Los Angeles. The authors develop a methodology to prioritize siting of vegetated nature-based solutions for stormwater capture so that these projects maximize benefits to biological diversity, social and public…
P. Manley, K. Wilson, N. Povak
The Framework for Resilience offers a shared vision for resilience that recognizes the interdependent nature of social and ecological values. These values are described by ten pillars that represent the desired outcomes of landscape resilience. Each of the pillars provide metrics for assessing landscape conditions…
Kristen N. Wilson, Patricia N. Manley
Climate change, high-severity wildfire, and drought threaten the resilience of forests and communities in the Sierra Nevada. The Tahoe–Central Sierra Initiative (TCSI) is a partnership of state and federal agencies, non-governmental organizations, the timber industry, and researchers that was established to improve resilience to climate…