Land Management
Land Management
Learn more about FORT research on land management.
Filter Total Items: 108
Developing habitat models for rare plants to inform decision making on multiple-use public lands
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.
Gunnison Sage-grouse Prioritizing Restoration of Sagebrush Ecosystems Tool (PReSET)
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.
Prioritizing Restoration of Sagebrush Ecosystems Tool (PReSET): A USGS-facilitated Decision-support Tool for Sagebrush Ecosystem Conservation and Restoration Actions
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...
Economics of Outdoor Recreation
Planning and managing outdoor recreation on public land and water entails a series of choices, many of which are economic in nature. Economics is useful for informing a wide range of decision-making processes in the context of outdoor recreation management, including why people choose to engage in recreation and where, how people substitute between different types of recreation activities and...
Developing structured science syntheses for use in NEPA analyses and decision making in the Bureau of Land Management
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.
Modeling Songbird Density-Habitat Relationships to Predict Population Responses to Environmental Change Within Pinyon-juniper and Sagebrush Ecosystems
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...
Characterizing greater sage-grouse climate-driven maladaptation
Climate change will expose many species to novel extreme environmental conditions, that may test organisms’ ability to respond to environmental change. Local adaptation, when a species evolves to be more suited for its local environment, can be an indicator of whether a species is likely to persist in the rapidly changing environment. Habitat specialists, like the greater sage-grouse, have evolved...
Characterizing the environmental drivers of range-wide gene flow for greater sage-grouse
Widespread anthropogenic development in the sagebrush steppe and shifting climatic patterns have contributed to the observed dramatic declines of the greater sage-grouse since the 1960s. Alteration of the sagebrush habitat can affect many aspects of the species life history, including survival and local resource use. Over many years, the combined effects of landscape composition on these traits...
Development and application of genomic resources for the greater sage-grouse
The greater sage-grouse is a sagebrush-obligate species that has experienced dramatic range-wide declines since the 1960s, causing significant conservation concern. Genetic information has refined our understanding of population structure, the levels of inbreeding or relatedness, allowed the ability to monitor for change over time, and has been used to understand the outcome of management actions...
Linking post-fire sagebrush restoration and sage-grouse habitat recovery
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...
Prioritizing restoration and conservation of Wyoming’s sagebrush ecosystems for wildlife and sagebrush connectivity
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...
Prioritizing restoration and conservation of sagebrush ecosystems in northwestern Colorado
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...