Harry Scott Butterfield

The Nature Conservancy · California Land Program

As the world population grows, so does the demand for food, putting unprecedented pressure on agricultural lands. At the same time, climate change, soil degradation, and water scarcity mean that productivity of many of these lands is deteriorating. In many desert dryland regions, drinking wells are drying up and the land above them is sinking, soil...

Restoration of agricultural drylands globally, here farmlands and grazing lands, is a priority for ecosystem function and biodiversity preservation. Natural areas in drylands are recognized as biodiversity hotspots and face continued human impacts. Global water shortages are driving increased agricultural land retirement providing the opportunity t...

With this publication, TNC in California marks a major shift in its approach to conservation easement monitoring. At the crossroads of conservation, stewardship and technology lies remote monitoring, an emerging practice that uses satellite imagery and a seamless web-based platform. This solution to meeting the chapter’s annual compliance monitorin...

Irrigated agriculture has grown rapidly over the last 50 years, helping food production keep pace with population growth, but also leading to significant habitat and biodiversity loss globally. Now, in some regions, land degradation and overtaxed water resources mean historical production levels may need to be reduced. We demonstrate how analytical...

This Policy Brief summarizes the results of a study on the potential for strategic habitat restoration in the San Joaquin Valley of California as an important part of reducing overall water demand to achieve groundwater sustainability under the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA). It also provides policy recommendations based on these res...

We combined two climate‐based distribution models with three finer‐scale suitability models to identify habitat for pronghorn recovery in California now and into the future. We used a consensus approach to identify areas of suitable climate now and future for pronghorn in California. We compared the results of climate models from two separate hypot...

Pronghorn ( Antilocapra americana ), a symbol of western North America, experienced diverging population trajectories since the mid‐twentieth century, with northern populations showing signs of recovery while those in the arid Southwest have struggled to persist. We conducted a systematic literature review of papers published through August 2023 to...

Positive associations between animals and foundational shrub species are frequent in desert ecosystems for shelter, resources, refuge, and other key ecological processes. Herein, we tested the impact of the density of the shrub species Ephedra californica on the presence and habitat use of the federally endangered lizard species, Gambelia sila. To...

Climate change profoundly influences plants and animals in all ecosystems including drylands such as semi-arid and arid scrublands and grasslands. At the peak of an extended megadrought in the Southwestern USA, the microclimatic refuges provided by foundation plant species and through associated vegetation were examined. Shrubs and open interstitia...

Species richness is a fundamental component of ecological research including restoration. Managing for enhanced native species richness in restoration is a powerful goal and outcome; nonetheless, local species richness can also be used as a proximate mechanism to decide on the lands to acquire, protect, and restore. Here, a meta‐analysis was used t...

Ecological land classifications serve diverse purposes including sample stratification, inventory, impact assessment and environmental planning. While popular, data-driven classification approaches can require large training samples, frequently with limited robustness to rapid environmental change. We evaluate the potential to derive useful, durabl...

Identifying high-quality habitat (i.e., areas with resources and conditions suitable to support long-term species persistence) is a priority for conservation, but estimating habitat quality is expensive and time consuming. Instead managers often rely on occurrence data or models of habitat suitability, but these data are only proximally related to...

Numerous pressures influence the ecological capacity and health of drylands globally. Shrubs are often a critical component of these systems and can function positively as foundation species through facilitation of other species. Nonetheless, limited attention has been paid to the potential negative and indirect effects of shrubs. Here, we tested t...

Cattle grazing is the dominant land management tool TNC has to manage biodiversity and reduce the threat of catastrophic wildfire at the TNC's Jack and Laura Dangermond Preserve. This Rangeland Management Plan, intended to guide rangeland management through 2025, details the adaptive management approach TNC is taking to the use cattle grazing for a...

Globally, no species is exempt from the constraints associated with limited available habitat or resources, and endangered species in particular warrant critical examination. In most cases, these species are restricted to limited locations, and the relative likelihood of resource use within the space they can access is important. Using Gambelia sil...

