Habitat Disturbance, Loss, or Degradation

Federal lands of the US contain important reserves of oil, gas and other resources important for Unleashing American Energy (SO 3418). After development of these resources is complete, successfully reclaiming disturbed lands is a necessary step towards restoring wildlife habitat, forage production, and maintaining natural resources for future use. To improve reclamation outcomes on these lands and...

The SAGE Wildlife Research Group consists of a large team of research scientists with an interest in conservation and management of wildlife and their ecosystems. Broadly, research involves understanding animal-habitat relationships, with an emphasis on conservation ecology and population demography, and a focus on shrubland, alpine, and grassland ecosystems. We are addressing the effects of...

The sagebrush biome is one of the largest ecosystems in North America. Encompassing nearly one-third of the continental U.S., it provides critical resources for millions of Americans and a home for hundreds of plants and animal species in the West. Natural resource management in sagebrush ecosystems can be complex, and science can support management decisions by providing knowledge and tools to...

Pollinators, including bees, flies, butterflies, bats, birds, and other animals, are critically important to U.S. ecosystems and agriculture. Recent reports of declines of pollinator species have led to widespread actions to conserve pollinator habitat and recover imperiled species, but resource managers need accurate data and science to support management actions. USGS pollinator research helps...

To support strategic ecosystem management across the imperiled sagebrush steppe in Wyoming, USA, we developed an extension of the Prioritizing Restoration of Sagebrush Ecosystems Tool (PReSET). Our expanded tool leverages emerging spatial data resources to provide a structured but customizable set of scenarios that can guide landscape-scale planning efforts by prioritizing conservation and...

Sagebrush ecosystems represent one of the most imperiled systems in North America and face continued and widespread degradation due to multiple factors including invasive species and increased human development. Effective sagebrush management must consider how to best conserve and restore habitats to stem the decline of species that rely on them, especially given limited conservation resources. To...

FORT researchers provide sound science to support the Department of the Interior in its efforts to manage wildfires, conserve water, reclaim public lands for multiple uses, and promote food security. This research is developed in partnership with resource managers from local, State, Federal and Tribal governments, industry, and nongovernmental organizations, empowering local and rural communities...

Wildlife movement and distribution can be influenced by local conditions like topography and landscape features, and the distances within which species respond to their landscape – scales of effect – can vary over space and time. We are estimating scales of effect for wildlife population trends to help land managers determine the distance within which wildlife will respond to landscape change.

We are working with Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW) to pilot an expansion of the Prioritizing Restoration of Sagebrush Ecosystems Tool (PReSET; Duchardt et al. 2021) across northwestern Colorado. We recently completed Phase I of this project where we leveraged existing data resources to provide customized scenarios that are now directly guiding landscape-scale conservation delivery by CPW...

USGS and Colorado State University researchers are conducting analyses and predictions of sagebrush recovery in the Great Basin and Wyoming and assess the role of weather, soils, and reseeding treatments.

This interdisciplinary project combines expert judgment on treatment costs with spatially explicit ecological modeling to estimate the financial resources needed to address the threat of invasive annual grass across the entire sagebrush biome. Results of the assessment will provide economic insights that can inform cost-effective resource allocation to efficiently achieve sagebrush conservation...

Through a collaborative effort with multiple state and federal agencies, university researchers, and individual stakeholders, we are producing a set of predictive seasonal habitat maps for greater sage-grouse ( Centrocercus urophasianus) spanning the entirety of the species’ U.S. distribution. This is the largest habitat modeling effort of its kind for the species and uses a large, compiled...