Skip to main content

James Jacobi

thumbnail
Managing Non-native Game Mammals to Reduce Future Conflicts with Native Plant Conservation in Hawai‘i
Landscape-scale conservation of threatened and endangered species is often challenged by multiple, sometimes conflicting, land uses. In Hawaiʻi, efforts to conserve native forests have come into conflict with objectives to sustain non-native game mammals, such as feral pigs, goats, and deer, for subsistence and sport hunting. Maintaining stable or increasing game populations represents one of the greatest obstacles to the recovery of Hawaii’s 425 threatened and endangered plant species. Many endemic Hawaiian species have declined and become endangered as a result of herbivorous non-native game mammals. Meanwhile, other environmental changes, including the spread of invasive grasses and changing precipitation patterns...
thumbnail
Establishing Climate Change Vulnerability Rankings for Hawaiian Native Plants
Hawaiʻi is considered a worldwide biodiversity hotspot, with nearly 90 percent of its native plants found nowhere else in the world. However, about half of these native plants are imperiled by threats including human development, non-native species, and climate change. Through this project, scientists modeled the relative vulnerability of over 1,000 native plant species to the effects of climate change. A panel of experts in Hawaiian plant species assisted with the development of the model and verified its results. From the model, researchers were able to develop a vulnerability score for each plant species and identify categories of species with high, medium, and low vulnerability to climate change. This information...
thumbnail
A Prioritization Plan for Coastal Wetland Restoration on Moloka‘i
Moloka‘i has great wetland restoration potential in Hawaiʻi, but most remaining sites are highly degraded. The future of several endangered waterbirds and insects relies on restoring coastal wetland habitat that is resilient under sea-level rise and coastal flooding. Currently, managers lack background data on Molokaʻi to prioritize sites for restoration. In this project, Researchers will develop a comprehensive dataset and create a prioritization plan for coastal wetland restoration. The team will work closely with project partners and stakeholders to develop a well-vetted plan to support endangered species and meeting community needs. Existing maps and spatial data about the Molokaʻi landscape will be compiled...
thumbnail
This is the primary output dataset from the project to access the potential impacts of climate change on vegetation management strategies within Hawaii Volcanoes National Park (HAVO). The key objective of this project was to combine climate projections from the International Pacific Research Center (IPRC) and plant distribution models from Price et al. to produce a series of projected species range maps over the next century. Although the project focused on HAVO, the projected species range maps were created for seven of the main Hawaiian Islands. We stored the model output as rasters (.TIF files); additionally we created multi-panel maps of these rasters that are available separately. In summary, this dataset consists...
ScienceBase brings together the best information it can find about USGS researchers and offices to show connections to publications, projects, and data. We are still working to improve this process and information is by no means complete. If you don't see everything you know is associated with you, a colleague, or your office, please be patient while we work to connect the dots. Feel free to contact sciencebase@usgs.gov.