Climate Impacts Group

The large-landscape conservation planning tool has spun into an independent non-profit, with CIG’s Andrew Shirk at the helm

When Andrew Shirk and two colleagues first conceived of the large-landscape conservation planning tool, TerrAdapt, in 2018, they knew they were starting something special.

Shirk, research scientist at the Climate Impacts Group, Carly Vynne, biodiversity and climate team lead at RESOLVE, and Gregory Kehm, principal advisor at Gregory Kehm Associates, knew they wanted to help fill a gap in regional-scale conservation planning. “Managers often have great local information to inform natural resource management within their boundaries, but rarely have access to the big picture regional-scale view needed to cooperatively manage the resource across boundaries,” Shirk says. “We were excited to help them monitor status and trends and project future threats to the species and habitats they manage, at scale.”

Shirk, Vynne and Kehm didn’t know yet just how significant TerrAdapt would become, or that in four years, they would develop a non-profit organization to support application of the conservation tool in regions around the world. Now, after more than a decade as a research scientist at the Climate Impacts Group, Shirk is leaving to lead the non-profit organization TerrAdapt.org full-time.

Meade Krosby, senior scientist at the Climate Impacts Group who has worked closely with Shirk on TerrAdapt and other projects related to large-landscape conservation says the team is sad to lose Andrew. “At the same time, we’re proud to have been part of TerrAdapt’s beginnings,” she says. “The development of a TerrAdapt non-profit is a win for the conservation community and a huge moment of pride for everyone who has been involved in the project.”

TerrAdapt was developed to meet dual challenges posed by climate change and human development: One is that landscapes are often changing more rapidly than traditional monitoring techniques can track; another is that conservation practitioners need current information about the landscape and future threats to guide and coordinate conservation decisions in this changing world. TerrAdapt uses Google Earth Engine and other cloud computing technologies to “provide managers with up-to-date regional-scale information so they make decisions based on current conditions, not the landscape as it was a decade or more ago,” Shirk says.

As species move to find more suitable habitats in the face of climate change and our expanding human footprint, decision makers need to not only act quickly, but work in tandem. “The problem is larger than any one land manager can track and solve on their own,” Shirk explains. TerrAdapt recognizes the need to think and act at broader scales than in the past, by painting a ‘big picture’ perspective of the landscape that can guide local decision-making. While other conservation tools exist, no other tool brings together so much information relevant to managing species habitats into a single portal and identifies key areas that are priorities for managers to take actions to increase resilience to threats, as TerrAdapt does.

“The ultimate goal for TerrAdapt is to make a difference on the ground to improve the viability of species and habitats threatened by climate change and our expanding human footprint,” Shirk says.

TerrAdapt has grown impressively since its inception, adding more capability and updated data products every year since 2019. And although they’ve only recently started helping conservation practitioners apply the tool to their work, they’re already getting a sense of what those applications will look like. Recently, the team worked with the US Forest Service to develop and implement models that are helping manage Mexican spotted owl habitat in Arizona and New Mexico.

The next steps for the TerrAdapt tool include working with the Washington Shrubsteppe Restoration and Resilience Initiative and the Aldo Leopold Wilderness Research Institute to monitor conditions for shrubsteppe and pronghorn antelope, respectively. The team will also focus on improving the core technologies of TerrAdapt, thanks to funding from the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife.

Responding to TerrAdapt’s impressive growth, Shirk and partners decided to develop a non-profit with the conservation tool at the center. “We felt like the non-profit status was necessary to realize all the potential of our work,” Shirk said, adding that the move will help TerrAdapt develop a fiscal and organizational structure. The non-profit will build and support regional applications of TerrAdapt, to monitor landscape change, project future impacts of climate change and prioritize locations for conservation actions to increase resilience to threats. The group is expanding the areas where they work: talking with several state and federal agencies in the Pacific Northwest, and scoping new projects in Southeast Asia and South America.

Currently, the tool and organization is managed by about 10 people working part-time on the project – all from different organizations across the US and Canada. The organization is led by a three-person executive team, as well as an eight-member board of directors and a science advisory team. The executive team includes Shirk as executive director, and Carly Vynne and Gregory Kehm as co-directors. In January, Shirk will leave the Climate Impacts Group to focus on the non-profit.

More than 13 years ago, Shirk came to the Climate Impacts Group after earning his master’s degree at Western Washington University. At the Climate Impacts Group, Shirk has mapped habitat and connectivity for many iconic Northwest species, including grizzly bear, wolverine, lynx and sage grouse.

“Andrew has brought ground-breaking technology to the sticky problem of conserving wildlife in rapidly changing landscapes,” Krosby says.  “His impact goes well beyond the Northwest to the conservation community at large — we are so excited to see this impact grow as Andrew devotes himself to TerrAdapt full-time.”

Shirk will continue to collaborate with the Climate Impacts Group on TerrAdapt and other projects.

“We’re excited to continue working with the Climate Impacts Group,” Shirk says. “We’re already making plans to collaborate on implementing a joint monitoring and assessment program as part of the larger Cascadia Partner Forum’s Blueprint for a Resilient Cascadia.”