MONITORING CLIMATE CHANGE AND BIODIVERSITY THROUGH THE CALIFORNIA SENTINEL SITE NETWORK | |||
Whitney Albright; California Department of Fish and Wildlife; whitney.albright@wildlife.ca.gov; Nicole Cornelius, Ryan Bourbour, Phillip Smith, Levi Souza, Dena Spatz | |||
Long-term monitoring is crucial to understanding how ecosystems change over time at local, regional, and state-wide scales, which informs management strategies and actions aimed at conserving California’s biodiversity. The California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) is working with several partners to establish a Climate-Biodiversity Sentinel Site Network to monitor ecosystems and wildlife on public lands and inform land management in the face of climate change and other stressors. As part of this ongoing and growing effort, CDFW sentinel sites are being established on select Wildlife Areas and Ecological Reserves across the state. Each sentinel site will host a series of weather and soil sensors for climate monitoring, suites of wildlife cameras and acoustic sensors, and permanent vegetation plots for biodiversity monitoring, a Motus tower to monitor animal movement, and more. Resulting data is being processed with multiple automated and machine learning tools and will allow scientists to evaluate links between climate change and effects on local species and ecosystems. This presentation will include preliminary data collected during the first field season. Understanding the effects of climate change at multiple spatial, temporal, and taxonomic scales can support adaptive land-management decisions and inform long-term goals and strategies for conserving California’s biodiversity. | |||
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