Climate Change and Conservation in the SF Bay Area

Climate change poses a grave threat to California biodiversity. We are researching projected impacts of climate change on California native plants, with a current focus on conservation planning in the San Francisco Bay Area. Loarie et al. (2008) examined projected range shifts for the endemic flora of California. The projections suggest widespread declines in plant diversity, and highlight the potential importance of mountainous regions as future conservation refugia. In a related project, supported by California State Parks, we have examined patterns of neo-endemism in California's endemic flora to assess 'evolutionary hotspots' and their relevance to conservation priorities (Kraft et al., 2010). Most recently we have focused on the geography of climate change (Ackerly et al., 2010), and the implications of spatial heterogeneity in climate conditions. Loarie et al. (2009) conducted global analyses of the velocity of climate change - the rate that organisms or populations will have to move to keep pace with changing temperature and precipitation.

Currently, we are conducting focused studies of climate change impacts in the San Francisco Bay Area, and the implications for future acquisition and management of protected areas. This project, funded by the Bay Area Program of the George and Betty Moore Foundation will examine spatial down-scaling of species distributions, the asymmetry of predicting species presence vs. absence, and the role of climate gradients and topographic heterogeneity in reserve design. In July 2009, Ackerly and Rick Rayburn (California State Parks) convened a workshop of climate change researchers and land managers to address Bay Area conservation planning in relation to climate change.

Collaborators on the Bay Area climate change research include the Upland Habitat Goals Project of the Bay Area Open Space Council and the Center for Biodiversity Research and Information at the California Academy of Sciences.