This Plan frames the biological and cultural significance and provides the short- and long-term goals, objectives, and priority actions for the Jack and Laura Dangermond Preserve.

Positive interactions enhance biodiversity and ecosystem function, but can also exacerbate biological invasions. Facilitation of exotic invaders by exotic foundation species (invasional meltdown) has been studied extensively, but facilitation of exotic invaders by native foundation species has attracted less attention. Specifically, very few studie...

A recent global trend toward retirement of farmland presents opportunities to reclaim habitat for threatened and endangered species. We examine habitat restoration opportunities in one of the world’s most converted landscapes, California’s San Joaquin Desert (SJD). Despite the presence of 35 threatened and endangered species, agricultural expansion...

Summary of resurvey effort for two apparently extirpated historical record locations at or near the historical northern range margin of Gambelia sila. (XLSX)

Comparison of realized climatic niches for Gambelia sila and all three species in the genus Gambelia. Other members of the genus occupy hotter and drier environments than are available to G. sila in the San Joaquin Desert (see also S2 Fig). Occurrence data were thinned to one record per 30-arcsecond climate grid cell. Climate data were extracted fr...

Ensemble habitat suitability surfaces generated for this study. Zipped file includes GeoTIFF files representing continuous and binary historical habitat suitability for Gambelia sila (see text). (ZIP)

Discussion of potential impact of climate change. (PDF)

Hours of restriction during the breeding season (left) and hours of activity during the active season (right). Hours of restriction are average number of hours per day during the breeding season (AMJJ) that operative environmental temperatures are too hot for Gambelia sila to be active above ground. Hours of activity are number of hours per day dur...

Modeled change in habitat suitability over time for four future climate scenarios. Climate scenarios were selected to represent a range of potential future conditions, combining two global circulation models with two emission scenarios. The global circulation models predict either a relatively hot and dry future (MIROC-ESM) or a relatively warm and...

Change in climatic niche of Gambelia sila from the historical era to modern era with respect to actual evapotranspiration (AET). The distribution of all distinct G. sila record locations on intact habitat has shifted toward sites with lower AET from the historical (pre-1960) to modern (1995 or after) periods. (TIFF)

Threatened, endangered, extinct, and extirpated species of the San Joaquin Desert. List includes 42 species with occurrence records that fall within the boundary of the San Joaquin Desert (sensu Germano et al., 2011). SSC indicates a California species of special concern. (XLSX)

Locations of some recent Gambelia sila habitat destruction. This list is by no means comprehensive. It is a partial list of locations where the authors and collaborators have observed habitat loss in the course of other work duties. Examining historical aerial imagery in the vicinity of many of these disturbances reveals additional instances of hab...

Density plots for 11 candidate predictor variables. Shown are Gambelia sila occurrence locations and background sampling locations used for parameterizing our models. Occurrence data was thinned to one record per 1-km grid cell. Old locations on developed habitat were not included. (TIFF)

Habitat suitability in the Westlands Water District peaks on alkaline soils located in the western portions of the district. Under a settlement negotiated with the federal government at least 405 km2 of farmland in Westlands Water District will be permanently retired, including 70–210 km2 of formerly suitable habitat for Gambelia sila. The thick bo...

Biases and critiques of previous species distribution models for San Joaquin Desert species. (XLSX)

Information on 11 candidate predictor variables evaluated for their strength in determining habitat quality and distribution. (XLSX)

Locations of Gambelia sila occurrence observed on retired agricultural lands. Scars from former ploughing are clearly visible on aerial imagery of these sites. (XLSX)

A recent global trend toward retirement of farmland presents opportunities to reclaim habitat for threatened and endangered species. We examine habitat restoration opportunities in one of the world’s most converted landscapes, California’s San Joaquin Desert (SJD). Despite the presence of 35 threatened and endangered species, agricultural expansion...

