Much of the coastal sage scrub habitat in Southern California that existed prior to European settlement has been developed for human uses. Over the past two to three decades, public agencies and land conservation organizations have worked to acquire some of the remaining lands for preservation. Many of these lands are degraded by past intensive livestock grazing, farming, and frequent fires, and the native flora has been replaced by weedy, exotic annual grasses and forbs, mostly of Mediterranean origin.

As species' geographic ranges and ecosystem functions are altered in response to climate change, there is a need to integrate biodiversity conservation approaches that promote natural adaptation into land use planning. Successful conservation will need to embrace multiple climate adaptation approaches, but to date they have not been conveyed in an integrated way to help support immediate conservation planning and action in the face of inherent spatial uncertainty about future conditions.

Seeds of Success (SOS) is a national native seed collection program, led by the US Department of Interior Bureau of Land Management in partnership with numerous federal agencies and nonfederal organizations. The mission of the SOS is to collect wildland native seed for long-term germplasm conservation and for use in seed research, development of native plant materials, and ecosystem restoration. Each year about 50 SOS teams are stationed across the United States to make seed collections following a single technical protocol.