Developing a conservation strategy for southern California forests and woodlands

We report on efforts to conduct an ecoregion-scale assessment of biological resources in the forests and woodlands of southern California. Key ecological questions under consideration are: How important are undeveloped habitat corridors between southern California mountain ranges? Is there adequate habitat on public lands for species dependent on oak woodlands? What are the long-term, ecological ramifications of current fire management policies? What are the ecological effects of existing and projected future levels of resource utilization and recreation use on public lands? We describe a four-step approach to addressing these questions: (1) compile and integrate spatial data on landscape patterns; (2) determine temporal trends in landscape change based on the influence of ecological processes and human land use; (3) identify local species/habitat relationships; and (4) use spatially explicit models to simulate and predict the effects of landscape change on the distribution and abundance of plant and animal populations.