Development of Adaptive Management Tools to Guide Habitat Allocation for At-Risk Species
RC-1656
Objective
The Department of Defense (DoD) increasingly is engaging landowners outside installation boundaries to help protect biodiversity at a landscape scale. Such activities include the acquisition of recovery habitat for species at risk. These land acquisitions have led to the trading of habitat to relieve training restrictions inside installations. SERDP Exploratory Development (SEED) project RC-1469 evaluated how habitat trading would affect population viability for the red-cockaded woodpecker (Picoides borealis, RCW) on Camp Lejeune. As an extension of that research, this project will increase the spatial scale of analysis while incorporating data from conservation partners to help reduce uncertainty regarding RCW population dynamics across the greater Onslow Bight landscape. Researchers also will work with a second species, the gopher tortoise (Gopherus polyphemus), at Fort Benning. The gopher tortoise was selected because it may be listed as federally threatened across its entire range in the near future and, in contrast to RCWs, is less well studied.
The objective of this project is to provide a scientifically rigorous approach for reallocating habitat for species at risk. Individual-based, spatially explicit population models (SEPM) will be used to simulate how a change in landscape pattern (e.g., a habitat trade) affects population viability. Because the quality of underlying data used to build and validate such models varies greatly over space and time, researchers will further develop a method called pattern-oriented modeling to manage uncertainty in SEPMs.
Technical Approach
Pattern-oriented modeling provides a method for managing model complexity and reducing prediction error in SEPMs. It will be used to find the suite of hypotheses describing biological processes (e.g., recruitment or migration) that most reliably replicate biological complexity observed in the field. This method will be used to evaluate uncertainty in the existing RCW SEPM. The uncertainty analysis also will be used to contrast the ability of population data collected on-base and population data collected off-base, often of lower quality, to help reduce uncertainty. Pattern-oriented modeling also will be integrated with population genetic techniques to develop a new individual-based model for the gopher tortoise. SEPMs for both species then will be used to ensure that habitats traded make equivalent contributions to rates of recruitment and migration at a landscape scale using landscape equivalency analysis. Landscape equivalency analysis assigns conservation value to habitat at the local scale based on its contribution to abundance and genetic variance estimated at the regional scale.
Benefits
Integrating landscape equivalency analysis and patternoriented modeling will provide a method for incorporating uncertainty into habitat trading decisions. Using this method, managers will be able to determine when enough is known about a species to trade habitat. The integration of pattern-oriented modeling with the RCW SEPM will be used to prioritize data collection off-base and also can be used to calibrate the SEPM to new sites. The integration of pattern-oriented modeling and genetic theory applied to the gopher tortoise will provide a general approach for extending SEPMs to new sites and even species. Landscape equivalency analysis will estimate the financial value of tradable credits based on the in-kind replacement costs of ecological services that differ in sensitivity to changes in habitat area and connectivity, providing a nexus for ecological-economic analysis of management decisions at a landscape scale. (Anticipated Project Completion - 2013)
Symposium & Workshop
FY 2013 New Start Project Selections
Points of Contact
Principal Investigator
Dr. Michael Jones
Michigan State University
Phone: 517-432-0465
Fax: 517-432-1699
Program Manager
Resource Conservation and Climate Change
SERDP and ESTCP
Document Types
- Fact Sheet - Brief project summary with links to related documents and points of contact.
- Final Report - Comprehensive report for every completed SERDP and ESTCP project that contains all technical results.
- Cost & Performance Report - Overview of ESTCP demonstration activities, results, and conclusions, standardized to facilitate implementation decisions.
- Technical Report - Additional interim reports, laboratory reports, demonstration reports, and technology survey reports.
- Guidance - Instructional information on technical topics such as protocols and user’s guides.
- Workshop Report - Summary of workshop discussion and findings.
- Multimedia - On demand videos, animations, and webcasts highlighting featured initiatives or technologies.
- Model/Software - Computer programs and applications available for download.
- Database - Digitally organized collection of data available to search and access.