OPUS:CRS: Global Change and California Birds and Mammals Across Centuries - The Grinnell Resurvey Project

University Of California-Berkeley, Berkeley CA

Investigators

Abstract

Most studies of the effects of 20th century environmental change on animals focus on shifts in the timing of their activities, such as breeding and migration, or develop forecasts of the future distribution of species using models based on the climate that species currently occupy. Few studies have directly measured the long-term impacts of environmental and land use change on the occurrences of species. This research will produce a synthesis with two important objectives: (1) Bring together the results of 28 core articles from different published studies into a book that synthesizes the entirety of Grinnell Resurvey Project for the general public, land managers, scientific colleagues, and "students of the future" who will resurvey these places again in 25-30 years after much greater levels of environmental change; and (2) Produce a statewide portrait of change over the past century for California's birds. Using the species-specific estimates of local colonization and extinction derived from multispecies occupancy models in conjunction with projections of climate and land-use change, the research will forecast future avian distributions, in order to evaluate species and regions of concern and the degree to which bird communities will change, which will be communicated to the public through outreach publications as well as to natural resource agencies through a workshop. The Grinnell Resurvey Project has been reconstructing a historic baseline of bird and mammal diversity in California from surveys done by Joseph Grinnell and colleagues in the early 1900's before anthropogenic climate change began. Their records include >100,000 specimens, 74,000 pages of field notes with bird count and mammal trapping data, and 10,000 images. Since 2004, members of the Grinnell Resurvey Project have been walking in Grinnell's footsteps throughout California - from the lowest point in the contiguous US in Death Valley to near its highest on Mt. Whitney - and conducting resurveys to document directly the effects of a century of environmental change on birds and mammals. The project has now retraced enough of Grinnell's footsteps throughout California's diverse environments and developed appropriate methods for working with these data to produce a credible synthesis. Measures of change in the occupancy of species, derived directly from resurveys at the same historic locations, will be linked to measures of climate, land-use and other global changes, and used to forecast future impacts on species. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.