Protecting and restoring habitat and mitigating movement barriers are highly effective but costly conservation actions, requiring managers to be strategic in where they implement them to deliver the greatest and most enduring benefits with limited resources. However, managers are challenged to optimally site these actions, in part, because data on the status and trends of habitat and connectivity needed to help prioritize the landscape for conservation is increasingly becoming outdated given recent widespread disturbances (e.g., wildfire). Further, the potential risk of climate change (e.g., species range shifts) to diminish the future value of today’s conservation investments is often unknown. This lack of an up-to-date, climate-aware, regional-scale perspective hinders achievement of regional conservation goals for at-risk species, particularly in highly dynamic landscapes like Cascadia. TerrAdapt monitors environmental change, projects potential future threats, and assesses potential impacts to species and ecosystems. This information helps managers identify key areas on the landscape that are most likely to be wise investments for conservation actions to increase resilience of the region’s natural systems.

TerrAdapt is a cloud-based workflow that automates the production of many data products used to guide land management decisions. In this workflow, we programmatically automated the entire process of model training, model projection, and production of monitoring and evaluation products in a cloud-based computing environment that is linked to required dynamic data sources. The workflow is centered around a set of conservation targets defined by regional stakeholders and co-produced with regional experts. To-date, TerrAdapt performs monitoring and assessment in Cascadia for 5 species (grizzly bear, wolverine, fisher, lynx, and greater sage-grouse) and 4 ecosystems (temperate forest, montane wet forest, montane dry forest, and shrubsteppe). For each target, we use common methods for species distribution modeling and connectivity modeling to map habitat and connectivity based on available observational data provided by partners and from environmental variables (e.g., climate data, topography, land cover, forest structure, etc.).

TerrAdapt can be used to monitor environmental change across Washington and southern British Columbia, assess impacts to at-risk species and ecosystems, and identify spatial priority areas for implementation of conservation actions to increase regional-scale resilience to biodiversity threats (e.g., our expanding human footprint and climate change). TerrAdapt.org currently offers users two resources to meet these planning needs. The Map page provides an interactive map of annual data products from 1990-present, including monitoring of environmental conditions (e.g., land cover, forest structure, ecological disturbance, habitat and connectivity), projection of future conditions (e.g., projected range shifts and climatic refugia), and spatial priority areas for implementation of conservation actions (e.g., habitat protection, habitat restoration, and mitigating movement barriers) to increase resilience for select species and ecosystems. The Dashboard page provides users with a tool to quantify change between two historical or future time periods over a user-selected area of interest, including plots and maps quantifying annual or decadal change in the user-selected theme (options include the same layers shown on the map page).

Monitoring Mexican Spotted Owl Habitat. Scientists from the Climate Impacts Group, US Forest Service and US Fish and Wildlife Service collaborated to develop an automated monitoring tool that uses remote sensing and cloud computing technologies to track changes in Mexican spotted owl (Strix occidentalis lucida) nesting and roosting habitat across Arizona and New Mexico from 1986 to present.

The Blueprint for a Resilient Cascadia identifies key climate adaptation actions for facilitating coordinated climate adaptation across the political and jurisdictional boundaries that divide the Cascadia region.

Photo credit Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, Michael Schroeder