Climate Change Vulnerability Assessment of Rare Plants in California is a Department of Fish and Wildlife project that began in 2011 to provide information or rare plant vulnerability to climate change. Project funding and oversight came from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and CA Landscape Conservation Cooperative (CA LCC).
The purpose of this project was to:
- Develop a climate change vulnerability assessment methodology,
- As a pilot study, assess roughly 10% of California’s rare plant species,
- Evaluate the Climate Change Vulnerability Index (CCVI) of NatureServe as a tool for ranking rare plant species with regards to climate change vulnerability,
- Use species distribution modeling to assess future range change under various climate change scenarios for rare plants, and
- Evaluate how vulnerability assessments can be used to set goals, determine management priorities, and inform decisions about appropriate adaptation strategies
Reports and Further Information
Related Efforts
Several other organizations have begun vulnerability assessment for plants, including Patti Vitt and Shannon Still of the Chicago Botanic Garden (funded by BLM), Mark Schwartz and Steele of UC Davis (funded by USFS), and Sam Veloz of Point Reyes Bird Observatory and Healey Hamilton of the Cal Academy of Sciences, and Frank Davis of UC Santa Barbara (funded by NSF).
Contact Information
Melanie Gogol-Prokurat
Biogeographic Data Branch
(916) 324-9265
Melanie.Gogol-Prokurat@wildlife.ca.gov