From Feathers to Forecasts: SFBBO’s Newest Program Is Leading Climate Change Adaptation Efforts in California

By Dr. Nathan Van Schmidt

​Scientists have identified the two biggest threats to biodiversity as land use change (which has driven historical extinctions) and climate change (predicted to drive the greatest future extinctions). As a bird observatory in a major metropolitan area, understanding how the loss of 90% of historical tidal wetlands in the Bay Area has impacted birds has always been a central focus of SFBBO’s research. And many of our programs are studying the impact of climate change on birds—from the  threats facing phalarope habitats under the worsening droughts to impacts on the timing of migration in songbirds. ​

​But climate change is bigger than the impact on bird species, affecting both nature and society in myriad ways. The impacts on social systems can in turn alter processes of land use change. For example, a major reason the South Bay Salt Pond Restoration Project is restoring tidal wetlands is not just to create habitats (though this is important!) but also to buffer our human communities against flood risk under sea level rise.

​SFBBO’s newest research initiative is our Climate Change Program, which is taking a “big picture” look at those climate interconnections. This initiative is growing the scope of SFBBO’s research like never before. We’re studying not just birds and their habitats, but also the human dimension of climate vulnerability and adaptation—this initiative really centers the “engaging communities” aspect of our new Strategic Plan! While you may not have heard much about this program, we've been quite busy on it behind the scenes. We’ll be talking more about this important effort in the coming months, as we roll out community outreach efforts!

​This research program has centered on California’s Central Coast, the mountainous stretch of California between San Francisco and Los Angeles. This region is dominated by natural landscapes, including iconic natural areas like the Big Sur coast and Pinnacles National Park. But in places like the Paso Robles region of the Salinas Valley, these stretching grasslands, woodlands, and forests are being lost to but major expansions of vineyards. Worse, agricultural expansion and intensification is worsening an already serious unsustainable overextraction of groundwater, which the Central Coast—isolated from the snowpack and reservoirs of the Sierras—is almost entirely dependent upon for maintaining agriculture, domestic use, and groundwater-dependent wetlands. The nexus between climate change, land use, water supplies, and the sustainability of both human and ecological communities is thus tightly linked in this region.

Our first big achievement has been developing (in coordination with the US Geological Survey) the newest version of LUCAS, a tool to jointly forecast future climate, land development, water availability, and carbon emissions, including feedbacks such as droughts reducing the extent of agriculture. Our recently published results indicate the current groundwater sustainability crisis is poised to become worse under climate change and future development. We examined alternative implementations of California’s landmark Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, which mandates water management agencies across the state to design strategies to achieve groundwater sustainability. Our forecasts with LUCAS have revealed the sobering possibility that efforts to increase water supply through technologies like desalination could encourage further development and overuse. In contrast, strategies that prioritized reducing groundwater withdrawals (for example, with a cap-and-trade system to groundwater pumping) were far more effective at securing sustainable water for both humans and nature.

​Yet even this had a trade-off: regulating water pumping displaced even more of the agricultural expansion into unregulated, outlying natural areas that are currently relatively pristine. This research highlights the complexity of climate adaptation. It isn’t just about technology or policy in isolation; decisions in one arena ripple into another. The key takeaway is that we need to pair smart water conservation efforts with smart land conservation efforts. By working directly with land use planners and water agencies, we ensured that our findings were not just theoretical but usable. The spatial data our staff generated—projecting development and water use patterns into 2061 under each alternative policy--have been made publicly available to support sustainable planning across the Central Coast.

But that first effort was just setting the stage for deeper involvement in California’s climate change adaptation effort: SFBBO is co-leading (along with social scientists at UC-Santa Cruz) the Central Coast Regional Report for the newest California Climate Change Assessment. Part of a sweeping state initiative to synthesize the best available science across every possible aspect of climate change impacts and adaptation, our work on the Regional Report aims specifically to inform local adaptation efforts by communities. Nathan is leading the Climate Analysis Coordination workgroup, facilitating the dozens of researchers working on the nine Regional Reports to collaborate in designing and coding the best possible sets of climate change measures to represent future on-the-ground risks across California.

​We are also wrangling dozens of scientists to write the “Natural Lands” section, highlighting how climate change is impacting the Central Coast’s diverse habitats—from forests and grasslands to tidal estuaries and kelp forests. But this effort is not just about scientific research on ecosystems; it’s also about ensuring that those most vulnerable to climate impacts have their voices heard and their knowledge reflected in the report. SFBBO staff are spearheading outreach efforts to the two dozen Native American tribes within the region, while our partners at Regeneración are coordinating engagement with farmworker communities.

If you or someone you know is living, working, or has roots in the Central Coast, you can contribute to this report too! Please fill out this form to share your perspective. By bringing communities together in conservations, we hope to build the partnerships needed to ensure California’s natural and human communities thrive in the decades ahead.