Science to Support Adaptive Landscape Planning and Decision Making for Gopher Tortoise Conservation

Principal Investigator

Clinton Moore

Start Date

2013-09

End Date

2018-06

Release Date

2013

The gopher tortoise is a familiar species across the southeastern Coastal Plain, but its population has declined significantly over the decades. One reason is that much of its primary habitat, sparse stands of mature pine, has been replaced by development or agriculture. Another is that periodic ground fires, which are important for providing needed forage, have been largely suppressed on the landscape. The gopher tortoise is a “keystone” species, meaning that its disappearance from the landscape would jeopardize the existence of many other species that make use of its underground burrows. The project goal is to develop a decision support system for the iterative selection of conservation actions that leads to a viable landscape supporting the statewide tortoise population and associated species and communities of interest. This work will result in an integrated system of databases, computer algorithms, and monitoring designs that provides a mostly automated process for decision making under uncertainty and for acquiring information to reduce uncertainty.

ScienceBase WMS

• National and Regional Climate Adaptation Science Centers
• Southeast CASC