randomtruth/Flickr

The Bay checkerspot butterfly is one of the species that might need help migrating.

Traditional approaches to preserving biodiversity may not hold up as the climate changes.

One common tool environmental groups use now is to buy land. But that tactic only works if, once the land is protected, the species that live there can stay there. Climate change scrambles that notion. Species won’t necessarily be able to stay where they are in perpetuity. A new study in the journal Conservation Biology (abstract only) examines what it would cost to stick to the current approach and the same conservation goals in one area in California. And that number — again, for just one conservation area — is staggering. By 2100, the study finds, the total price tag will be about $2.5 billion.

“It is a dizzying number,” Rebecca Shaw, the associate vice president of the Environmental Defense Fund and one of the study’s authors, told me. “And it’s dizzying because climate change is dynamic and our conservation strategies are designed for static systems.”

Shaw explains that the current approach — searching out good habitat, buying the land, hands-on management and monitoring — is expensive anyway. But she predicts that climate change will double the cost.

Shaw studied the Mount Hamilton Project Area, southeast of San Jose. It’s home to animals like the Bay checkerspot butterfly, the San Joaquin kit fox, and the California horned lark. These species are native to the area but they may not be able to stay there. Climate change will likely squeeze them out of their habitats. Some, like the checkerspot, Shaw projects, will disappear from California entirely.

“We need to get creative about how we’re going to conserve species in the future,” she said. “We can save a portion of the species and the habitats, but we’ve got to get economically savvy about what it’s going to cost.”

One cost-saving idea Shaw suggests is to work with private landowners — farmers and ranchers, for example — to borrow or lease land from them as species migrate through their property.

Risa Sargent

The alpine chipmunk only lives in California, and its habitat is shrinking.

The alpine chipmunk, found in Yosemite’s high country, has moved upslope as temperatures have warmed over the last century.

Now a new study out yesterday from the journal Nature Climate Change shows a warming climate may also be affecting the species’ genetic diversity. Listen to my radio story about the study on today’s California Report.

The alpine chipmunk is one of the smallest chipmunks in California. It’s also got a uniquely striped face. It’s hard to see these chipmunks in the wild unless you strap on a backpack and climb some 10,000 feet high in the Sierra.

That’s what study author Emily Rubidge did as a PhD student at UC Berkeley’s Museum of Vertebrate Geology. She’s part of a team that’s been ambitiously updating Joseph Grinnell’s historic survey of Yosemite’s wildlife from the early 1900s.

The team first found that the alpine chipmunk had pushed its habitat some 1600 feet higher into the Sierra over the last century, a period when average temperatures in the park increased by about 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit. Back in the early 1900s, Grinnell and his colleagues sighted alpine chipmunks at elevations of 7,800 feet. More recently, researchers couldn’t find the species any lower than 9,600 feet.

Rubridge also compared DNA of century-old dried specimens and skeletons Grinnell collected for the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology to samples she took from the ears, toes and tails, of alpine chipmunks today.

She found that the chipmunks living at higher elevations showed a startling decline in the species’ genetic diversity compared to samples from the early 20th century.

“This new work shows that, particularly for mountain species like the alpine chipmunk, such shifts can result in increasingly fragmented and genetically impoverished populations,” said Rubidge. “Under continued warming, the alpine chipmunk could be on the trajectory toward becoming threatened or even extinct.”

A more limited gene pool means the chipmunks could face problems caused by inbreeding or disease. And could also be less likely to adapt to changing environments.

This study is one of the first to show actual impacts on genetic diversity because of warming temperatures, evidence that climate change could already be altering life for mammals unique to California.

PRBO Conservation Science

Anna's Humminbird

Maybe… if you’re a bird.  

You may have heard that climate change is affecting the size of habitats, but did you know that it may also be changing the size of organisms themselves?

A new study finds that songbirds in central California are getting bigger.

The report, published this month in the journal Global Change Biology, looked at the wingspan and weight of thousands of small birds in the region, such as finches, robins, swallows and hummingbirds, and found that over the last 30 years size has increased from .02 percent to .1 percent annually.

