UC GIS Week

I can seed clearly now: A GIS triage protocol for prioritizing areas for seed collection efforts:

Climate change and wildfire are increasing, stressing limited reforestation seed supplies. Tree stands at low elevation and southern latitudes with hot conditions are potentially both at the highest risk and contain the most climate change-adapted seeds. We present a partially-automated GIS framework to guide seed scouting for tree species in California. Its intended use is to identify areas at the highest risk of extirpation and with the least representation in CalFire’s current seedbank.

We begin by creating new, highly-accurate species range maps (see my other presentation this week) and intersecting each with “seed zones and elevation bands” (SZEBs), used for cataloging the state’s seed lots and reforestation efforts. Next, we combined place-based climate change exposure, processed using principal components analysis in RStudio, and potential wildfire intensity indices to rank-order risk each SZEB’s range area. We combined three measures of priority for CalFire’s nursery operations—current inventory, target seed supplies, and areas of high seed demand—as an operational priority ranking, and combined this metric with the two SZEB risk metrics to identify overall scouting priority areas. We used summed road length in each SZEB as a measure of accessibility, but precise seed survey routes and annual assessments of seed production could provide more comprehensive information about accessibility over time.

The outputs from this workflow are then combined with outputs from the climate-adapted seed tool (CAST), which helps identify optimal climate-adapted seed mixtures by SZEB, and the mast inference and prediction tool (MASTIF), which attempts to predict optimal seed production seasons, to inform seed scouting and reforestation. The applied use of this framework is already underway in the state of California.

Fire in the Desert: A Study of Yucca Survival in Mojave:

Following the 2020 Cima Dome fire, see how the unique vegetation landscape of the Mojave National Preserve has changed over time. California is home to thousands of unique plant and wildlife species that can't be found anywhere else in the world. In effort to protect such amazing biodiversity, Mojave National Preserve is located in Southern California. When the 2020 Cima Dome fire burned 44,000 acres of Joshua tree forest woodland within the Preserve, it had a substantial impact on the ecosystem.

UC Riverside researcher Danelle Baronia will present an interactive StoryMap that showcases a comparison of pre- and post- fire photo documentation of the Cima Dome landscape. She will discuss the results of research from the Sweet Lab studying the recovery and resilience of desert plants, focusing on two species of yucca, the Eastern Joshua tree and banana yucca, within the ecosystem of the Mojave Desert.

Nearshore nutrient regimes link land use to tropical lagoon microbial communities:

Coral reefs provide coastal protection, subsidize food, and harbor biodiversity in coastal waters of tropical islands around the globe. Corals are sensitive to rising ocean temperatures, but other anthropogenic factors such as nutrient pollution (via, e.g., fertilizer runoff) interact with warming to impact coral bleaching. Here, we describe the results of a multiyear monitoring effort to uncover how terrestrial factors impact the nutrient dynamics and microbial communities in lagoons of Moorea, French Polynesia. We combine in situ field sampling, remote sensing techniques, and geospatial analyses to connect watershed parameters on land with biotic variability in lagoons. We show that reefs that are close to shore and downstream of large, human-impacted watersheds have higher water column nutrients, and that algae samples in these sites have similarly elevated nutrient concentrations. Furthermore, nearshore, “fringing reef” habitats are home to unique microbial communities not found in lagoon sites that are more isolated from terrestrial human influences. This work demonstrates the importance of land-sea connections for coral reef ecology, and hints at broader pathways by which human impacts may drive change in tropical marine ecosystems.