Audubon’s Assessment for a Resilient Great Salt Lake

A wholesome community of saline lakes within the Western United States is essential to the survival and wellbeing of tens of millions of waterbirds that rely on these ecosystems for nesting, breeding, refueling, and relaxation. Nice Salt Lake is an irreplaceable cornerstone of this community. As one of many largest saline lakes within the Western Hemisphere, the Nice Salt Lake ecosystem helps roughly 12 million birds yearly and hosts globally important populations. Growing water diversion, improvement, and local weather stressors threaten the system’s resilience and straight impression habitat high quality and availability for waterbirds. The challenges dealing with Nice Salt Lake are huge and these converging threats create an crucial for strategic habitat prioritization. 

The Nice Salt Lake Birds and Habitat Evaluation (the Evaluation) is a science-based evaluation designed to tell conservation methods throughout the Nice Salt Lake watershed and assist the Nationwide Audubon Society’s strategic priorities, with its core aim specializing in defending birds and the locations they want, at this time and tomorrow. Developed by Audubon’s workforce of scientists, with enter from habitat and water consultants, this effort integrates habitat suitability, local weather projection, and human modification information right into a unified, spatial framework that identifies precedence conservation areas for waterbirds. 

“Nice Salt Lake is likely one of the most necessary remaining strongholds for migratory birds as they make their hemispheric journeys alongside the Pacific Flyway,” mentioned Marshall Johnson, Chief Conservation Officer for Nationwide Audubon Society. “This evaluation contributes on to Audubon’s broader work to bend the chicken curve and supplies invaluable perception to our companions—water and wetland managers, associate conservation teams, and policymakers—a shared, science-based framework for shielding Nice Salt Lake habitats and water sources.”   

The Evaluation makes use of two analyses: an Aviation Prioritization Evaluation and a Hydrological Inflows Evaluation. 

The Avian Prioritization Evaluation makes use of a habitat prioritization mannequin to guage Audubon’s Flight Plan indicator waterbird species throughout all seasons. Audubon scientists performed a sequence of optimization analyses to determine precedence areas utilizing Zonation Conservation Planning software program. Analyses had been performed for each current and midcentury (yr 2025) timesteps based mostly on focal chicken suitability and relative abundance utilizing the strategies described in Deluca et al. (2023). The options being optimized are listed on the left aspect of every field and embrace current and future habitat and local weather suitability fashions for the breeding and nonbreeding seasons (Wilsey et al. 2019), in addition to relative abundance fashions for fall and spring migration seasons (Fink et al. 2024, Meehan et al. 2022), for all indicator species in all seasons by which they’re current within the watershed. The proper aspect of every field signifies the panorama degradation attributes the mannequin goals to keep away from.  

Moreover, as a part of this Evaluation, Audubon utilized a hydrologic mannequin that depicts potential contributions to Nice Salt Lake from upstream wetlands and flood-irrigated agricultural lands to determine alternatives for safety of flows to Nice Salt Lake and wetlands and water useful resource administration. The Evaluation illustrates how the Nice Salt Lake’s mosaic of interconnected habitats throughout the watershed is crucial for sustaining the area’s distinctive waterbird range and abundance.    

_{^{DeLuca, W. V., Seavy, N. E., Grand, J., Velásquez-Tibatá, J., Taylor, L., Bowler, C., Deppe, J. L., Knight, E. J., Lentijo, G. M., Meehan, T. D., Michel, N. L., Saunders, S. P., Schillerstrom, N., Smith, M. A., Witko, C., & Wilsey, C. B. (2023). A framework for linking hemispheric, full annual cycle prioritizations to native conservation actions for migratory birds. Conservation Science and Observe, 5(8), e12975. https://doi.org/10.1111/csp2.12975}} 

 _{^{Fink, D., Auer, T., Johnston, A., Strimas-Mackey, M., Ligocki, S., Robinson, O., Hochachka, W., Jaromczyk, L., Crowley, C., Dunham, Okay., Stillman, A., Davis, C., Stokowski, M., Sharma, P., Pantoja, V., Burgin, D., Crowe, P., Bell, M., Ray, S., Davies, I., Ruiz-Gutierrez, V., Wooden., C., & Rodewald, A. (2024). eBird standing and developments, information model: 2023. Cornell Lab of Ornithology. https://doi.org/10.2173/WZTW8903}} 

 _{^{Meehan, T.D., Saunders, S.P., DeLuca, W.V., Michel, N.L., Grand, J., Deppe, J.L., Jimenez, M.F., Knight, E.J., Seavy, N.E., Smith, M.A., Taylor, L., Witko, C., Akresh, M.E., Barber, D.R., Bayne, E.M., Beasley, J.C., Belant, J.L., Bierregaard, R.O., Bildstein, Okay.L., Boves, T.J., Brzorad, J.N., Campbell, S.P., Celis-Murillo, A., Cooke, H.A., Domenech, R., Goodrich, L., Gow, E.A., Haines, A., Hallworth, M.T., Hill, J.M., Holland, A.E., Jennings, S., Kays, R., King, D.T., Mackenzie, S.A., Marra, P.P., McCabe, R.A., McFarland, Okay.P., McGrady, M.J., Melcer Jr, R., Norris, D.R., Norvell, R.E., Rhodes Jr, O.E., Rimmer, C.C., Scarpignato, A.L., Shreading, A., Watson, J.L., & Wilsey, C.B., 2022. Integrating information sorts to estimate spatial patterns of avian migration throughout the Western Hemisphere. Ecological Purposes, 32(7), e2679. https://doi.org/10.1002/eap.2679}} 

 _{^{Wilsey, C., Bateman, B., Taylor, L., Wu, J. X., LeBaron, G., Shepherd, R., Koseff, C., Friedman, S., & Stone, R. (2019). Survival by levels: 389 chicken species on the brink. Nationwide Audubon Society, New York, New York, USA. https://www.audubon.org/climate/survivalbydegrees}}