With California’s population on track to reach 50 million people, the demand for energy, water, and land will continue to grow. Climate change will compound the strains on society and the environment. Most of this population growth will be centered in larger cities that are already struggling to maintain aging transportation and water infrastructure.
But nature can play an important role in the redevelopment of these systems. Wetlands treat storm water, oyster reefs buffer storm surges, and shade trees reduce heat, providing the benefits of traditional infrastructure while adding scenery and wildlife habitat.
Conservancy scientists are demonstrating how society can minimize trade-offs between development and conservation through innovative regional planning. And by showing what nature can do for cities–and what cities can do for nature–we can develop models for improving the quality of urban life, with broad application on an urbanizing planet.
The Nature Conservancy: Erica Brand, Laura Crane, Dick Cameron, Energy and Environmental Economics: Grace C. Wu, Nick Schlag
Integrating ecological data into long-term energy planning is critical to meet both California’s long term energy and conservation goals. This report assesses the potential trade-offs associated with renewable energy build-out by evaluating the land and water use implications and cost of a range of potential…
Katie Andrews, Megan Webb, Robin Cox
This interactive webmap takes a multimedia approach to showcase the Conservancy’s conservation legacy in Marin County, California. Eleven achievements are profiled with photographs and summaries that provide a “then and now” perspective.
M.L. Mann, P. Berck, M.A. Moritz, E. Batllori, J.G. Baldwin, C.K. Gately, D.R. Cameron
Between 1940 and 2000, nearly 10 million housing units were constructed in California. This new development led to increased interaction between human and natural communities. Tha authors of this paper modeled the extent and intensity of future housing settlements between 2000 and 2050 using three…
Strategies for preserving the Earth’s biodiversity that can be employed within cities are likely to become more common as urban areas continue to increase in size and number. Progress towards the development of effective conservation methods for urban areas is impeded by several factors, including…
H.B. Ernest, T.W. Vickers, S.A. Morrison, M.R. Buchalski, W.M. Boyce
Highly fragmented landscapes can pose myriad threats to wide-ranging species like mountain lions. Coastal southern California has long been the focus of research into demographics, genetics, and movement patterns of lions, in large part to inform conservation planning. This paper presents genetic data, which combine…
Butterfield, H.S., D. Cameron, E. Brand, M. Webb, E. Forsburg, M. Kramer, E. O’Donoghue, L. Crane
The Western San Joaquin Valley Least Conflict Solar Energy Assessment characterizes the land use constraints and opportunities associated with siting solar energy facilities in the Western San Joaquin Valley (WSJV). Because the San Joaquin Valley currently has no official process to develop a conservation and…
Butterfield, H.S., D. Cameron, E. Brand, M. Webb, E. Forsburg, M. Kramer, E. O’Donoghue, L. Crane
A Conservancy analysis of the western Mojave Desert identified where human activities had degraded the conservation value of lands making them potentially low impact locations for development of solar facilities. In this assessment authors applied that same approach in the Western San Joaquin Valley—an area with…
This webmap is a product of The Nature Conservancy’s 2013 Western San Joaquin Valley (WSJV) Least Conflict Solar Energy Assessment which characterizes the land use and conservation constraints and opportunities associated with siting solar energy facilities in the WSJV in California. This approach identified areas with high…
Cameron, D., S. Parker, B. Cohen, J. Randall, B. Christian, J. Moore, L. Crane, S. A. Morrison
Industrial-scale renewable energy generation facilities can have sizable footprints and therefore significant impact on the conservation values of a landscape. This assessment focused on a region experiencing intense development pressure, the western Mojave Desert, to highlight how facilities could be sited to have lower impact…
Cameron, D.R., B.S. Cohen, S.A. Morrison
California, like many regions in the world, needs to plan for emissions reductions and domestic clean energy. Ideally, that would be done in a way that is strategic, not reactionary. Through science-based landscape planning for conservation and energy, the trade-offs between energy development and habitat…
Small preserves are difficult to manage, but they can be important for rare plant protection. The article outlines the management challenges faced by small preserves, provides a case study from The San Bernardino Mountains of southern California, and suggests strategies and management recommendations for rare…
This map and a series of others in the Conservancy's 2010 Mojave Desert Ecoregional Assessment have played a guiding role in siting—and mitigating the impacts of—renewable energy development throughout the Mojave Desert. The Assessment helped shape the Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan. Completed and signed in 2016, the…
John M. Randall, Sophie S. Parker, James Moore, Brian Cohen, Laura Crane, Bill Christian, Dick Cameron, Jason B. Mackenzie, Kirk Klausmeyer, Scott Morrison
Regional conservation planning is critical to inform land and resource use decisions. The Mojave Desert Ecoregional Assessment represents an important advance in such planning, because of how its output characterized not just areas of high conservation value, but how conservation values distributed and graded across…
This dataset is a product of the Mojave Desert Ecoregional Assessment and characterizes the distribution of biodiversity conservation values and land disturbance to help inform regional land-use and conservation investment. The data were grouped into four categories of conservation value: Ecologically Core, Ecologically Intact,…
CL Burdett, KR Crooks, DM Theobald, KR Wilson, EE Boydston, LM Lyren, RN Fisher, TW Vickers, SA Morrison, WM Boyce
Long-term studies of animal movement can generate data that allow for robust modeling of habitat use by the species. This study characterizes and maps the distribution of habitat for mountain lions in coastal southern California, and combines those data with models of projected urban growth…
Scott Morrison, Walter Boyce
Critical for biodiversity conservation is the retention of ecological connectivity in the landscape, so that wildlife—and the natural processes that sustain wildlife—can move around. Ideally, that cohesion would be protected by conserving landscape-scale linkages—large swaths of relatively intact habitat joining core reserve lands. Where linkages…
Douglas T. Bolger, Andrew V. Suarez, Kevin R. Crooks, Scott A. Morrison, Ted J. Case
Habitat fragmentation ushers in a wide array of ecological changes, and understanding the drivers and impacts of those changes is critical for conservation management. This study examines an often overlooked suite of taxa – arthropods – and describes patterns of abundance and diversity across a…
