Opening Letter 

Hello RAMPS community,

In this newsletter, we are excited to share two recent RAMPS publications with you to help improve restoration outcomes. The first synthesis paper, “Invasive grass influences on the fire-cycle and treatment effectiveness to control their abundance in the Intermountain West, USA,” is part of an ongoing project examining treatments to reduce invasive grasses and associated fuels that increase wildfire risk. The second paper, “Integrating science and management to improve seed-based restoration,” is part of a project to share lessons learned and identify future research directions for native seed development and use in the U.S.

I also have a big announcement: I’m starting a PhD program in Natural Resources at the University of Arizona this fall. I’ll still be affiliated with USGS and working on several ongoing projects, but I will no longer be coordinating the RAMPS program after August 7, 2026. I’m grateful for everything I’ve learned in this position, the connections I’ve made, and the research I’ve contributed to help improve dryland restoration in the Southwest. If you’d like to stay in touch, my updated contact information is below. You can also reach out to RAMPS ecologist Seth Munson with questions and inquiries about restoration, research, and monitoring in the Southwest.

Laura Shriver 
Outgoing RAMPS coordinator 
LShriver@arizona.edu 

Seth Munson 
RAMPS Ecologist 
Smunson@usgs.gov

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Project Highlights & New Publications 

Invasive Species and Fire Risk 

The spread of invasive species is a growing threat to ecosystems and a challenge for land managers and landowners who are tasked with controlling them. Many invasive grasses elevate wildfire risk by increasing fuel load amount and continuity. Despite large investments to reduce invasive grass abundance, mitigate fire risk, and improve land condition, there is often a lack information on treatment characteristics and whether they achieved management objectives, which could inform future decision-making and planning. To help address these issues, RAMPS is leading a research project on reducing fuels and mitigating fire risk that has three components: 

1. Compiling information on treatments to reduce invasive species and fuel loads. We are collecting this information through visits to Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service, and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service offices in the Southwest, digitizing paper records, and mapping treatments. 

2. Expanding decision-making tools, including the USGS Land Treatment Digital Library (LTDL) and the associated Land Treatment Exploration Tool (LTET), which already curate records from over 75,000 land treatment across the U.S. Intermountain West. Land managers can query treatment characteristics through the LTDL and determine what other treatments have been implemented in their area of interest and access this information in the LTET for future treatment planning and adaptive management. These tools have easy-to-use graphical user interfaces that can be used to synthesize treatment trends and effectiveness to support land and resource management. 

3. Evaluating treatment effectiveness by comparing the abundance of invasive grasses in control/treated areas or before/after treatments reported in studies. We published a synthesis in February 2026 examining fuel characteristics and treatment effectiveness for six invasive grasses in the Western U.S. (Costanzo & Munson 2026) and will update this synthesis to explore how different treatment types, intensity, and frequency influence short- and long-term reductions in invasive grass abundance.

In spring 2026, RAMPS coordinator Laura Shriver and biologist Sarah Birchard visited several land management offices in Arizona and southern California to collect paper and digital records for the LTDL and LTET. Laura will continue working on this project as part of her PhD research at the University of Arizona.

CITATION: Costanzo, S.A. and Munson, S.M., 2026. Invasive grass influences on the fire-cycle and treatment effectiveness to control their abundance in the Intermountain West, USA. Invasive Plant Science and Management 19: e9. https://doi.org/10.1017/inp.2025.10037

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Integrating Science and Management to Improve Seed-Based Restoration 

Laura Shriver and Seth Munson helped lead a collaborative project to synthesize lessons learned and future directions for native seed development and use in the U.S. The research team conducted semi-structured interviews with Bureau of Land Management Ecoregional Program coordinators and science support staff and held a workshop in April 2025 with over 40 land managers and researchers to chart a path forward for collaborative land management and research to enhance seed-based restoration efforts.  

RAMPS is excited to share a publication that summarizes lessons learned and future directions identified during the interviews and workshop. In addition to USGS authors, coauthors include researchers and land managers from other federal agencies, botanic gardens, and universities across the U.S. This publication reveals how close collaboration among researchers, land managers, and restoration practitioners has resulted in science-based guidance and decision-support tools for seed selection, seed production, and new strategies for ecological restoration. Future research and coordination directions are summarized in the figure below and include integrating research into restoration practice to address key questions in native seed development and use. Please email lshriver@usgs.gov (until August 7) or smunson@usgs.gov for the paper if you cannot access a PDF. 

CITATION: Shriver, LC , J.D. Huxley, S.E. Jordan, A.J. Symstad, L.A. DeFalco, J.B. Bradford, T.C. Esque, C. Mengelt, S.M. Munson, S.C. Barga, F.F. Kilkenny, K. Kindred, S.M. Kulpa, J.L. Perkins, A.M. Pilmanis, F.S. Edwards, A.C. Agneray, B.J. Butterfield, A.M. Faist, M. Gaddis, M. Garbowski, A.M. Goebl, J.E. Larson, R.C. Benkendorf, D.F. Shryock, M.L. Slate, A.G. Vandergast, C.B. Woolridge, and R. Massatti, 2026. Integrating science & management to improve seed-based restoration. Ecological Restoration 44(2): 114-127.  https://doi.org/10.3368/er.44.2.114

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Research Updates – New Publications 

New RestoreNet paper explores Sonoran Desert results 

In this article, RAMPS Ecologist Seth Munson and others from Arizona State University, Northern Arizona University, and the McDowell Sonoran Conservancy examined RestoreNet results specific to three sites in the Sonoran Desert. They explored the influence of two seed mix types (cool versus warm adapted species) and four soil surface treatments (pits, mulch, connectivity modifiers or ConMods, and controls) on seeded and unseeded plant establishment over 3 years. They also asked whether patterns of plant establishment could be predicted by whether the climate envelope of species in the seed mix types was similar to the site climate where they were seeded (climate matching). Similar to results across the RestoreNet network, they found that pit treatments significantly enhanced seeding success and increased unseeded plant density during post-drought springs. During these same seasons, species suited to cooler temperatures had higher cover at the site receiving the highest precipitation, and species suited to warmer temperatures established better at the drier two sites. These results suggest that in arid systems, surface treatments like pits that retain soil moisture may be promising for supporting seed-based restoration, and matching species that have high temperature tolerance with hotter, drier sites may enhance restoration success. 

