Scientists Chart Best Course to Save California’s Native Plants from Impacts of Climate Change

In view of the IPCC warnings that humans have merely 12 years to decrease greenhouse gas emissions by almost 50% or face considerably greater effects from climate change, researchers at the University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley) are now planning the best route to save the native plants of California from these human threats.

We just have a decade or two given the rapid pace of climate and land-use change. Our opportunities, even 10 years down the line, are way more limited compared to what they are now. What we are going to save, we are going to save quickly. We don’t have forever to leisurely conserve California.

Brent Mishler, Professor of Integrative Biology and Director of University and Jepson Herbaria, University of California, Berkeley

Mishler, graduate student Matthew Kling, and their colleagues at UC Berkeley have developed a computer model to focus on the plants and the growing areas that require preservation, and for the first time, linked this with the areas’ appropriateness for preservation.

The computer model will enable conservation groups, spanning from national and state parks to the Nature Conservancy, to establish whether land harboring species requiring preservation are either already protected, unprotected but can be salvaged, or degraded to such an extent that it would be useless to save them: essential triage given only limited funds for preservation.

The model is capable of identifying parcels that must be at the zenith of the state’s list for acquisition to optimally protect the unique and irreplaceable flora of California. The state’s flora contains over 5,000 native species, and many of these cannot be found anywhere else in the globe.

This is realpolitik. These are the places where the diversity that is present is not protected elsewhere and the land is still intact enough that it could make a reserve, a situation where there is both opportunity and motive.

Brent Mishler, Professor of Integrative Biology and Director of University and Jepson Herbaria, University of California, Berkeley

An interactive web application was also developed by Kling, who is the lead author of a paper that describes the computer model. This web application enables the public to see the genera and species at all locations in the state, so as to get an idea for the various flora and their evolutionary lineages. The model has been reported in the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B.

Preserving young and old

Mishler and his colleagues conducted studies in the past which were able to pinpoint important areas around the state because these sites contain critical endemic species—that is, species which are native to California and not found anywhere else. The majority of these species are relicts dwelling in refugia, similar to nursing homes, while others are newly evolved lineages in sites similar to nurseries.

Mishler stated that both may need to be preserved—older lineages as promising sources of novel pharmaceuticals or alternatively as pockets of genetic variability that might help enhance the human food supply in the future, and newer species due to their established ability to create spin-offs to colonize newly produced ecological niches.

While the innovative model builds off this previous study to identify hotspots of biodiversity, it concentrates on the practical objective of detecting regions that can be reasonably sustained, to get the most out of this.

Part of our goal for this paper is to get both academics and practicing conservationists thinking about these different aspects of the old and the young, the rapidly evolving and the very stable sorts of lineages, and thinking about which ones we want to conserve and why. That would be a nice discussion to contribute to.

Matthew Kling, Graduate Student, University of California, Berkeley

Today, normal considerations in conservation are likely to focus mainly on species diversity. In addition, Mishler, Kling, and their colleagues consider the evolutionary and genetic uniqueness of plants in relation to other regions of the state, whether those plants are rare endemics that would vanish if one land is lost to changing climate or development, and whether they are optimally protected elsewhere and therefore not considered to be highly important.

“There may be hundreds of reasons why you would want to save the flora of a particular location, and we have boiled them all down into this one measure.” said Mishler.

Coastal areas ripe for preservation

From the standpoint of evolutionary age, uniqueness on the tree of life, and possibility to evolve new lineages, some of the greatest priority regions for preservation are along the coast of California—Point Conception near Lompoc in Santa Barbara County and Arcata in Humboldt County are important areas—and also the Coast Ranges and foothills of the Sierra Nevada.

Mishler noted that some of these regions are already protected. Thanks to a $165 million grant last year, the Nature Conservancy was able to acquire a huge ranch close to Lompoc, now known as the Jack and Laura Dangermond Preserve that has been identified as a key preservation priority by the UC Berkeley study.

Others, including the forested regions close to the northwest coast of California, may be owned by timber-harvesting companies or may be in private hands.

Mishler noted that very few are in southern California. This is because the high population density of the region means that areas of key biodiversity are already protected or they are degraded to the point where saving them would be pointless.

“It is really the areas both currently unprotected but still relatively pristine that we want to focus on for future conservation,” stated Kling.

It is like a triage situation. When medical personnel arrive on the scene of a bad accident, they have to know who to help immediately to be effective.

Brent Mishler, Professor of Integrative Biology and Director of University and Jepson Herbaria, University of California, Berkeley

Other co-authors of the paper, which was reported in an issue dedicated to using museum specimens as a roadmap for comprehending biodiversity in the Anthropocene, are Bruce Baldwin, a professor of integrative biology; Andrew Thornhill, a postdoctoral fellow; and David Ackerly, dean of the College of Natural Resources. The National Science Foundation (DEB-1354552) funded the study.