USGS scientists and colleagues have designed a hierarchical monitoring framework for greater sage-grouse in Nevada, Wyoming, and northeastern California that will provide land managers with a monitoring and detection system to identify sage-grouse breeding locations (known as leks), clusters of leks, and populations where intervention may be necessary to sustain populations and to evaluate effectiveness of conservation efforts.
Incorporating spatial and temporal scales into monitoring strategies can provide more robust detection of population rates of change and indication of whether trajectories for those rates of change are driven by local or regional factors. USGS scientists and colleagues have designed a hierarchical monitoring framework for greater sage-grouse in Nevada, Wyoming, and northeastern California that will assist Federal, State, and private land managers by providing a monitoring and detection system to identify sage-grouse breeding locations (known as leks), clusters of leks, and populations where intervention may be necessary to sustain populations and to evaluate effectiveness of conservation efforts. The team is working with the State wildlife agencies and the Bureau of Land Management to expand these approaches to the geographic range of sage-grouse and will develop methods to assess population change relative to vegetation characteristics, climate, disturbances such as fire and cheatgrass invasion, and other management-relevant gradients.
Range-wide greater sage-grouse hierarchical monitoring framework—Implications for defining population boundaries, trend estimation, and a targeted annual warning system
Designing multi-scale hierarchical monitoring frameworks for wildlife to support management: A sage-grouse case study
Assessing lek attendance of male greater sage‐grouse using fine‐resolution GPS data: Implications for population monitoring of lek mating grouse
Hierarchical population monitoring of greater sage-grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus) in Nevada and California—Identifying populations for management at the appropriate spatial scale
- Overview
USGS scientists and colleagues have designed a hierarchical monitoring framework for greater sage-grouse in Nevada, Wyoming, and northeastern California that will provide land managers with a monitoring and detection system to identify sage-grouse breeding locations (known as leks), clusters of leks, and populations where intervention may be necessary to sustain populations and to evaluate effectiveness of conservation efforts.
Incorporating spatial and temporal scales into monitoring strategies can provide more robust detection of population rates of change and indication of whether trajectories for those rates of change are driven by local or regional factors. USGS scientists and colleagues have designed a hierarchical monitoring framework for greater sage-grouse in Nevada, Wyoming, and northeastern California that will assist Federal, State, and private land managers by providing a monitoring and detection system to identify sage-grouse breeding locations (known as leks), clusters of leks, and populations where intervention may be necessary to sustain populations and to evaluate effectiveness of conservation efforts. The team is working with the State wildlife agencies and the Bureau of Land Management to expand these approaches to the geographic range of sage-grouse and will develop methods to assess population change relative to vegetation characteristics, climate, disturbances such as fire and cheatgrass invasion, and other management-relevant gradients.
- Publications
Range-wide greater sage-grouse hierarchical monitoring framework—Implications for defining population boundaries, trend estimation, and a targeted annual warning system
Incorporating spatial and temporal scales into greater sage-grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus) population monitoring strategies is challenging and rarely implemented. Sage-grouse populations experience fluctuations in abundance that lead to temporal oscillations, making trend estimation difficult. Accounting for stochasticity is critical to reliably estimate population trends and investigate variaDesigning multi-scale hierarchical monitoring frameworks for wildlife to support management: A sage-grouse case study
Population monitoring is integral to the conservation and management of wildlife; yet, analyses of population demographic data rarely consider processes occurring across spatial scales, potentially limiting the effectiveness of adaptive management. Therefore, we developed a method to identify hierarchical levels of organization (i.e., populations) to define multiple spatial scales, specifically inAssessing lek attendance of male greater sage‐grouse using fine‐resolution GPS data: Implications for population monitoring of lek mating grouse
Counts of males displaying on breeding grounds are the primary management tool used to assess population trends in lekking grouse species. Despite the importance of male lek attendance (i.e., proportion of males on leks available for detection) influencing lek counts, patterns of within season and between season variability in attendance rates are not well understood. We used high‐frequency globalHierarchical population monitoring of greater sage-grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus) in Nevada and California—Identifying populations for management at the appropriate spatial scale
Population ecologists have long recognized the importance of ecological scale in understanding processes that guide observed demographic patterns for wildlife species. However, directly incorporating spatial and temporal scale into monitoring strategies that detect whether trajectories are driven by local or regional factors is challenging and rarely implemented. Identifying the appropriate scale