Conclusions

A spatially comprehensive (i.e.,wall-to-wall) sampling strategy with fairly regular temporal frequency (e.g. annual to every five years) is required to truly monitor and manage the condition of wildlife habitat within southern California reserve systems. This can only be achieved with mulititemporal remotely sensed image data having high spatial resolution, subjected to image processing procedures, and analyzed in conjunction with field-level biological data.

The keys to efficient monitoring of detailed changes in land surface cover and form are: 1) careful planning and execution of airborne image data collection and 2) precise image registration.

The radiometric, geometric, surface feature extraction, and change detection processing results presented in website provide the basis for efficient and effective monitoring of land cover and habitat condition changes within southern California reserves. Discrimination of natural land cover variability from actual changes in habitat quality is one the most challenging aspect of habitat monitoring through remote sensing in semi-arid landscapes such as shrublands in southern California. In addition to monitoring habitat changes over time, remotely sensed imagery may also be utilized to assess indicators of habitat quality such as bare soil exposure, shrub cover, and site-specific degradation resulting from unauthorized trail development.

The following recommendations focus on practical steps to make habitat monitoring through remote sensing an operational methodology for nature preserve management. These steps include strategic actions as well as specific tasks for technology development. For more a more comprehensive list of recommendations please refer to the project report (PDF).

1. Research and development should continue along several fronts. The first is continued development of techniques for detecting temporal changes and spatial differences in those variables that are key to determining habitat quality. Foremost among these is shrub density or percent cover of shrub species, especially in the coastal sage scrub plant community.

2. Further investigation of the utility of available and cost-effective color-infrared digital orthophotographs for habitat quality mapping and change detection should be performed to identify potential low-cost alternatives to satellite and aerial multispectral image products.

3. Research should continue in the realm of facilitating data exchange and analysis and improving the interface with other geo-spatial technologies. This area of research includes development of methods and protocols for storing and accessing data via the internet, as pioneered in the NASA ARC project conducted in 2001 (Tsou, et al., 2002). Efforts to enhance capabilities for data access and update in real time from the field, such as the NASA ARC study currently underway, also speak to this need to make geo-spatial datasets derived from remote sensing more useful and practical for lay-users.

4. Significant additional work is warranted in developing management oriented analytic tools that are driven by geo-spatial data. The development of analytic tools would significantly enhance the utility and cost-effectiveness of remote sensing and all other associated geo-spatial tools, and would complete the suite of tools identified early on by southern California managers for their modernized toolbox.

5. Given the need for strong leadership from NCCP coordinators to implement the established research agenda, and chronic uncertainties in funding for research activities from the resource agencies, a prudent strategy to ensure continued development of these technologies is to diversify the base of future support while expanding the potential community of users. The tools and methodologies developed through this research are not limited to the NCCP or to the southern California region in their utility. A strategic marketing program to enlist users from a broader community of natural resource managers, including other public agencies such as the U.S. Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management, California State Parks and National Parks Service; and private organizations such as national and international conservation organizations and NGOs.

6. Diversification should also take the form of concrete steps to enable research and implementation to continue through partnerships with the private sector.

7. A diversified flexibility would position researchers to readily collaborate with future institutions charged with managing regional data bases. Such an institution is likely to be a hybrid of public and private (NGO) partnerships and therefore, supported by a mix of public and private funding sources.

8. A potentially effective strategy is to establish a formal agreement between supervisory agencies (California Department of Fish and Game and U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service), NASA, and SDSU to implement an integrated monitoring system.