A recent global trend toward retirement of farmland presents opportunities to reclaim habitat for threatened and endangered species. We examine habitat restoration opportunities in one of the world’s most converted landscapes, California’s San Joaquin Desert (SJD). Despite the presence of 35 threatened and endangered species, agricultural expansion...

Preservation of desert ecosystems is a worldwide conservation priority. Shrubs can play a key role in the structure of desert communities and can function as foundation species. Understanding desert shrub ecology is therefore an important task in desert conservation. A useful model for the function of shrubs in deserts is ecological facilitation, w...

Strategic retirement and restoration of agricultural lands is a critical conservation opportunity globally. The objective of this synthesis was to examine whether ecological habitat assessments, endangered species historical occurrence data, and restoration research can be used to develop evidence-based\ strategy for retiring and restoring agricult...

Strategic retirement and restoration of agricultural lands is a critical conservation opportunity globally. The objective of this synthesis was to examine whether ecological habitat assessments, endangered species historical occurrence data, and restoration research can be used to develop evidence‐based strategy for retiring and restoring agricultu...

Aim: Habitat loss has been the greatest historical driver of species extinctions. A recent global trend toward retirement of marginally productive agricultural lands presents opportunities to reclaim critical habitat for endangered species. We examine habitat restoration opportunities in the context of historical sources of habitat loss, including...

The US and Mexico share a common history in many areas, including language and culture. They face ecological changes due to the increased frequency and severity of droughts and rising energy demands; trends that entail economic costs for both nations and major implications for human well being. We describe an ongoing effort by the Environment Worki...

California's Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) established a framework for sustainable, local groundwater management. SGMA requires groundwater-dependent regions to halt overdraft and bring basins into balanced levels of pumping and recharge. As a result, agricultural land retirement is on the rise in the San Joaquin Valley, California’...

Invasive weeds threaten the biodiversity and forage productivity of grasslands worldwide. However, management of these weeds is constrained by the practical difficulty of detecting small-scale infestations across large landscapes and by limits in understanding of landscape-scale invasion dynamics, including mechanisms that enable patches to expand,...

Comparison of overall accuracy (%) of classification for four types of NDVI-analogue image inputs processed with both unsupervised (U) and supervised (S) classification algorithms. (TIF)

Producer’s and user’s accuracies for weed patches. (TIF)

Producer’s and user’s accuracies for non-weed patches. (TIF)

Comparison of daily precipitation in growing year 2008 (September 1 2007 –August 31 2008) and 2009 (September 1 2008 –August 31 2009) at our study location. (TIF)

Recent climate change should result in expansion of species to northern or high elevation range margins,

Recent climate change should result in expansion of species to northern or high elevation range margins, and contraction at southern and low elevation margins in the northern hemisphere, because of local extirpations or range shifts or both. We combined museum occurrence records from both the continental U.S. and Mexico with a new eco-physiological...

Recent climate change should result in expansion of species to northern or high elevation range margins, and contraction at southern and low elevation margins due to extinction. Climate models predict dramatic extinctions and distributional shifts in the next century, but there are few ground-truths of these dire forecasts leading to uncertainty in...

On the Ground • Many public agencies and land trusts that manage grazing lands are interested in using remote sensing technologies to make their monitoring programs more efficient but lack the expertise to do so. In California annual grasslands, using remote sensing is especially challenging because the dominant vegetation is not detectable by sta...

Genomic responses to habitat conversion can be rapid, providing wildlife managers with time-limited opportunities to enact recovery efforts that use population connectivity information that reflects pre-disturbance landscapes. Such opportunities may still exist for the endemic fauna and flora of California's San Joaquin Desert, where biome conversi...

Background Carrizo Plain National Monument (San Joaquin Desert, California, USA) is home to many threatened and endangered species including the blunt-nosed leopard lizard (Gambelia sila). Vegetation is dominated by annual grasses, and shrubs such as Mormon tea (Ephedra californica), which is of relevance to our target species, the federally listed...