Researchers at PRBO Conservation Science looked at data for 73 species, combing 40 years of data from Point Reyes National Seashore and nearly 30 years of data from Milpitas.

What’s particularly interesting about the study, say authors, is that previous studies from other places in the world have found the size of organisms to be shrinking — not growing. That phenomena has been attributed to warming temperatures.

Authors of this study propose that the increases they found in central California’s birds could be attributed to more variation in the climate and harsher weather conditions.

There’s more on the study at the San Jose Mercury News and The Bay Citizen.

Tad Arensmeier/Flickr

Tad Arensmeier photographed this Yellow-Blotched Palm-Pitviper for iNaturalist.

The organizers of a new effort to catalog the world’s reptiles want to enlist you and your iPhone for their cause. The Global Reptile Bioblitz launched last month and aims to collect amateur observations of every species of reptile on Earth — all 9,413 of them. The project is the sister effort of the Global Amphibian Bioblitz which launched earlier this summer and, thanks to submissions from citizen scientists around the world, has already collected photos of more than 700 of the nearly 7,000 known amphibian species on the planet.

The observations are all logged at iNaturalist.org, an online citizen science community with more than 2,000 members who’ve cumulatively logged more than 30,000 field observations of species ranging from redwoods to coyotes.Observations can be uploaded to the site directly, or through an iPhone app, also called iNaturalist, which was launched earlier this year. Since we first reported on it back in January, the app has been downloaded more than 3,000 times, according to its developer Ken-ichi Ueda.

Scott Loarie, a researcher at the Carnegie Institution for Science who is coordinating both the reptile and the amphibian initiative says that it’s critical to document reptile and amphibian populations around the world because they are changing rapidly, due to climate change, habitat loss, disease, and irresponsible collecting.

He said iNaturalist is making a critical connection in this effort, by allowing amateurs to share photos, and connecting them with experts who can identify the species.

Jeff Winget/iNaturalist

Photo of a western painted turtle, one of thousands of "citizen science" field observations uploaded to the iNaturalist website

“The Flickr and Facebook communities, which are really outside the academic efforts, are sharing photos ferociously,” said Loarie. “With iNaturalist, there’s the ability to turn these casual photos into real data points for scientists, and that’s really exciting.”

Loarie said a new pilot project between iNaturalist and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species illustrates this point.  The IUCN is considered the world’s main authority on the conservation status of species, and it aims to have the status of every species evaluated every five-to-ten years. Starting this week, iNaturalist will be powering the distribution maps on the new IUCN Amphibian Specialist Group site.

According to Loarie, iNaturalist will not only provide the technology for the IUCN to have interactive, dynamic maps. It will also provide citizen science data that can help update the species distributions and in that way, potentially affect conservation action and policy.

“Every observation can confirm the existence of these species in these locations,” said Loarie. “This way the IUCN can say ‘This is our range map. Are we right or not?’”

“One of the problems with citizen science is that there’s been a high barrier to entry.  You really have to be highly skilled,” said Loarie. “But what the Internet has done, with its culture of sharing photos, is that it separates the citizen from the scientist: the citizen just has to share the photo. That’s dropped the barrier to entry for citizen science.”

Redwoods: There's an app for that. (Photo: Michael Limm)

We’re not the only ones who think iNaturalist is pretty cool. Save the Redwoods does, too.

The San Francisco-based conservation organization has teamed up with the biodiversity-tracking social networking site to create an iPhone app exclusively for monitoring redwood and giant sequoia forests. It’s called Redwood Watch. It uses the same technology as the iNaturalist iPhone app, aggregating data on a special Redwoods page within iNaturalist.org.

“We hope that this will help us have a better idea of where redwoods are, and then we can use that data to understand what kinds of conditions they can tolerate,” said Emily Limm, director of science and planning for Save the Redwoods.

Like the iNaturalist iPhone app, Redwood Watch is a free download that allows users to take field observations and easily upload them to a central online database.  There’s an online tutorial explaining how it works.

Limm said the hope is that members of the public will download the app onto their iPhones, and use it when they’re out hiking and spot redwoods, sequoias, and a list of other forest organisms the organization is hoping to track. These field observations from “citizen scientists” will help researchers gain a clearer picture of where the trees actually are throughout California.

