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Effective management and restoration are limited by our inability to account for site-specific and year-specific effects of management on multiple goals. California’s grasslands, oak woodlands and riparian areas are the target of local, state and national funding to support conservation of species and ecosystem services. However, over 80% of conservation projects fail due to lack of site-specific recommendations. This project is compiling data from many of the UC/UCCE research projects on ecosystem services, along with data from thousands of management trials across California's grasslands, oak woodlands, and riparian systems to determine how environmental conditions and management practices interact to affect the provisioning of multiple management goals.

We have developed a searchable database of management effects on multiple production and conservation goals. The database will provide land managers with direct access to case studies across the state, so they can assess the successes and failures associated with different types of practices, on sites that are similar to their own.

The database also allows researchers to analyze across case studies to determine:

- Which practices are most successful in specific types of environmental conditions (e.g. depending on your soil type, rainfall, topography).

- Which goals are achievable depending on the specific environmental conditions (e.g. perhaps production, or carbon storage are limited at specific types of sites, no matter how they are managed). This will result in maps that detail areas that are more or less promising for different goals.

 Focal goals include:

- Plant production

- Plant community composition (e.g. proportion of natives, invasive species, palatable species, etc.)

- Forage quality

- Soil fertility (nutrient availability)

- Soil carbon storage

- Soil water infiltration and storage

- Soil resistance to erosion

- Soil compaction

- Water quality

- Wildlife habitat

This effort is a long-term project, and we are always looking for new collaborators, new data/case studies, and feedback on how we can improve this tool. Contact: Valerie Eviner at veviner@ucdavis.edu or 530-752-8538.