Extreme weather events can provide unique opportunities for testing models that predict the effect of climate change. Droughts of increasing severity have been predicted under numerous models, thus contemporary droughts may allow us to test these models prior to the onset of the more extreme effects predicted with a changing climate. In the third y...

Table of surveyed localities and winter precipitation. Binary data in column titled “Neonates observed in 2014” indicates neonates observed (= 1) or not observed (= 0). “ns” indicates we found no record of surveys conducted for neonates in past 3 years. (XLSX)

Table of data used in model selection analysis. (XLSX)

Background Carrizo Plain National Monument is one of the largest remaining patches of San Joaquin Desert left within the Central Valley of California. It is home to many threatened and endangered species including the San Joaquin kit fox, blunt-nosed leopard lizard, and giant kangaroo rat. The dominant plant lifeform is shrubs. The species Ephedra...

Monitoring the effects of grazing on rangelands is crucial for ensuring sustainable rangeland ecosystem function and maintaining its conservation values. Residual dry matter (RDM), the dry grass biomass left on the ground at the end of the grazing season, is a commonly used proxy for rangeland condition in Mediterranean climates. Moderate levels of...

Species distributions are known to be limited by biotic and abiotic factors at multiple temporal and spatial scales. Species distribution models, however, frequently assume a population at equilibrium in both time and space. Studies of habitat selection have repeatedly shown the difficulty of estimating resource selection if the scale or extent of...

The Nature Conservancy (the Conservancy) in California monitors residual dry matter (RDM) on approximately 300,000 acres of conservation easement and fee lands. On approximately half of this acreage, the Conservancy contracts out monitoring each year at a cost of approximately $55,000. The purpose of this study was to evaluate whether satellite rem...

The high cost of directly measuring habitat quality has led ecologists to test alternate methods for estimating and predicting this critically important ecological variable. In particular, it is frequently assumed but rarely tested that models of habitat suitability (‘species distribution models’, SDM s) may provide useful indices of habitat qualit...

In the Western San Joaquin Valley (WSJV) of California, approximately 64,000 acres of utility-scale solar energy projects are proposed or under construction. Many of these projects are sited within remnant San Joaquin Valley (SJV) ecosystems. These ecosystems, of which less than 5% of their historical range is left, have largely been converted to i...

Accurate, reliable, and efficient monitoring methods for detecting changes in the distribution and abundance of wildlife populations are the cornerstone of effective management. Aerial surveys of active burrow sites and ground counts of open burrows have been used to estimate distribution and abundance, respectively, of a number of rodent species....

Background/Question/Methods Human communities worldwide are seeking to solve environmental problems that involve multivariate consideration of human needs, maintenance of ecological processes, and conservation of species. The scientific community is contributing to this effort and has leveraged its impact through partnerships with extension speci...

Remote sensing is increasingly being used to quantify vegetation biomass across large areas, often with algorithms based on calibrated relationships between biomass and indices such as the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI). To improve capacity to evaluate grassland dynamics over time, we examined the influence of phenological changes on...

Download at: http://www.desertreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/DR_Fall2008.pdf

As valuation of ecosystem goods and services derived from ecological processes becomes increasingly important in environmental decision-making, the need to quantify how restoration activities influence ecosystem function has grown more urgent, particularly within income-generating or subsistence-providing landscapes where economic needs and biodive...

Although remote sensing has many potential applications for range management, its use by range managers thus far has been limited. To investigate the factors that encourage use of remote sensing and to examine its influence on decision making by individuals who manage privately owned rangeland, we evaluated the decision-making processes of 3 ranch...

Although remote sensing has many potential applications for range management, its use by range managers thus far has been limited. To investigate the factors that encourage use of remote sensing and to examine its influence on decision making by individuals who manage privately owned rangeland, we evaluated the decision-making processes of 3 ranch...