“It’s impossible for us to collect all this data ourselves,” said Limm. “If people are engaged, they can help us refine our understanding of where the trees are in their natural ranges and where those edges are.”

But the project isn’t limited to trees in their native California habitats. Limm says that data about redwoods from botanical gardens and forestry projects around the world is just as important because it can yield clues about the range of environments the trees can tolerate. That could help scientists understand how the species may be affected by climate change, which can help land managers and conservation organizations plan for the future.

There’s more about the project, and about California’s redwoods, from Paul Rogers at Mercury News. And see KQED’s QUEST for more about redwoods and climate change.

Joshua trees in Eureka Valley, CA (Photo: Ken Cole, USGS)

Joshua trees, the spiky desert-dwellers that are so iconic to Southern California’s dry country that they got a national park named after them, will likely disappear from 90% of their current range by the end of the century, according to a new study by scientists at the US Geological Survey.

Ecologist Ken Cole, the study’s lead author, said that means no more Joshua Trees in Joshua Tree National Park, which is currently in the southernmost part of the species’ range. It also means elimination of the trees across wide swathes of other parts of Southern California as well as Nevada and Arizona.

Cole and his team used climate models, field work, and the fossil record to project the future distribution of Joshua trees. They compared the projected increase in temperatures for the Southwest (four degrees Celsius, according to a “middle of the road” IPCC scenario) to a similar rapid increase in temperatures nearly 12,000 years ago, at the end of the ice age.

Using fossil sloth dung and packrat midden, the scientists reconstructed how Joshua trees responded to that warming. (Sloths, which are now extinct in the region, and packrats, ate the Joshua tree fruit, spreading the seeds and leaving them behind for the scientists to track.)

“Sometimes the climate changes rapidly, like it did 11,700 years ago,” said Cole. “At that time the Joshua trees squashed into a narrow band at the northern edge of their range. That’ll happen again. The southerly ones will not be able to persist.”

This loss of southern territory is particularly significant for a species like the Joshua Tree, which has a “pretty pitiful” expansion rate, according to Cole. That’s because, unlike the Ponderosa pine, which can expand its range 500 meters a year thanks to birds and other factors, the range of Joshua trees can stretch just about six feet per year.

“They don’t release their seeds until some animal chomps on them,” said Cole, referring to the fruit of the Joshua tree. “They’re spread by squirrels and pack rats that might run 100 feet and stash some seeds in the ground. Some of them might grow, but it could take 20, 30, or 40 years. Going 100 feet every 20 years is not moving as quickly as it needs to to keep up with climate change.”

Researchers mapped where in the Southwest Joshua trees are currently located, where they are likely to disappear, and where they will likely persist (small pockets in Nevada and in southeastern California).  They also mapped where future climate will likely be suitable for the trees, should anyone want to undertake a program of managed relocation.  But even that, said Cole, has its risks.

“We don’t know how well they would grow then,” he said. “Joshua trees are very picky.”

Not only that, but relocating the trees would be expensive, and he said, “You’d have to assume that the climate wouldn’t change again. That’s a really bad assumption.”

Cole says his field observations support the study’s projections.  Temperatures in the region have been warming since 1975, he said, and there’s no record of Joshua trees reproducing in the southern stands in the last 30 years.

“You don’t see any seedlings or saplings in the southern stands,” said Cole.

That’s a big contrast to the northerly stands in the Inyo Mountains above Eureka Valley, where, he said, Joshua trees are thriving.

“The ones in the north are really vigorous,” he said. “They’re going like mad.”

The full study is located on the Ecology Society of America’s website, but a subscription is required to access it.

Read more on climate change impacts facing the national parks.

The North American pika like the protection and cool refuge of high-elevation talus slopes. (Photo: US Forest Service)

California is one of five places on earth with a Mediterranean climate. It has enough endemic plant species to be its own “floristic province.” It’s also what biologists refer to as a biodiversity hotspot. So it’s not surprising that a report by the Endangered Species Coalition includes three places either completely or partially within California in its list of ten of the most important locations to protect endangered species.

