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CARIBBEAN LANDSCAPE CONSERVATION COOPERATIVE
The Caribbean Landscape Conservation Cooperative (CLCC) is part of a national network of 22 Landscape Conservation Cooperatives (LCCs). A Landscape Conservation Cooperative (LCC) is an applied conservation science partnership among state and federal agencies, regional organizations, tribes, NGOs, universities and other entities within a geographic area. LCCs are designed to inform resource management decisions in an integrated fashion across landscapes – at a broader scale than any individual partner’s responsibility.

History
Order Number 3289 of the United States Secretary of the Interior establishes Landscape Conservation Cooperatives (LCCs), a network of public-private partnerships that provide shared science to ensure the sustainability of America’s land, water, wildlife and cultural resources. As a collaborative, LCCs seek to identify best practices, connect efforts, identify gaps, and avoid duplication through improved conservation planning and design. Partner agencies and organizations coordinate with each other while working within their existing authorities and jurisdictions. Caribbean LCC was created to assess the conservation status of species and habitats in the Caribbean and to provide a guiding vision for sustainable land and seascapes in the future, by taking into account landscape-scale stressors, such as climate change, habitat fragmentation, urban sprawl, invasive species, and water availability. The CLCC includes the terrestrial and marine components of the Puerto Rican archipelago and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Many members of the cooperative also work at an international level, thus bringing that capacity to the CLCC as we recognize the connectivity of these islands with the greater Caribbean and the continental regions through shared species, habitats, and conservation opportunities and goals.

Objective
The Caribbean LCC essentially works to develop and provide sound science-based information to help in the conservation of natural and cultural resources. We support diverse conservation initiatives by funding research and providing a platform for partners to facilitate the exchange of information, and we support our partners’ research and conservation-related activities. This site features valuable information about the U.S. Caribbean and some of the conservation issues we share with the continental United States, including competing demands for open space, climate change and managing for the future, vulnerable coastal habitats, degraded lands in need of restoration, and threatened and endangered species.Develop and provide integrated science-based information about the implications of future change for the sustainability of natural and cultural resources.Support site-level conservation initiatives and complement other landscape conservation strategies to restore, manage, and conserve the natural resources of the region in the face of climate change and development pressure.Provide a regional context to conduct conservation planning and management at several scales, from decisions on site-management to understanding the implications of management actions regionally, nationally and globally.Provide a platform for partners working to integrate information, perform regional assessments of conservation status, assess future scenarios, and collaborate in applied conservation science.Support individual partner decision-making in the context of larger landscape goals.Provide a venue for and benefit to leveraging resources by partners. Support continuous exchange of information and feedback among partners.

==Monitoring== This includes monitoring environmental characteristics and monitoring the effectiveness of conservation actions. Environmental characteristics include aspects such as sea level rise, coastal wetland elevation response to sea level rise, salt water intrusion, water quality, sedimentation, animal populations, fire occurrence, climate, habitat conditions, and others. Assessing conservation effectiveness includes monitoring response to management actions or treatments, and revisiting decision-making processes (informing the adaptive management process.

Conservation and Society
CLCC analyzes the links between society, decision-makers, and conservation actions and effectiveness. It includes any aspects where people and conservation intersect. Sub-themes and working groups include laws and regulations, ecosystem services, perceptions and expectations, adaptive management, and land use.

Cultural Resource
This theme broadly includes cultural resources that may be vulnerable to climate change and land use changes. It ranges from geographic features such as archeological sites, parks, and special natural areas designated by society, to communities defined either by place (e.g. coastal) or activity (e.g. subsistence fishermen, coffee growers, subsistence farmers).

Landscape and Seascape
This theme includes the physical aspects of land and seascapes, issues of water quality and pollution, development and habitat distribution and quality, the biological cover of landscapes, the ecosystem services provided by land and seascapes, and interactions of different components of the landscape. Sub-themes and working groups may be organized around the protected area network, forests, the coastal zone, estuaries, coral reefs, mangroves, ecosystem services, and special habitats.

Working Lands and Agriculture
This theme encompasses the conservation aspects of working landscapes, which include farmland, timber lands, pastures, woody agriculture, hay and row crops, coffee-growing regions, soil and water conservation, and aquaculture. The goal of activities within this theme is to develop and promote conservation science and strategies appropriate to working lands.