CITATION: Lyu, S., Rowe, H.I., Broatch, J., Brady, J.X., Fastiggi, M., Fitts, S., Langenfeld, D. and Munson, S.M., 2026. Can surface treatments and climate matching enhance restoration success in the Sonoran Desert? Restoration Ecology, p.e70429. https://doi.org/10.1111/rec.70429 

Rethinking seed selection beyond climate matching 

In this study, USGS Ecologist Carla Roybal and others from Northern Arizona University, University of Arizona, and Landscape Stewardship Collective assessed the assumption implicit in the construction of seed transfer zones that plant populations are adapted to their home climates and that transferring native seed across climate gradients risks maladaptation and poor performance. However, plants are adapted to multiple aspects of their environments that are often excluded from seed transfer zone development. The authors used models integrating geographic distance, climate distance and soil metrics to predict plant mortality in an experimental garden for three restoration-relevant species in the southwestern United States. Overall, climate distance explained mortality better than geographic distance, but increasing climate distance was not consistently associated with higher mortality. In contrast, mortality always increased with geographic distance. Species responded idiosyncratically to environmental gradients such as soil texture and pH, indicating that incorporating site-specific variables beyond climate can improve predictions of survival. Collectively, these results suggest that seeding strategies extending beyond climate matching alone may better support restoration outcomes when species-specific guidance is unavailable. 

CITATION: Roybal, C.M., Samuel, E.M., Mitchell, R.M., Winkler, D.E. and Massatti, R., 2026. Rethinking seed selection based on climate matching during restoration: Geography, soils and climate explain species-specific mortality. Cambridge Prisms: Drylands, 3, p.e18. https://doi.org/10.1017/dry.2026.10031 

Supporting dryland restoration with applied ecological forecasting 

In this study, researchers from the USGS, Bureau of Land Management, and Boise State University discussed how forecasts for plant establishment can be developed and delivered to help land managers anticipate the impacts of near-term (months to years) environmental conditions on restoration. They developed an ecological forecast system that predicts the outcome of restoration seeding by integrating weather forecasts, an ecosystem water balance model, and plant establishment models. The authors illustrated the potential of this approach by adapting existing ecological models to build an initial version of a decision support tool that delivers a species-specific ecological forecast for big sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata) establishment. Integrating ecological forecasts into plans for restoration seeding presents opportunities to anticipate and account for environmental variability. Finally, the authors discussed how connecting research, forecast delivery, and management can maximize the impact of ecological forecasts on restoration success. 

CITATION: Siegmund, G.F., Schlaepfer, D.R., Andrews, C., Bennion, L.D., Ferguson, J., Jeffries, M.I., Olwell, P., Pilliod, D.S., Simler‐Williamson, A., Stears, A.E., Zweng, R., and Bradford, J.B.,  2026. Supporting dryland restoration success with applied ecological forecasting of seeding outcomes. Restoration Ecology, 34(2), p.e70179. https://doi.org/10.1111/rec.70179 

Combining hydrothermal models of fast- and slow-germinating seeds predicts restoration outcomes for a widely seeded dryland grass species 

In this article, researchers from the USGS, Northern Arizona University, and University of California tested the ability of hydrothermal germination models of germination to explain restoration outcomes. Specifically, they retrospectively determined if simulated soil moisture and temperature conditions that influence germination could explain restoration outcomes for a dryland grass species, squirreltail (Elymus elymoides), that is widely seeded in the Western United States. They manipulated temperature and osmotic potential of aqueous solutions to quantify hydrothermal germination requirements of squirreltail in growth chambers, then identified 383 locations where squirreltail was seeded and subsequently censused. They simulated temperature and moisture conditions at these locations to estimate the occurrence and timing of germination events and assessed how well these simulated events predicted the occurrence of squirreltail in post-treatment censuses. The hydrothermal time models for fast-germinating seeds had high specificity (good at predicting absence of squirreltail from the census), while models for slow-germinating seeds had high sensitivity (good at predicting presence). When combined, these models outperformed a retrospective climate-informed model. Post-germination conditions indicated effects of wetter soil and cooler temperature in improving seedling emergence and survival. 

CITATION: Butterfield, B.J., Korte, M.K., Siegmund, G.F., Schlaepfer, D.R. and Bradford, J.B., 2026. Combining hydrothermal models of fast‐and slow‐germinating seeds predicts restoration outcomes for a widely seeded dryland grass species. Restoration Ecology, p.e70493. https://doi.org/10.1111/rec.70493 

RAMPS is a program of the USGS Southwest Biological Science Center located in Flagstaff, AZ 

RAMPS engages stakeholders within the U.S. Department of the Interior, other federal and state agencies, Tribal governments, and on private lands to provide guidance and support for effective restoration strategies across the southwestern U.S. The RAMPS network consists of over 500 individuals representing 50+ agencies, organizations, and universities working together to increase land productivity and reduce threats posed by environmental hazards.  

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