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DeltaMultipleBenefits

The DeltaMultipleBenefits package supports estimating the net impacts of scenarios of landscape change in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta to identify projected benefits and trade-offs across multiple metrics.

This package supports land use planning, management, conservation, and community engagement in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta by providing tools for applying existing models and data to user-supplied landscapes to estimate a range of benefits to the Delta community and compare a baseline landscape to proposed or anticipated future landscape scenarios. Currently, the benefit categories addressed include: Agricultural Livelihoods, Water Quality, Climate Change Resilience, and Biodiversity Support. Each category is represented by multiple individual metrics, representing either values applied to each land cover class and summarized over the entire landscape or the total amount of suitable habitat projected from species distribution models. By comparing landscape totals for each metric estimated from a baseline landscape and alternative scenarios of future landscape change, the expected direction and magnitude of the net change in each metric is estimated.

Installation

You can install the development version from GitHub with:

# install.packages("devtools")
devtools::install_github("pointblue/DeltaMultipleBenefits")

How to use

This package includes a vignette that serves as a tutorial outlining the major steps of analyzing alternative Delta landscapes and comparing them to each other, including:

  1. Preparing new landscape scenarios for analysis
  2. Summarizing the net change in the total area of each land cover class
  3. Estimating the net change in simple metrics
  4. Estimating the net change in metrics informed by spatial models

Supporting data

  • Baseline and scenario rasters:
    Dybala KE. 2023. Baseline and projected future land use and land cover in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. Available from: https://apps.wildlife.ca.gov/bios6/?bookmark=356

  • Metrics (also included in the DeltaMultipleBenefits package):
    Dybala KE. 2023. Multiple-benefit Conservation in Practice: Metrics Data for Quantifying Multidimensional Impacts of Landscape Change in California’s Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta. doi: 10.5281/zenodo.7504874.

  • Species distribution models:
    Dybala KE, Sesser KA, Reiter ME, Shuford WD, Golet GH, Hickey CM, Gardali T. 2023. Distribution models for riparian landbirds and waterbirds in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. doi: 10.5281/zenodo.7531945.

  • Supplemental spatial data:
    Dybala KE. 2023. Multiple-benefit Conservation in Practice: Supplemental Spatial Data for Quantifying Multidimensional Impacts of Landscape Change in California’s Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta. doi: 10.5281/zenodo.7672193.

Relevant Literature

  • Dybala K, Sesser K, Reiter M, Shuford WD, Golet GH, Hickey C, Gardali T (In press) Priority Bird Conservation Areas in California’s Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta. San Francisco Estuary and Watershed Science [link TBD]

  • Dybala KE, Reiter ME, Hickey CM (In review) Multiple-benefit Conservation in Practice: A Framework for Quantifying Multi-dimensional Impacts of Landscape Change in California’s Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta. [link TBD]

  • Dybala KE, Sesser K, Reiter M, Hickey C, Gardali T. 2023. Final Project Report: Trade-offs and Co-benefits of Landscape Change Scenarios on Bird Communities and Ecosystem Services in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. Point Blue Conservation Science, Petaluma, CA. Available from: http://www.prbo.org/refs/files/12791_DybalaKE2023.pdf

Funding Statement

These data were developed as part of the project “Trade-offs and Co-benefits of Landscape Change on Bird Communities and Ecosystem Services in the Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta”, funded by Proposition 1 Delta Water Quality and Ecosystem Restoration Program, Grant Agreement Number – Q1996022, administered by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.