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John Eadie

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The Impact of Drought on Waterbirds and Their Wetland Habitats in California’s Central Valley
California’s Central Valley is a nexus for water resources in the state, draining the Sacramento and San Joaquin River watersheds. Urban centers, agricultural operations, and the environment all compete for limited water, and demand is expected to only increase as the population grows and agriculture intensifies. At the same time, the water supply is projected to decrease as temperatures rise, precipitation patterns change, and the frequency of extreme droughts increases. The Central Valley also provides critical wetland habitats to migratory waterbirds, and wetland managers require information on how to best use water resources to support wildlife objectives, particularly during drought. This project seeks to...
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Assessing the Impacts of Drought on Migratory Waterbirds in Key Conservation Regions of the Western U.S.
Migratory birds may be hit especially hard by climate change – particularly waterbirds that depend on wetlands as resting and feeding sites during their journey between breeding and non-breeding grounds. California’s Central Valley and the interior basins of southeastern Oregon and northeastern California provide some of the most critical wetlands resources to migratory waterbirds in the western U.S. However, these wetlands rely heavily on snow pack and precipitation for water supply, both of which have already decreased due to climate change. Of further concern is the fact that drought conditions resulting from climate change could exacerbate existing water allocation issues in the region. Researchers are examining...
SWAMP provides a tool for wildlife management stakeholders to predict the effects of landscape changes on populations of foragers, specifically focused on waterfowl and other migratory birds. Specifically, we have developed SWAMP as a spatially-explicit agent based model to determine the carrying capacity and energy budgets of waterfowl foraging on moist-soil managed wetlands and flooded riceland during winter in the Central Valley (CV), with a goal to extend the application of SWAMP to other regions and species. SWAMP models the time-budget, foraging activities, and metabolic state of each bird individually throughout the season. While the rules governing patch selection and foraging behavior are user-defined (e.g....
The baseline map of the Butte Basin, the representative basin from the Central Valley, was generated first by delineating the extent of the landscape to be modeled, in agreement with the basin boundaries identified by the Central Valley Joint Venture.The Butte Basin (CV) encompasses a region approximately 44km x 64 km, and the map used contains 10,698 individual habitat patches and 179,964 acres of possible foreageable area. Patch habitat types were identified by a combination of USDA CropScape data (to identify agricultural habitat patches including rice and corn) and other local mapping data made available through collaboration with USGS. Habitat flood schedules were generated using the Water Evaluation and Planning...
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