Landscape Science

Scientific information is fundamental to understanding how proposed actions on public lands may impact the environment. Development of new science is occurring at rates that can make it challenging for biologists, resource managers, decision makers, private landowners, and other stakeholders to ensure they are using up-to-date, high-quality science information to inform their decisions. Further...

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...

FORT researchers provide sound science to support the Department of the Interior in its efforts to streamline reliable energy development, enhance cost efficiency in public lands management, and manage fire-prone habitats for public safety. This research is developed in partnership with resource managers from local, State, Federal and Tribal governments, industry, and nongovernmental organizations...

U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) scientists are working with the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) Environmental Security Technology Certification Program (ESTCP) to advance efforts to deploy next generation fire behavior models through a research-to-operations transition to enable land managers to use advanced modeling tools for real-time decision making. As part of this effort, USGS is leading an...

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...

Habitat models can provide critical information on the current and potential distribution of plant species, as well as help target and support conservation efforts. Despite their potential utility in public land management, model use may be constrained by a variety of factors including staff access to and trust in models. In this project, we seek to bring together model users and model developers...

Public lands provide many important resources, values, and uses to the American people. For example, many lands offer abundant recreational opportunities while also conserving habitat for iconic wildlife species and delivering stunning scenic views. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) manages the largest area of public lands in the United States and is committed to using science to inform their...

The GSIL is a state-of-the-art facility located on the Denver Federal Center that specializes in the measurement of light stable isotope — Hydrogen (H), Carbon (C), Nitrogen (N), Oxygen (O), and Sulfur (S) — compositions and other chemical and biomarker analytes in matrices relevant to the Earth sciences. Chemical and isotopic tracers offer novel insights into ecosystem biogeochemistry, food webs...

Wildlife nutrition is an essential element of fitness, and contextualizing resource use within the broader framework of local and regional food webs is paramount to species health, function, and management.

Biogeochemical cycles impart significant control on ecosystem structure, function, and ecosystem services, such as nutrient sequestration, transformation, long-term storage, mitigation of water quality concerns, and carbon fixation/mineralization processes that support local food webs.

The distribution of species across the landscape is of great interest to biologists, owing to a critical need to understand the connectivity of disparate habitats for species that undertake broadscale movements. Indeed, habitat quality and quantity are thought to be important drivers of occurrence and distribution, and numerous studies have demonstrated fitness-related consequences as evidenced in...