Effects of Climate Change on Endangered Species’ Habitat

Location: Central Valley California

Summary: The issue of climate change is at the forefront of discussion in the scientific community and the ecological significance of climate change is being recognized by the courts as an essential element to consideration in the environmental permitting process.

ENTRIX is currently utilizing their ecologists, physical scientists, and academic partners in a project directed at addressing this important issue. Specifically, ENTRIX is working in partnership with the Bureau of Reclamation, (South Central California Office) to evaluate the effects of climate change on a group of federally-listed species chosen to represent taxa utilizing diverse aspects of the ecosystem in Reclamation’s project jurisdictions. The taxa included in this study are: steelhead, San Joaquin kit fox, red-legged frog, tiger salamander, giant garter snake, and two plants (palmate-bracted bird’s-beak and San Joaquin woolly-threads). The geographic areas to be considered include the Central Valley from the Sacramento – San Joaquin Delta, south to about Bakersfield. Santa Clara and San Benito counties, and Santa Barbara County the Santa Maria and Santa Ynez river and several smaller streams draining to the Pacific near the City of Santa Barbara.

The purpose of this evaluation is to provide information necessary to incorporate the effects of climate change into the assessment of the effects of future planning efforts, and thus aid in the development of NEPA and ESA environmental documents. Climate change data based upon the previous 50 years, along with other information such as greenhouse gas level data, will be used to predict change over the next 20 years. The effect of those climate change attributes most critical to the selected species will be used to predict changes in their habitat 20 years from the present.