Laguna Watershed Knowledgebase

Climate changes poses new and formidable challenges for the design and management of protected area networks. In the face of uncertainty, in both the magnitude of climate change and its biotic impacts, how can decisions be made now? I will present one approach to this problem, focusing on the role of climatic diversity across landscapes. In the Bay Area, coastal, elevational and topographic features generate high levels of spatial variability in temperature and rainfall. In the face of changing climates, spatially heterogeneous landscapes are expected to support greater biological diversity and provide more opportunities for small-scale migration and local climatic refugia. These patterns can be evaluated at a range of spatial scales, from small-scale topoclimate variability (tens of meters) to elevational and regional climatic variability (tens of kilometers). I will present quantitative and GIS-based methods to evaluate and visualize this heterogeneity, and the potential value of new and expanded reserves, and connectivity between reserves. These methods merit consideration as a basis for short-term decision-making, and pose a related set of research questions to test underlying assumptions and identify appropriate spatial scales in relation to the demography and dispersal capacity of different species.