Climate impacts to natural habitats in the Northwest involve many interacting factors and may vary seasonally or from one year to the next. One way to conserve important habitat in the face of this complexity is to adopt land management practices that promote healthy ecosystems, fostering adaptability and resilience. To maintain or enhance ecosystem health across Washington State, the Voluntary Stewardship Program (VSP) incentivizes the adoption of conservation practices in Fish and Wildlife Habitat Conservation areas on private lands. The VSP has been in place since 2011, but the details of implementation are still being worked out. This program’s success depends on the ability to answer the question: Is the collective effort of voluntary conservation practices a net positive for ecosystems?

To answer that question, participating VSP counties must monitor and report on ecosystem condition for each major watershed. Yet, many of the Conservation District offices that conduct counties’ VSP monitoring have limited capacity to acquire and analyze the data that would be needed to accurately and efficiently track ecosystem health.

In this project, Amanda and the project team will help fill data gaps for the watershed-scale ecosystem monitoring required of the 27 Washington counties participating in the VSP. During the project, the team will generate customized cover maps to provide Conservation Districts with access to watershed-scale data that provides measurements of change by acreage to meet the specifications for VSP reporting, which is on a 5-year cycle. Products will include freely available online training resources to support interpretation of the map data. This includes considering questions such as where and when climate impacts or management actions are affecting important habitats or ecosystems. If successful, the VSP will contribute to the resilience of sensitive habitats on working lands, including riparian areas, wetlands, or other naturally vegetated areas.