Software

Bats play crucial ecological roles, and provide valuable ecosystem services, yet many populations face serious threats from various ecological disturbances. The North American Bat Monitoring Program (NABat) aims to assess status and trends of bat populations, while developing innovative and community-driven conservation solutions using its unique data and technology infrastructure. To support scal

Greater sage-grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus; hereafter referred to as sage-grouse) are landscape-scale sagebrush obligate species and an important gamebird and iconic species of the West (Hanser & Knick, 2011; Rowland et al., 2006). They occupy the sagebrush biome in western North America, extending east of the Sierra Nevada/Cascade Mountain ranges to the western regions of the Great Plains of

PopEquus is a predictive modeling tool to support decisions related to the management of free-roaming horse populations. It permits the simulation and comparison of how management alternatives influence horse population size and metrics associated with management. This repository uses R scripts with predictive functions from the PopEquus model to simulate how management alternatives (e.g., removin

PopEquus is a website application that can be used to understand trade-offs and inform decisions in free-roaming horse (Equus caballus) population management. The application (https://rconnect.usgs.gov/popequus/) contains a predictive population modeling tool that can be used to simulate how different management actions drive changes in horse population size, while measuring management costs and o

We developed a method to construct hierarchically nested and biologically relevant groupings of similar habitats associated with field surveys while considering structure/connectedness (movements between habitats). This approach can support mobile species using high fidelity sites where monitoring during surveys occurs, such as birthing grounds, breeding grounds, or stopovers/seasonal habitats for

The distance within which populations respond to features in a landscape (scale of effect) can indicate how disturbance and management may affect wildlife. Using annual counts of male greater sage-grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus) attending 584 leks in southwest Wyoming (2003-2019) and estimates of sagebrush (Artemisia spp.) cover from a remote sensing product (Rigge et al., 2021; Monroe et al.,

We developed a software framework to estimate high-resolution spatiotemporal soil moisture (monthly, annual, and seasonal) and temperature-moisture regimes. Our approach builds on the Newhall simulation model, allowing for the substitution of data and parameters, such as climate, snowmelt, soil properties, alternative potential evapotranspiration equations, and air-soil temperature offsets. The Ne

Greater sage-grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus) are landscape-scale sagebrush obligate species and an important gamebird and iconic species of the western United States. They occupy the sagebrush biome in western North America, extending east of the Sierra Nevada/Cascade Mountain ranges to the western regions of the Great Plains of the United States. Sage-grouse are one of the most closely monitor

We present software that creates least-cost path spanning trees, a least-cost path minimum spanning tree, and graph theory centrality measures. The software was developed to support identification of population structures--specifically, greater sage-grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus), but also support other species or graph theory applications where least-cost paths are desired. We used habitat pa

Bats play crucial ecological roles, and provide valuable ecosystem services, yet many populations face serious threats from various ecological disturbances. The North American Bat Monitoring Program (NABat) aims to assess status and trends of bat populations, while developing innovative and community-driven conservation solutions using its unique data and technology infrastructure. To support scal

Decisions related to controversial problems in natural resource management receive the greatest support when they account for multiple objectives of stakeholders in a structured and transparent fashion. In the United States, management of feral horses (Equus caballus) is a controversial multi-objective problem because disparate stakeholder groups have varying objectives and opinions about how to m

USGS BiblioSearch is a python tool that performs literature searches across multiple citation databases via APIs or other web services in Python. The tool provides a quick method to query keywords and clean and compile results. Currently, the software includes methods to search four databases - Clarivate Web of Science, Elsevier Scopus, USGS Publications Warehouse, and USGS ScienceBase.