A 450-year-old valley oak tree in Calaveras County, California. Photo: Jon Myatt/USFWS
Science Applications
The goal of the Service's Science Applications initiative is to strengthen the Service's tradition of scientific excellence in the conservation of fish, wildlife, plants and their habitat. We will accomplish this by: • Expanding our capacities to acquire apply and communicate scientific information.
• Promoting active involvement of the Service and our employees in the larger scientific community.
• Strengthening partnerships between the Service and other scientific organizations; and
• Growing the next generation of Service scientists.
This site will maintain information on implementation of the Science Applications initiative and related matters.
Strategic Habitat Conservation
Strategic Habitat Conservation is an adaptive resource management framework that applies lessons learned from past management actions when doing conservation planning for the future. It has five key elements: biological planning, conservation design, conservation delivery, monitoring and research.
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Strategic Habitat Conservation Homepage
Surrogate Species
The large number of species with which the Service and our partners work makes creating landscape-scale conservation plans on a species-by-species basis impractical. We are developing a process to collaboratively identify "surrogate species" that represent other species or aspects of their environment. Conserving habitat for these surrogate species can, at the same time, address the needs of a larger group of species. This is a practical step in using the SHC approach and the best-known science to conserve landscapes supporting multiple species. Selected surrogate species will be used as the basis for conservation planning efforts within a landscape or geographic area. Learn more about Service efforts involving the use of surrogate species here.
Collaborative Landscape Conservation
Landscape Conservation Cooperatives (LCCs) are self-directed science and conservation planning partnerships that provide shared science capacity to inform resource management actions addressing climate change and other processes operating on broad landscape scales.
Landscape Conservation Design
For practitioners looking to develop, facilitate, or participate in a landscape conservation design (LCD) process, the Recommended Practices for Landscape Conservation Design guide can serve as a reference and springboard for implementing broad-scale, multi-species conservation; enhancing collaboration; sharing data across regions and states; incorporating human dimensions into the landscape; and more. The guide covers five major themes — initiating LCD, convening stakeholders and framing the design, assessing current and future desired conditions, spatial design and strategy design. Each section of the document describes vetted practices; provides resources for further information; and presents a case study where the practices have been implemented.
Climate Change
Changing climate is accelerating threats to our wildlife and natural systems like habitat loss and water scarcity, making it all the more important that we work together to conserve America's natural heritage for the future.
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Climate Change Homepage
Pacific Southwest Region Climate Change Homepage
Science Policy
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is committed to using sound science in its decision-making and to provide the American people with information of the highest possible quality. Visit our peer-review page for more on what we're doing to ensure the quality and credibility of the scientific information we distribute.
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Science Information Quality Homepage
Scientific Code of Professional Conduct for the Service - 212 FW 7
Peer Review of Region 8 Scientific Information
Science Support
The Science Applications Program plays a key role in providing science support to other Service programs in the Pacific Southwest Region. The program coordinates closely with the U.S. Geological Survey, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and other organizations to acquire, synthesize and share science information that land resource managers need to be effective.
U.S. Fish and Wildlife/USGS Science Support Partnership Home
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Scientific Journals
WORKING WITH PARTNERS
Sustaining the “Natural Infrastructure” of the San Francisco Bay Region
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service works with partners to conserve landscapes for fish, wildlife, and people. With support from the California LCC, the Bay Area Open Space Council recently completed a project to identify lands essential to sustain the “natural infrastructure” of the San Francisco Bay region -- a functioning landscape that provides fresh water, wildlife, local food, fresh air and beautiful places for more than 7 million people.
Dubbed the Conservation Lands Network, these places are a mix of protected and unprotected areas in ten Bay Area counties. Information on the Conservation Lands Network exists in a map, web-based interactive mapping tool, and a GIS database, all of which are available online at: BayAreaLands.org.
LCC IN OUR REGION
OTHER RESOURCES
National Conservation Training Center Climate Change Learning Center
The Climate Change Learning Center provides information about training, workshops, and webinars relating to climate change that are available to employees of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and its partners. It also provides links to a wide range of resources can help you build your knowledge of climate science, climate change, and resource management strategies being developed and implemented to deal with the changing conditions brought on by climate change. Go to:
NCTC Climate Change Learning Center
ClimateWizard
ClimateWizard is a web-based program that enables technical and non-technical audiences to access leading climate change information and visualize the impacts anywhere on Earth. With ClimateWizard you can: view historic temperature and rainfall maps for anywhere in the world, view state-of-the-art future predictions of temperature and rainfall around the world, and view and download climate change maps in a few easy steps. Go to: http://www.climatewizard.org/
Cal-Adapt
A product of California’s Public Interest Energy Research (PIER) program, Cal-Adapt is a web-based climate adaptation planning tool that allows the user to identify potential climate change risks in specific geographic areas throughout the state. Users can either query by location, or click on an interactive map to explore what climate impacts are projected to occur in their area of interest at: http://cal-adapt.org/
The Climate Adaptation Knowledge Exchange (CAKE)
CAKE is an innovative community website for people working to manage the natural environment in the face of climate change. CAKE includes case studies of on-the-ground adaptation efforts, a virtual library of resources to support your work, a community forum with an expert advice column, a directory of individuals and organizations rich with adaptation knowledge, and a tools section full of useful online resources for adaptation planning and implementation go to: http://www.cakex.org/
California Department of Fish and Game Climate Change Activities
The Pacific Southwest Region works 
closely with the California Department of Fish and Game to conduct a broad range of planning and conservation activities associated with climate change.
CAL DFG Climate Change Activities
Get Connected!
The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service FieldNotes
FieldNotes showcases the activities, events and conservation work of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service here in the Pacific Southwest Region. The articles inside are written by our employees and reflect the efforts of the Service and our partners in conserving and preserving the unique natural resources here in California, Nevada and the Klamath Basin. After you've visited FieldNotes, follow us on these social media channels...
