Landscape Science

Public lands provide important habitat for many rare plants. However, public lands often need to accommodate many other uses, including traditional and renewable energy development, in addition to conservation. We are working with the Bureau of Land Management to coproduce ensemble habitat suitability models that can inform agency planning and permitting decisions that may impact rare plants.

In partnership with the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, and other partners, scientists from USGS Fort Collins Science Center are working to create a suite of prioritization scenarios that will inform adaptive management for Gunnison sage-grouse.

Sagebrush ecosystems represent one of the most imperiled systems in North America and face continued and widespread degradation due to multiple factors including climate change, 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...

Science information is fundamental to understanding how proposed actions on public lands may impact the environment. However, agencies often have limited time to compile and synthesize existing science. We are working with land management agencies to develop a new type of science product—structured science syntheses—for facilitating use of the science information in public lands decisions.

Within areas of overlapping sagebrush and pinyon-juniper ecosystems, wildlife populations are declining due to habitat fragmentation and degradation, changing climate, and human development. However, management to bolster species associated with one ecosystem may result in negative consequences for species associated with the other. Thus, land managers are challenged with balancing which system to...

Many revegetation projects are intended to benefit focal wildlife species. Yet, few scope the ability of revegetation efforts to yield habitat. To investigate the ability of alternative sagebrush planting strategies to recover habitat conditions for wildlife like sage-grouse,  USGS and Colorado State University scientists developed a spatial vegetation-habitat recovery model . Scientists combined...

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...

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 are in the initial phase of a two-phase project where we are leveraging existing data resources to provide customized scenarios that directly guide landscape-scale conservation delivery by CPW. This...

Arid shrublands of western North America face growing threats from disturbances such as wildfire, drought, and invasive species. These threats are increasingly altering the sagebrush ( Artemisia species) biome and degrading habitat for species of conservation concern such as greater sage-grouse ( Centrocercus urophasianus ). Effective management and restoration are needed to slow or reverse these...

The Bureau of Land Management’s National Landscape Conservation System seeks to conserve, protect, and restore nationally significant landscapes. Science is a critical piece of this effort. The US Geological Survey is working with the Bureau of Land Management to develop Science Plans to help prioritize and support science efforts to better understand and manage resources in these landscapes.

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.

Sage-grouse, iconic birds of the American West, have experienced dramatic reductions and fragmentation of habitat, resulting in significant conservation concern. Genetic information can help inform priorities for protection and habitat restoration as well as strategies for translocations, but may be difficult for resource managers to find, interpret, and use in their decision making. In this work...