While meadows cover less than one percent of the Sierra Nevada, these ecosystems are of high ecological importance given their role in carbon and nitrogen storage, mediation of surface water flows, groundwater recharge, sediment filtration, and as refugia for numerous species. Understanding how – and where – to conserve and restore meadow ecosystems is a critical management question facing US Forest Service (USFS) and other land managers in the Sierra Nevada. The information and tools generated from this project are intended to significantly increase understanding of meadow responses to climate, associated changes in hydrology, and to develop conservation and restoration priorities that are strongly aligned with climate-smart principles across multiple jurisdictions in the region.
To address the needs of the USFS and other stakeholders in the Sierra Nevada ecoregion, this effort will leverage a 26-year time series (1985-present) of climate and remotely sensed data in ~6000 meadows to analyze meadow vegetation responses to contemporary variation in climate, a measure of their sensitivity to climate change, and characterize how these responses vary in accordance with hydrogeomorphic contexts (e.g., geology, elevation, topographic position, soils, stream network topology, etc.) at an ecoregional scale.
The project will develop a vulnerability assessment of Sierra Nevada meadows based on our meadow sensitivity results, projections of climate variables that meadows are sensitive to (exposure) and indicators of adaptive capacity (e.g., geomorphic context, connectivity, intactness, etc.). Building from principles and characteristics of Climate-Smart Conservation, the project will develop a decision framework that provides guidance on where to focus restoration and conservation actions based on meadow vulnerability assessment results. This framework can then be incorporated into existing meadow prioritizations to allow practitioners to more rigorously consider climate impacts and adaptation options.
The decision framework and monitoring tool will be piloted with the Amador-Calaveras Consensus Group (ACCG) to help guide their prioritization of 20 meadows for restoration in the upper Mokelumne, Stanislaus, Calavares, and Consumnes watersheds.
