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Bay Area Coastal & Near-shore Habitat Conservation Plan

Bay Area Coastal & Near-shore Habitat Conservation Plan. Gabriela Holl , Ariel Jacobs, & Dana Murray. Introduction. Address Bay Area Open Space Council goal to protect an additional million acres Coastal approach:

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Bay Area Coastal & Near-shore Habitat Conservation Plan

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  1. Bay Area Coastal & Near-shore Habitat Conservation Plan Gabriela Holl, Ariel Jacobs, & Dana Murray

  2. Introduction • Address Bay Area Open Space Council goal to protect an additional million acres • Coastal approach: • Analyze near-shore and coastal features to identify a network of conserved lands along the coast • Organizations: • The Nature Conservancy • California Coastal Conservancy • Stakeholders • Help select and implement near-shore reserves along the Bay Area coast • Aid in the biological monitoring of reserves

  3. Objective • Provide linkage between terrestrial & marine reserves • Select a representative set of coastal terrestrial habitats and near-shore marine habitats • Maximize the connectedness between reserves and reduce the “island” effect of many existing reserves • Consider both terrestrial & marine reserves • Incorporate near-shore features and assign values for each, weighing the near-shore features heavier than the purely terrestrial biodiversity features

  4. Planning Problem • Primarily used data and values established by: • Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) process • Data collected by the CA Dept. of Fish & Game • Data from NOAA-NMFS • Data from the Nature Conservancy • Identify important coastal features • Biological-species level attributes • Important habitats • Proximity to legally protected areas (both marine and terrestrial)

  5. Framing the Plan: Feature Selection • Identified important features, most from the MLPA Marine Map database to include in our analysis • Selected 9 coastal or marine features and 2 terrestrial based on their importance to marine ecology and near-shore ecosystems • Pinniped Haul-outs & Rookeries • Seabird Colonies • Western Snowy Plover Colonies • Estuaries • Coastal Marsh • Eelgrass • Persistent Kelp • Existing State MPAs • Terrestrial Protected Lands • Terrestrial Biodiversity

  6. Framing the Plan: Features & Values • Pinniped Haul-outs & Rookeries • Pinniped species in Bay Area: California Sea Lions, Northern Elephant Seals, Pacific Harbor Seals, & Steller Sea Lions • Pinniped survival is tied to the land: they come ashore to breed, pup, molt, and rest • Availability and accessibility to suitable, undisturbed habitat for breeding and birthing (rookeries) are crucial for long-term survival of pinniped populations • Seabird Colonies • Seabird populations in CA have been declining, mostly due to human impacts • One of the largest threats to seabirds comes from humans disturbing the birds where they nest and breed • Western Snowy Plover Colonies • Pacific coast population listed as threatened in 1993 • Fewer than 1,500 breeding plovers nesting in CA • Tend to nest in coastal habitats such as sand spits, dune-backed beaches, beaches at creek and river mouths, and salt pans at lagoons, and estuaries

  7. Framing the Plan: Layers & Values • Estuaries & Coastal Marsh • Nursery habitat for many invertebrates and fish • Anadramous species (salmonids, sturgeons, and lampreys) pass through estuaries on their migration pathways • Support large densities of waterfowl and many coastal estuaries are important stops on the Pacific Flyway • Coastal Marsh includes: Palustrine Forested Wetland, Palustrine Scrub/Shrub Wetland, Palustrine Emergent Wetland, Estuarine Forested Wetland, Estuarine Scrub/Shrub Wetland, and Estuarine Emergent Wetland • Eelgrass • Seagrass habitats among the most productive and biologically diverse ecosystems on the planet • Help prevent erosion and maintain stability near shores by anchoring sediment with spreading rhizomes and slowing water flow • Provide foraging, breeding, or nursery areas for invertebrates, fish, and birds • Persistent Kelp • Diverse, structurally complex, and highly productive components of coldwater rocky marine coastlines • Threatened by El Niño events, pollution discharge and sedimentation, and herbivory • Overfishing and extirpation of apex predators often triggers herbivore population increases, leading to widespread kelp deforestation

  8. Framing the Plan: Features & Values • Existing State MPAs • Includes CA’s MPAs, including updated central coast Marine Life Protection Act MPAs recently adopted by the California Fish and Game Commission (FGC) on April 13, 2007 • Terrestrial Biodiversity and Protected Lands • Data from BPAD and GreenInfo Network, this data allows assessment of regional goals, assists in planning for new areas to conserve, and identifies where people are in relation to parks

  9. Methods • Created center points, or “centroids”, for each planning unit • Point distance function to calculate the distance from the center point of each parcel to the features of interest • Calculated each feature’s final value by multiplying the inverse of distance to feature by the chosen weight for that feature • Used MATLAB to compile all non-zero weighted values and their associated PU ID’s • Edited auvspr.dat and the spec.dat file • Within the spec.dat file, weighted the “target” category heavily in favor of marine features over terrestrial features • Ran MARXAN & joined output to biodiversity shapefile in ArcGIS

  10. Findings • PUs are closely clustered around habitat areas that currently have some level of protection • Some inland parcels were selected for their proximity to marsh land

  11. Significance of Findings • PUs chosen are closely linked to valuable seabird colonies and marine mammal haulouts • Overlap illustrates the strength of our analysis