Vegetation dynamics related to climate and land use in Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands
Project Status: In-progress Geographic Scope: Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands Principle Investigator(s): Postdoctoral researcher Azad Henareh (NCSU/IITF) works with IITF Research Ecologist William Gould and NCSU professor Jaime Collazo. The research is housed in the IITF GIS and Remote Sensing Laboratory. Sponsor(s): This project is supported by the US Geological Survey, North Carolina State University (NCSU) and the US Forest Service International Institute of Tropical Forestry (IITF). Goals: Two studies are the main components of the project:Spatial factors of land cover transition in Puerto Rico The transition between land cover types is dependent upon landscape spatial arrangement. Land cover maps for 1951, 1977-78, 1991-2, and 2000 are available from the previous studies. We are developing a land cover from 2010 aerial photography. For each transition type at each time step we calculate all topographic, climatic, hydrologic, management, and other spatially referenced themes. We are using binomial logistic regression to calculate the probability of each transition based on the main underlying factors, and we check whether the spatial factors with significant effects change through time. The transition probabilities based on spatial arrangement will be a new source of information for all spatially explicit landscape modeling of the area.

State and transition simulation modeling of vegetation dynamics-CLCC will use the calculated transition probabilities from our first step as inputs for simulations in a state and transition model. The model will be created in Path tool which uses state-and-transition models to simulate the future vegetation conditions on a landscape. The model in Path environment will be connected to TELSA tool which is used to process the GIS data and do the simulations in a spatially explicit environment. We will validate the model projections for accuracy. Our simulations will be used along with results from climate change, hydrology, and urban modeling being done by the NCSU team to help in assessing future scenarios, spatial planning, and resource management in light of climate change.

Ecosystem Governance Knowledge Base
Project Status: In-progress. Expected completion September 2013 Geographic Scope: Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands Principle Investigator(s): SustainaMetrix is a social enterprise located in a business incubator at Johns Hopkins University that focuses on building capacity for the ecosystem approach. They offer a wide range of training, planning, evaluation and facilitation services and specialize in complex and dynamic social-ecological systems. They excel in situation analysis and have a range of conceptual options to best fit the challenge and engage the appropriate stakeholders. For example, one framework applies a sequence of “essential actions” that define the processes by which an ecosystem-based initiative is organized. This is best captured by the five step management cycle that organizes the many actions (and the different contributions of the sciences) to steps of issue identification and analysis, planning, negotiation of the necessary authority and funding to implement a plan of action, program implementation and an evaluation of the effort and its impacts. Their work has shown that a well designed and well-executed management process still may not produce the desired outcomes. This has led to development of the Orders of Outcomes framework. This simplifying framework disaggregates the ultimate goal of sustainable forms of development into a sequence of more tangible outcomes. They also build capacity for high quality collaboration to work more effectively across sectors, cultures, disciplines and scales. Sponsor(s): This project is supported by U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service’s Southeast Region (Region 4), National Fish and Wildlife Foundation and Caribbean Landscape Conservation Cooperative. Project Cost: $64,000 Goals: A team from SustainaMetrix, Glenn Page and Audrey Swanenberg, will be assisting the CLCC and partners in the development of an inventory of conservation based actions, collaborative structures and sources of governance at multiple scales to serve as a basis for an ecosystem governance knowledge base. There are four main components to this work:

First, the team will engage with principal participating organizations of the CLCC and conduct interviews with steering committee members regarding their organization’s structure, priority areas of focus, priority issues they are addressing, goals and objectives, core capacity, range of conservation activities on Puerto Rico and USVI, as well as their involvement in other forms of conservation-based collaborative structures. Distill key findings, our distilled findings/analysis.

Second, the team will define specific attributes of the intended collaboration within the CLCC so that its existence, development, quantity, quality and effects can be measured, observed and documented. The team will be using the Collaboration Evaluation and Improvement Framework (CEIF).

Third, the team will examine three examples of ecosystem-based governance (Guánica Watershed Restoration, St. Croix East End Marine Park and the CLCC) to model a process to inventory and map collaborative structures in place, their goals and objectives, current activities, and other potential sources of governance. The team will be using The Analysis of Governance Response to Ecosystem Change developed by Olsen, Page and Ochoa, 2009.

Fourth, the team will make a series of recommendations to the CLCC for the development of an expanded ecosystem governance knowledge base, use of the knowledge base to define and refine goals, to sequence and prioritize actions, and to evaluate progress of the CLCC along the way.

The goal of the project is to build adaptive capacity, increase learning by doing, and increase the overall quality of the collaborative process of the CLCC.

Systems’ Response to Climate Change Projections and Species-distribution Models in the Caribbean
Project Status: On-going; expected completion date is June 2014. Geographic Scope: Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands Principle Investigator(s): Jaime A. Collazo, William Gould, Lauren Hay, Jennifer Costanza, Azad Henareh Khalyani, and Ashley Van Beusekom. Sponsor(s): U.S. Geological Survey, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, U.S. Forest Service and Caribbean LCC. Project Cost: $229,666 Research question(s) and approach: CLCC propose to use downscaled climate data to: 1) model climate-change related effects on water quantity and water temperature across the island, 2) simulate future spatial patterns of urban growth across the island according to recent growth urbanization trends, and 3) model vegetation dynamics to project future land covers for Puerto Rico and the USVI.   Goals: This work will be used to project biotic and abiotic responses of tropical island ecosystems to climate change and urbanization.

