Pollinator Corridors on the Central Coast: A Regional Connectivity Analysis of Agricultural Lands

Pollinators face significant declines across California’s Central Coast due to habitat loss, fragmented agricultural landscapes, and the reduction of native floral resources. In an effort to address this issue, the California Department of Food and Agriculture provided funding for the establishment of pollinator habitat on working lands. With this funding, pollinator habitat was implemented on over 25 farms in San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, and Ventura counties. This has increased the amount of native habitat available to pollinators and enhanced population connectivity across the central coast, however the region still lacks a landscape-scale understanding of how these improvements contribute to overall habitat fragmentation and pollinators’ ability to move uninterrupted through the region. Using spatial and connectivity analysis, this project will pinpoint existing barriers to potential movement corridors in order to identify suitable areas for pollinator habitat installation or restoration.

Although quantitative data tools will be at the heart of our technical analysis, we also want to understand the experience of the farmers to assess whether or not expanding pollinator habitat is feasible. ArcGIS and Google Earth will be used to establish current conditions, followed by a connectivity analysis using Circuitscape, an open-source modeling tool that is used for wildlife corridor design and movement ecology. This will allow us to highlight priority locations for additional pollinator habitat and make recommendations about where future restoration work will have the greatest impact in the establishment of corridors or stepping-stone sites. Additionally, we will conduct interviews with farmers that participated in the program to gauge overall willingness to expand pollinator habitat on their land and learn about their experience thus far. We will present our findings in a public-facing StoryMap to show the project’s rationale, methods, spatial analysis results, and on-the-ground habitat successes. We anticipate that this assessment will be used as a science communication tool and guide for agencies, farmers, and conservation organizations to target new restoration sites, inform policy discussion, and shape future investments in ecological infrastructure on working lands.