A download link for this addendum report, which provides information on the Condition and Climate Resilience of Collaborative Priority Conservation Linkage Areas in the Columbia Plateau Ecoregion
Related Documents and Data:
A report on the condition and climate resilience ALI's Priority Core Areas (PCAs) is posted here. The report provided on this page is focused on Priority Linkage Areas [PLAs]), and it uses methods that are described in greater detail in the PCA report.
A companion report describing the Ecological Integrity Assessment and its results is here.
A file geodatabase containing the PLAs and PCAs along with all attributes presented in the scorecards is here.
A file geodatabase containing the input raster models and other pre-existing data products that were used to derive the scorecard metrics is here.
Introduction to the report:
The Arid Lands Initiative (ALI) is a partnership between federal and state agencies and nongovernmental organizations that came together to develop and cooperatively implement a coordinated strategy for the conservation of Washington’s arid lands, in pursuit of a shared vision of a viable, well connected system of habitats. In 2014, the ALI partners embraced a set of priority areas across the Columbia Plateau Ecoregion (Figure 1, ALI 2014a). Partners are now using those products to guide their conservation actions. One challenge, however, is that those priority areas were selected based on the current measures of key ecological attributes of the systems and species the ALI is trying to conserve; they did not include the wealth of information being developed for the region on climate change and climate change impacts.The Arid Lands Initiative (ALI) is a partnership between federal and state agencies and nongovernmental organizations that came together to develop and cooperatively implement a coordinated strategy for the conservation of Washington’s arid lands, in pursuit of a shared vision of a viable, well connected system of habitats. In 2014, the ALI partners embraced a set of priority areas across the Columbia Plateau Ecoregion (Figure 1, ALI 2014a). Partners are now using those products to guide their conservation actions. One challenge, however, is that those priority areas were selected based on the current measures of key ecological attributes of the systems and species the ALI is trying to conserve; they did not include the wealth of information being developed for the region on climate change and climate change impacts.
This gap in knowledge was initially addressed through an analysis described in a recently published US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) report, “Assessing the Condition and Climate Resilience of Collaborative Conservation Priority Areas in the Columbia Plateau Ecoregion” (USFWS 2015). This report (available here) describes methods and results of a spatially explicit, relative Climate Change Vulnerability Assessment (CCVA) that was conducted for the Priority Core Areas (PCAs) agreed upon by the ALI in 2014 (ALI 2014a; see ALI 2014b for details on how the PCAs were identified). For each PCA, the recent USFWS report includes a “scorecard” that indicates how the PCA ranks, relative to other PCAs, for various metrics of climate change vulnerability, as well as other threats (development pressure, fire, etc.). These scorecards also provide information about the contribution each PCA makes to the eight ALI biological priorities (see ALI 2014a for a description of the ALI’s shared biological priorities).
A key component of the ALI’s share vision is the focus on a well-connected system of habitats. Due to time and resource constraints, the initial CCVA only developed scorecards for the Priority Core Areas, not for the Priority Linkage Areas. The purpose of the current analysis is to repeat the CCVA and generate similar scorecards for the ALI’s Priority Linkage Areas (PLAs). These PLAs were delineated based on the priority linkages that were selected by the ALI core team as part of their effort to identify shared priorities (ALI 2014a). Spatial products developed by the Washington Wildlife Habitat Connectivity Working Group (WHCWG) for the Columbia Plateau were the basis for the selected linkages (WHCWG 2012, 2013a). The linkage areas are a critical part of the conservation blueprint in the Columbia Plateau, and protection and management of these areas is necessary if we are to realize the ALI’s shared vision of a viable, well-connected landscape (ALI 2014a).
The information presented on these PLA scorecards is intended to aid land managers as they identify the most appropriate conservation and management strategies for each area of concern. Along with the information included in ALI 2014a and USFWS 2015, this document should allow managers to spatially focus the various strategies (such as protection, restoration, fire treatments, etc.) that these organizations carry out in different areas across the landscape.
