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San Francisco Estuary Institute and Partnership

Tidal marsh habitat is at high risk of severe loss and degradation as a result of human uses, sea-level rise, changes in salinity, and more frequent and extreme storms projected by climate models. Availability of habitat is a prerequisite for long-term viability of marsh bird populations and this has been modeled in a companion California Landscape Conservation Cooperative project (Veloz et al. 2011). However, habitat alone will ensure neither resilience nor recovery of depleted and threatened populations. To provide management guidance to reduce species’ vulnerability and recover depleted populations, we developed interactive population dynamic models for four key marsh species: Black Rail, Clapper Rail, Common...
This project designed a monitoring program and protocol to detect the effects of climate change on tidal marsh bird population abundance and distribution. It is a companion to “Tidal Marsh Bird Population and Habitat Assessment for San Francisco Bay under Future Climate Change Conditions” and will build on its products, enabling evaluation of the long-term viability of four tidal-marsh bird species threatened by impacts of climate change: Clapper Rail, Black Rail, Common Yellowthroat, and Song Sparrow (three endemic subspecies: San Pablo, Suisun, and Alameda). Information is available through the California Avian Data Center. See also: http://data.prbo.org/apps/sfbslr/index.php?page=lcc-page
The vulnerability of species at risk from climate change is recognized as an important issue in California as well as globally. Assessing vulnerability requires information on the long-term viability of populations and understanding the influences on that viability, due to environmental drivers as well as impacts of management action. We developed population-dynamic models to assess and better understand the long-term population viability of four key, tidal marsh-dependent species, under a variety of environmental conditions, including climate change impacts. In the San Francisco Estuary, each species is represented by one or more subspecies that is entirely or mainly confined to the tidal marsh habitat in the region:...
Priority areas for conservation of tidal marsh birds given current and future environmental conditions. Maps were created using Zonation, a spatial conservation planning software tool that can take into account multiple species and scenarios to create a hierarchical prioritization of the landscape.The current (2010) and future (2030-2110) prioritization is based upon distribution and abundance models for five tidal marsh bird species which utilized avian observation data (2000 - 2009), a marsh accretion model, and physical variables (e.g. salinity, distance to nearest channel, slope, etc). Values represent the rank in which pixels were removed from the landscape using Zonation Conservation Planning software with...
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