The report highlights areas across the U.S. that are most threatened, such as the Everglades, and places that provide home to the greatest number of endangered species, like Hawaii.

California locations include the Sonora Desert, the Sierra Nevada, and the Bay Delta. The coalition, an activist group which aims to stem the tide of species loss, says the gravest threats in these California places — no surprise here, either — revolve around water: not enough, too much, or badly timed.

In the Sonora Desert, drought threatens species like the desert tortoise. The Sierra and the Delta are linked, since the former provides water for the latter. Species face different challenges depending on where they are along that watershed. Down in the Bay Area, trout, salmon, and the Delta smelt are losing habitat to development and losing water to irrigation canals. Up in the Sierra, the report explains that yellow-legged frogs and pika are confronted with thinner snowpack and warmer temperatures.

About those pika: The Endangered Species Coalition doesn’t list any supporting literature, and favors messaging over nuance in this report. There is an ongoing debate over pika colonies in California and Nevada. The Center for Biological Diversity, a coalition member, has petitioned both state and the federal wildlife agencies to list the pika as endangered. That listing has so far been denied, and for good reason, according to Forest Service ecologist Connie Millar, who says that in California, pika are “extremely abundant.”

Millar is concerned that all the attention focused on pika draws away from other species in the Sierra that may indeed be in climate change-induced trouble, like Belding’s ground squirrels and yellow-bellied marmots.

Climate and Nature
by Anthony Barnosky

Some impacts of climate change in California are pretty obvious, things like rising sea level submerging large parts of the San Francisco Bay region, or drought cutting into our water supplies.  Less obvious, but every bit as important, are impacts on something you probably don’t even know you have: your relationship with nature.

One part of that relationship is the concept of “ecosystem services;” the direct benefits you get from nature.  California’s Climate Action Team highlighted some of the state’s ecosystem services in their recent report.  Examples include the ski trip you may have taken this winter, the salmon fillet you may have bought at the grocery store, or surprisingly, even your hamburger.

Snow will be less, soggier, at higher elevations, and on the ground for fewer days of the winter, melting some of the $500 million-per-year revenues of the ski industry–not to mention melting your favorite ski run.  Altered river dynamics and temperatures will almost certainly cut into the state’s $33-million-per-year salmon industry. Climate-caused loss of forage means that in 2070 California’s cattle ranchers will be losing up to $92 million in comparison to today’s markets, which means higher beef prices at the grocery store.  Combined, the losses in these ecosystem services likely will cost the state’s already suffering economy well over a hundred million dollars per year as we move into the next few decades. And those are just three of many ecosystem services that will be affected.

A second part of your relationship to nature is the species around you, that is to say, biodiversity. Simply put, biodiversity is which species live in a place, and the extent to which those species are rare or common.  In general, biodiversity means more productive and healthier ecosystems, which translates as more benefits to humans that inhabit those areas.  As it turns out, California is a globally recognized biodiversity hotspot, unique in the world.  But biodiversity losses from global warming promise to be severe: one study predicts that two-thirds of the 2387 plant species found only in the state will lose 80% of their range within the century.

The third part of your relationship to nature is how it makes you feel.  There’s no question: you can’t get the same feeling you get looking at a giant redwood anywhere but in a redwood forest.   Among species that may have little or no suitable climate left in California, however, are its coastal redwoods and sequoias.

Such impacts of climate change on nature are not confined to California.   Many other reports indicate that global warming is redefining our relationship to nature worldwide.  As with other impacts, this one can be partially mitigated by reducing greenhouse gas emissions immediately, but also will require some new management strategies for preserving nature in the age of global warming.  California, in particular, has a lot to lose.

Anthony D. Barnosky is a Professor of Integrative Biology at the University of California, Berkeley and author of the recently published Heatstroke: Nature in an Age of Global Warming. You can read more on this topic in his blog. Photos by the author.

Barnosky is scheduled to appear Saturday as part of Berkeley’s “Cal Day” activities. His talk is scheduled for noon at the Valley Life Sciences Bldg, Room 2060, followed by a book-signing at the T-Rex (which is hard to miss).