Assessing climate-sensitive ecosystems in the southeastern U.S
Project Status: On-going; expected completion date is September 2013. Geographic Scope: Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands Principle Investigator(s): Jaime A. Collazo, Jennifer Costanza, and William Gould Sponsor(s): USGS Southeast Climate Center, Caribbean LCC Project Cost: $50,000 Research question(s) and approach: We are assessing the three components of vulnerability: exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity of selected ecosystems in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Ecosystems were selected based on feedback from local LCCs. Goals: The result will be a comprehensive assessment of potential climate change impacts to selected ecosystems, an explicit outline of how to assess other ecosystems of interest in Puerto Rico and U.S. Virgin Islands, and a list of recommended management, conservation, and monitoring strategies.

Developing multi-model ensemble projections of ecologically relevant climate variables for Puerto Rico and the US Caribbean
Project Status: On-going Geographic Scope: Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands Principle Investigator(s): Adam Terando, Ryan Boyles, Jared Bowden, Jaime Collazo, William Gould, Vasu Misra, and Lydia Stefanova. Sponsor(s): USGS Southeast Climate Science Center, Caribbean LCC Project Cost: $527,708 Research question(s) and approach: CLCC propose: 1) Engage in ongoing dialogue with ecologists, hydrologists, and conservation biologists, eliciting expert knowledge to focus resources on the most valuable types of information that will aid decision-making, 2) simulate precipitation response to the anthropogenic forcings (both local and global) at a scale that resolves key physical processes, such as convection, across Puerto Rico, 3) characterize the uncertainty in the projections by nesting up to two regional climate models (RCMs) within within a minimum of two and up to four general circulation models (GCMs), that simulate the climate response to the anthropogenic forcing based on a ‘business-as-usual’ emission scenario (known as RCP8.5), and 4) develop projections of ecologically-relevant climate variables that will most directly influence the distribution and persistence of wildlife species, namely, ectotherms (e.g., reptiles, amphibians). Such variables include, in addition to precipitation, projected changes in cloud-base heights, surface air temperature, relative humidity, and evapotranspiration. Goals: The resulting simulations will fill a critical need for climate change information in Puerto Rico and the broader U.S. Caribbean by enabling future estimates of likely deviations from known ranges of species’ thermal/moisture optima. Our proposed work furthers scientific understanding of local responses to global climate change and lays the foundation for a decision analytic approach to climate adaptation in the Caribbean LCC.

Development and dissemination of a high-resolution national climate change dataset
Project Status: Near completion; data for Puerto Rico is in the process of being reviewed and submitted to complete the project. Expected completion date is June 2014. Geographic Scope: United States and U.S. Caribbean Principle Investigator(s): Jaime Collazo, Nathaniel Booth, Lauren Hay, Katharine Hayhoe, and Adam Terando Sponsor(s): This project is supported by the U.S. Geological Survey and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Project Cost: $276,834 Research question(s) and approach: The project had three objectives: 1) develop a database of up-to-date and state-of-the-art downscaled climate projections for the continental U.S., using a range of plausible future greenhouse gas emission scenarios, 2) conduct workshops to solicit input about climate-related data needs and to discuss best practices for accessing and using downscaled climate projections and other landscape change datasets, and 3) make downscaled climate and other landscape change projections available as an enterprise-level web-based source. Users will be able to freely access the data via an interactive, easily manageable interface, in formats which are familiar to ecosystem and impact modelers.   Goals: The Geo Data Portal (GDP) will provide public access to high-resolution climate change projections in Puerto Rico, and eventually, the U.S. Virgin Islands. The Geo Data Portal (GDP) is now available for public use at and a prototype of the companion portal that calculates various projections of climate thresholds and extremes is available at

Strategic habitat conservation in Puerto Rico
Project Status: On-going Geographic Scope: Puerto Rico Principle Investigator(s): Jaime A. Collazo, Stephen J. Dinsmore, James F. Saracco, and Jose Cruz Burgos Sponsor(s): Puerto Rico Department of Natural and Environmental Resources Project Cost: $294,395 Research question(s) and approach: The goal of this project is to design a biological corridor for resident avian species between Guanica and Susua State Forest Reserves in southwestern Puerto Rico. The project emphasizes the estimation of patch colonization and extinction rates in agricultural, urban, and forested matrices, and the permeability of the urban matrix. Goals: A spatially-explicit conservation design plan to facilitate movement of birds through habitat matrices, and ultimately, between Susua and Guanica Reserves to foster species persistence in the region. The strategy recognizes that the landscape is under multiple land uses, including low density urban development. The conservation design is centered along the Rio Loco watershed, joining ongoing conservation efforts in the watershed by USDA-NRCS and NOAA