Human Dimensions of Resource Management

The use of rare plant habitat models in land management decisions can be constrained by issues surrounding data access, model quality, and institutional capacity, among other factors. This project seeks to understand challenges associated with using habitat models and explore avenues for addressing these challenges to facilitate greater use of habitat models in public lands decision making.

Coproduction is a highly collaborative approach to conducting science that focuses on producing actionable products that are used to inform natural resource management decisions. This project will develop an informational toolkit to facilitate coproduction between resource managers and science providers in the context of federal public land management.

The Bureau of Land Management Recreation and Visitor Services Program regularly conducts recreational visitor satisfaction surveys. The USGS Social and Economic Analysis Branch is assessing the visitor survey effort and recommending updates to the current effort.

As part of the Values Mapping for Planning in Regional Ecosystems project, also known as VaMPIRE, USGS scientists are developing a public participatory GIS application that aids in gathering information about visitors’ values for public lands and waters.

The Joint Fire Science Program is a partnership between the Department of the Interior and the U.S. Forest Service that connects relevant fire science research with stakeholders. USGS Scientists are supporting the Joint Fire Science Program by assessing the science needs of its stakeholders in order to inform future decision making.

This research effort is an interagency partnership between U.S. Geological Survey and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to model the social-ecological system that encompasses chronic wasting disease management in the United States. Chronic wasting disease (CWD) is a fatal, neurologically degenerative disease that impacts many cervid species in North America (e.g., elk, moose, mule deer, and white...

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 research effort is an interagency partnership between U.S. Geological Survey and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to systematically explore the issues, viewpoints, and concerns within the Service in relation to conservation introductions. Conservation introduction is the planned, intentional moving of species, populations or genotypes to a location outside a target’s native range.

Natural resource agencies are challenged not only by climate change impacts on terrestrial and marine resources, but also by related effects on human communities that depend on these lands and waters. These effects include changes in economic activity, subsistence practices, demographic trends, human health, recreation, infrastructure, and community resilience. While there are many policy...

The Department of Interior (DOI) produces annual estimates of the economic contributions of DOI programs, activities, and services. Fort Collins Science Center Economists contribute to this report.

For thousands of years, much of the San Luis Valley basin of south-central Colorado was made up of a series of lakes, marshes, and shallow playa basins that were integral to the lives of indigenous peoples. By the mid-1900s, the basins had dried up from the diversion of water sources for irrigation and became known as the “Dry Lakes.” In 1965, BLM began a series of wildlife habitat projects to...

Characterized by a vast landscape dotted with sagebrush and juniper-clad foothills, the area surrounding the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM’s) Burley Field Office in Idaho is home to a variety of species, such as the greater sage-grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus), mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus), antelope (Antilocapra americana), bighorn sheep(Ovis canadensis), and pygmy rabbit (Brachylagus...