A new planting palette for Sierra meadows: “Point Blue Conservation Science is excited to share a new climate-smart resource for Sierra meadow restoration: the Sierra Meadow Planting Palette Tool and Tool User Guide . The purpose of this tool is to help restoration practitioners plan for climate change by identifying plant species that have traits that will increase the likelihood that they will survive, recruit, and continue to provide additional co-benefits under projected future conditions. Wet meadows are particularly vulnerable to the effects of a changing climate, including shifting hydrology, warming temperatures, and drier conditions. Climate change will further degrade meadows, requiring a climate-smart restoration approach to increase resilience of these sites while providing additional co-benefits. … ” Read more from Point Blue Conservation Service here: A new planting palette for Sierra meadows
Watching the flow of water through oak woodlands at Arbor Creek Experimental Watershed: “Foothill oak woodlands are among the most familiar ecosystems in California. Supporting deer and squirrels, acorn woodpeckers and oak moths, these habitats occupy tens of thousands of acres across the state. Yet change is coming to these widespread habitats. Like much of the West, California’s foothills are predicted to experience shifts in climate in coming decades. Shifts in the amount and timing of precipitation, together with warming weather, are likely to affect how fast local soils will erode, how much water is stored below ground, and even whether oaks can survive where they are found today. To understand how these beloved woodlands will fare in a rapidly warming climate, UC Santa Cruz researchers are putting a headwaters stream in the Diablo Range under a hydrological microscope. ... ” Read more from the Santa Cruz Sentinel here: Watching the flow of water through oak woodlands at Arbor Creek Experimental Watershed
Can nature help curb climate change? “Just off Highway 880 at the edge of Hayward, the cityscape changes abruptly. Businesses and parking lots give way to large swaths of pickle grass and pools of water stretching out to the eastern edge of the San Francisco Bay. On a recent sunny, windy March day – just before COVID-19 sent the Bay Area into lockdown – Dave Halsing stood on the trails at Eden Landing Ecological Reserve and pointed out what used to be old industrial salt ponds. He noted how they’re gradually being restored into a rich mosaic of tidal wetlands and other ecosystems in the South Bay Salt Pond Restoration Project. ... ” Read more from EcoWatch here: Can nature help curb climate change?
Migration tracking of Swainson’s Thrushes reveals that vulnerabilities differ by region: “One important step toward identifying and prioritizing management actions to conserve wildlife populations is determining how vulnerable they are to environmental changes.For migratory species, which are affected by conditions in more than one location, assessing vulnerability (amount of risk) also must consider where they travel throughout their annual life cycle.Recent advances in tracking technology now allow us to identify these migratory connections and explore the links between population declines and habitat change in both breeding and non-breeding regions. … ” Read Publication Brief by Point Blue Conservation Service here: Migration tracking of Swainson’s Thrushes reveals that vulnerabilities differ by region
For scientists who study birds, this spring is without precedent: “Once a year, on Prince Leopold Island—a remote, cliff-bound breeding site for five species of Arctic birds in Nunavut, Canada—environmental scientist Mark Mallory and his team drop down in a helicopter for a day of intensive fieldwork. It’s one of several spring and summer field projects for Mallory, who studies the effects of environmental contaminants and rapidly accelerating climate change on Arctic seabirds such as gulls, terns, and ducks. The Prince Leopold Island study stretches back decades, but this year, Mallory and his colleagues couldn’t risk the possibility of spreading COVID-19 to remote areas with limited healthcare options and vulnerable populations. “The general consensus was that this is really serious and deserves a full-stop,” Mallory says. “Especially in the case of the Arctic, we’re just going to say no this year.” ... ” Read more from Audubon here: For scientists who study birds, this spring is without precedent
Researchers are retracing the steps of a century-old expedition to see how California’s birdlife has changed: “Steve Beissinger knows exactly what famed naturalist Joseph Grinnell was doing on June 2, 1932: He was hiking a ridge near Lagunitas, California, with his wife, Hilda. This was no lovers’ picnic. On their 3.5-hour trek, the duo undertook three separate bird counts, and Grinnell tallied each of the 94 birds from 31 species that they saw or heard. Beissinger knows all this because he’s been reading Grinnell’s diaries. Clues gleaned from two pages of neat cursive written 87 years ago led the modern ornithologist with University of California, Berkeley’s Museum of Vertebrate Zoology (MVZ) to what he’s certain is the same trail Grinnell investigated. On a May morning, he, his postdoctoral student Kelly Iknayan, and I returned to repeat the hike ourselves. ... ” Read more from Audubon Magazine here: Researchers are retracing the steps of a century-old expedition to see how California’s birdlife has changed
Drought less predictable under declining future snowpack: “A recent study published in Nature Climate Change finds that climate change-induced reductions in snowfall will significantly reduce our ability to predict the onset of drought. The study was led by Ben Livneh of the Western Water Assessment (a CPO RISA team) and funded by the Sectoral Applications Research Program’s (SARP) Coping with Drought initiative in partnership with the National Integrated Drought Information System (NIDIS). Water reserved in mountain snowpack plays a major role in seasonal water cycles and currently supplies water to an estimated two billion people. … ” Read more Climate Program Office here: Drought less predictable under declining future snowpack
Climate change’s toll on freshwater fish: A new database for science: “Scientists have created a new database to help track the impacts of climate change on fish living in rivers, lakes and other inland waters throughout the world. The Fish and Climate Change Database — or FiCli (pronounced “fick-lee”) — is a searchable directory of peer-reviewed journal publications that describe projected or documented effects of climate change on inland fishes. These wild animals are a vital source of food and income for many people, and an indicator of the health of global aquatic ecosystems. A better understanding of how climate change is affecting these fishes could aid in their future survival, informing conservation efforts. … ” Read more from Science Daily here: Climate change’s toll on freshwater fish: A new database for science
Climate-driven megadrought is emerging in western US, study finds: “With the western United States and northern Mexico suffering an ever-lengthening string of dry years, scientists have been warning that climate change may be pushing the region toward an extreme, long-term drought worse than any in recorded history. A new National Science Foundation-funded study says the time has arrived: a megadrought as bad or worse than any detected since prehistoric times is very likely in progress, and a warming climate is playing a key role. The study, based on modern weather observations, 1,200 years of tree-ring data and dozens of climate models, appears in the journal Science. ... ” Read more from the National Science Foundation here: Climate-driven megadrought is emerging in western US, study finds
Large ocean currents system likely to critically impact climate response to greenhouse gases on centennial timescale: “As greenhouse gas concentrations increase, a warmer climate is expected, but large-scale internal climate processes can affect the rate and amount of our planet’s warming. New research supported by CPO’s Climate Variability and Predictability (CVP) Program shows that the strength of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), a large system of ocean currents that transports heat and salt, is likely to play an important role in determining Earth’s climate response to rising greenhouse gas concentrations on the centennial timescale. … ” Read more from the Climate Program Office here: Large ocean currents system likely to critically impact climate response to greenhouse gases on centennial timescale
About Science News and Reports: This weekly feature, posted every Thursday, is a collection of the latest scientific research and reports with a focus on relevant issues to the Delta and to California water, although other issues such as climate change are sometimes included. Do you have an item to be included here? Submissions of relevant research and other materials is welcome. Email Maven
