Tamara’s broad research interests include how climate and land use change, both historic and projected, influence regional environmental processes and resource availability. Her scenario research identifies climate change impacts and feedbacks on land use, protected areas, water availability, ecosystems, and habitat sustainability.
Land change and water use in California
Water shortages in California are a growing concern amidst ongoing drought, earlier spring snowmelt, projected future climate warming, and currently mandated water-use restrictions. Modeling results show that only if currently mandated 25% reductions in municipal water use are continuously implemented, would water demand in 2062 balance to water use levels in 2012.
Threats to protected areas
Protected areas will likely undergo shifts in ecological composition in coming decades given the coupled threats of land use and climate change. By assessing the land use threats facing species and/or ecosystems we can assist land managers in preserving biodiversity into the future and prioritizing at-risk lands for land acquisition or other nature based solutions.
Ecological Forecasting
We modeled dynamic scenarios of climate, land use, cropland and wetland habitat change across the Central Valley of California to help optimize water allocations for multiple ecosystem benefits, producing annual mapped forecasts and long-term projections of the spatial and temporal availability of managed wetland habitat in this critical migratory corridor.
Her graduate training at the University of Arizona was in the fields of biogeography, climatology, climate change, paleoclimate, and paleoecology. With her experience examining natural archives of paleo-environmental landscape change, she was able to make the leap to utilizing modern remote sensing based records to examine climate and human-derived landscape level changes and their associated impacts. Her recent work utilizes historic land change records to inform model scenarios of future land change and their potential impacts on natural resources, including habitat and water availability.
Tamara's land change scenario work in California estimates future land-use related water demand under various climate and land use futures. This work has grown to include funding from California's Strategic Growth Council for examining future water demand in underserved, groundwater dependent communities along California's Central Coast. In addition, her modeling work is being used to map future projections of flooded agricultural lands in the Central Valley as part of the NASA Ecoforecasting project, examining the availability of wildlife and migratory bird habitat under varying land use and climate scenarios. This effort involves integrated modeling between a streamflow, runoff, water demand, and water supply model which identifies flooded habitats by land use and land cover type and basin and translating this for use in the spatially explicit LUCAS land change model.
As Deputy Director of the National Innovation Center, Tamara works to expand the reach of the center, helping to forge new and exciting partnerships between USGS scientists and other public, private, academic, and non-profit parties. She is working to develop regional and national communication pipelines as well as coordinating science seminars and workshops to introduce the latest technological advancements in earth science and explore their use in the federal science portfolio.
Tamara is currently serving as the USGS Climate Science Steering Committee Coordinator, under the USGS Chief Scientist, supporting the development of the 1) USGS Climate Science Plan, 2) USGS Climate Science Communications Plan, and 3) USGS Climate Science Network Analysis. She serves in a supporting role to the Chief Scientist on the U.S. Global Change Research Program’s Subcommittee on Global Change Research. Her work has contributed to the White House OSTP Council on Environmental Quality’s “Recommendations for Accelerating Nature-Based Solutions for Climate Progress, Ecosystems, Equity, & Prosperity - A Report to the National Climate Task Force” (2022) and the Nature Based Solution Resources Guide Companion Report Resources Guide and coordinated the USGS response for DOI.
Science and Products
National Innovation Center Seminar Series
5th Federal UxS Workshop
Integrating Remote-Sensing and Ecological Forecasting into Decision-Support for Wetland Wildlife Management in the Central Valley of California
Pacific Region Colloquium
The Pacific Region Colloquium, founded in February 1996 as the Western Region Colloquium, was a monthly speaker series that spanned the spectrum of earth and environmental science.
Land use and tsunami hazards in the Pacific Northwest
California land-change projections
Threats to protected areas
Land change and water use in California
Land Use and Climate Change Team
Science and Products
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National Innovation Center Seminar Series
This bi-weekly seminar series is an opportunity to present innovation successes and prospects across USGS Mission Areas. It is a forum for our scientists and partners to learn about existing and potential innovative technologies to help fill known observation gaps, as well as to present cutting edge research and technology opportunities which could be leveraged to advance USGS science through...5th Federal UxS Workshop
Welcome Back! The Federal UxS community returns to in-person meetings to explore new opportunities, and plenty of challenges, together. The overarching goal of the workshop is to approach UxS challenges with a whole-of-Government team, leveraging successes within our Agencies to accelerate our national UxS enterprise and focus group resources on shared expertise and new opportunities. Mark your...Integrating Remote-Sensing and Ecological Forecasting into Decision-Support for Wetland Wildlife Management in the Central Valley of California
In the Central Valley of California, the few remaining wetlands plus cropland that is flooded after harvest provide critical habitat for wetland-dependent species. However future climate conditions and a growing human population will challenge how they are managed. To support coordinated conservation, wetland restoration, and climate adaptation planning, we partnered with Point Blue Conservation...Pacific Region Colloquium
The Pacific Region Colloquium, founded in February 1996 as the Western Region Colloquium, was a monthly speaker series that spanned the spectrum of earth and environmental science.
Land use and tsunami hazards in the Pacific Northwest
Tsunamis have the potential to cause considerable damage to communities along the U.S. Pacific Northwest coastline. As coastal communities expand over time, the potential societal impact of tsunami inundation changes.To understand how community exposure to tsunami hazards may change in coming decades, we projected future development (i.e. urban, residential, and rural), households, and residents...California land-change projections
This dataset consists of modeled projections of land use and land cover and population for the State of California for the period 1970-2101. For the 1970-2001 period, we used the USGS's LUCAS model to "backcast" LULC, beginning with the 2001 initial conditions and ending with 1970. For future projections, the model was initialized in 2001 and run forward on an annual time step to 2100. In total 5...Threats to protected areas
Land-use intensification poses significant threats to biodiversity both directly through the alteration and fragmentation of ecosystems and habitat loss, and indirectly through the disruption of supporting ecological processes. While protected areas offer refugia for species and ecosystems, they do not function in isolation from surrounding natural, working, or human-dominated landscapes.Protected...Land change and water use in California
Water shortages in California are a growing concern amidst ongoing drought, earlier spring snowmelt, projected future climate warming, and currently mandated water-use restrictions. Increases in population and land use in coming decades will place additional pressure on already limited available water supplies. We used a state-and-transition simulation model to project future changes in developed...Land Use and Climate Change Team
We are a research team focusing on understanding the rates, causes, and consequences of land change across a range of geographic and temporal scales. Our emphasis is on developing alternative future projections and quantifying the impact on environmental systems, in particular, the role of land-use change on ecosystem carbon dynamics. We are interested in how land-use and climate systems will... - Data
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*Disclaimer: Listing outside positions with professional scientific organizations on this Staff Profile are for informational purposes only and do not constitute an endorsement of those professional scientific organizations or their activities by the USGS, Department of the Interior, or U.S. Government