  12. Process & Change Models • Human population growth could lead to increased stress to near-shore ecosystems in the form of: • Amplified disturbances to sensitive shore species as beach use increases • Increased fishing and associated food chain impacts • Potential increase in urban run-off and water pollution • Increase in human development of formerly natural areas in coastal zone • Climate change could lead to additional stress through: • Erosion • Limited rocky and beach area for species • Species range shifts

  13. Implementation • Utilize volunteer-based scientific data collection or “citizen scientists” through stakeholder groups • Farallon Marine Sanctuary Association • Reef Check Foundation • Point Reyes Bird Observatory • Continuously monitor important near-shore values before and after reserve implementation

  14. Literature Cited Bonora, W. 2006.NOAA National Marine Sanctuary Program (NOAA-NMS). California Seabirds Get a Helping Hand. http://sanctuaries.noaa.gov/news/features/1006_californiabird.html California Department of Fish and Game (CDFG), Marine Region GIS Lab. 2009. Persistent Kelp. mlpa.sde.BIO_CA_KelpPersistent_SAT. MLPA MarineMap Shape Files http://data.marinemap.org California Department of Fish and Game (CDFG), Marine Region GIS Lab, Unpublished Material. 2004 A. Federal MPAs. mlpa.sde.MAN_CA_FedMPA. MLPA MarineMap Shape Files http://data.marinemap.org California Department of Fish and Game (CDFG), Marine Region GIS Lab, Unpublished Material. 2007. Existing State MPAs. mlpa.sde.MPA_CA_Existing_State. MLPA MarineMap Shape Files http://data.marinemap.org Green M., and J. Paine, 1997. State of the World’s Protected Areas at the End of the Twentieth Century. Paper presented at IUCN World Commission on Protected Areas Symposium on “Protected Areas in the 21st Century: From Islands to Networks” Albany, Australia, 24-29th November 1997. World Conservation Monitoring Centre, Cambridge, UK Leader-Williams, N., Harrison J., and Green, M.J.B. 1990. Designing protected areas to conserve natural resources. Science Progress 74: 189-204. MacKinnon, J., MacKinnon, K., Child, G. and Thorsell, J., 1986. Managing Protected Areas in theTropics. IUCN, Gland, Switzerland. 295 pp. McNeely and Miller 1984. National Parks, Conservation and Development: The role of protectedareas in sustaining society. Proceedings of the World Congress on National Parks held on 11–22 October 1982 in Bali, Indonesia. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington DC. MLPA MarineMap Shape Files Seabird Colonies. http://data.marinemap.org Accessed 2010 The Nature Conservancy, Humboldt Bay Atlas, CA Dept of Fish and Game, and NOAA. 2004. Eelgrass. mlpa.sde.HAB_CA_Eelgrass. MLPA MarineMap Shape Files http://data.marinemap.org NOAA-National Marine Fisheries Service - Southwest Region. 2007A Pinniped geospatial data. Marine Mammal Pinniped Haulouts. mlpa.sde.BIO_CA_Mammal_Pinnipeds_Haulouts. MLPA MarineMap Shape Files http://data.marinemap.org NOAA-National Marine Fisheries Service – Southwest Region. 2007B California Pinniped Rookeries & Haul-out Sites. http://swr.nmfs.noaa.gov/psd/rookeryhaulouts/pinnipedinfo.htm NOAA-National Marine Fisheries Service - Southwest Region. 2007C Pinniped geospatial data. Marine Mammal Pinniped Rookeries. mlpa.sde.BIO_CA_Mammal_Pinnipeds_Rookeries. MLPA MarineMap Shape Files http://data.marinemap.org NOAA, Center for Coastal Monitoring and Assessment - Biogeography Team National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science. 2003. Northern and Central California Biogeographic Assessment - Marine Fishes, Birds and Mammals. Prepared for Cordell Bank, Gulf of the Farallones and Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuaries. NOAA CCAP raster data set. Coastal Marsh. mlpa.sde.HAB_CA_CoastalMarsh. http://www.csc.noaa.gov/crs/lca/ccap.html. MLPA MarineMap Shape Files http://data.marinemap.org Accessed 2010 Steneck, R.S., et al. 2002. Kelp forest ecosystems: biodiversity, stability, resilience and future. Environmental Conservation 29:436-459. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service - National Wetlands Inventory, NOAA – ESI (USFWS-NOAA). 2004 Estuaries. mlpa.sde.HAB_CA_Estuaries MLPA MarineMap Shape Files http://data.marinemap.org U.S Fish and Wildlife Service and California Department of Fish and Game- Wildlife and Habitat Data Analysis Branch. 2001. Western Snowy Plover Colonies. mlpa.sde.BIO_CA_WesternSnowyPlover. MLPA MarineMap Shape Files http://data.marinemap.org U.S. Fish and Wildlife. 2001. Western Snowy Plover Pacific Coast Population Draft Recovery Plan. http://www.westernsnowyplover.org/pdfs/draft_recovery_plan.pdf Weiss S., N. Shaefer, and R. Branciforte. 2008. San Francisco Bay Area Upland Habitat Goals, Methodology, and Vegetation Representation Analysis. A Project of the Bay Are Open Space Council.

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