Assessing Ecological Benefits for the California Department of Water Resources: Incorporating Landscape Pattern into Habitat Evaluation Models

The California Department of Water Resources has committed to enhancing ecological function within the Central Valley flood system as a component of their newly adopted Integrated Water Management approach.  They have authored a comprehensive Conservation Strategy report which lays out specific ecological objectives including; restoring ecological processes, eliminating stressors, improving target habitats and benefitting target species. In order to optimize planning to meet those ecological objectives, we have developed a tool which quantifies the ecological benefits of the proposed restoration actions and scores aggregated configurations of these actions so that decisions makers can compare and contrast suites of projects. This modeling tool has two primary components; one quantifies general ecosystem quality for target ecosystem typologies and the other quantifies the connectivity of those restored ecosystems to the associated target species.