Adaptive Management
Adaptive Management
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Grand Canyon Sandbar Monitoring
Since the completion of Glen Canyon Dam in 1963, the amount of sand supplied to Grand Canyon National Park has been reduced by more than 90 percent. The Paria River, a tributary to the Colorado River 15 miles downstream from the dam, is now the single most important supplier of sand to the Colorado River within the Park. This large reduction in sand supply has resulted in substantial decrease in...
Adaptive Management
In 1996, the Secretary of the Interior signed a formal decision altering the historical flows from Glen Canyon Dam and establishing the Glen Canyon Dam Adaptive Management Program (GCDAMP). In the context of the management of Glen Canyon Dam, adaptive management was selected to create a process whereby “the effects of dam operations on downstream resources would be assessed and the results of...
Predation of Desert Bighorn Sheep by Mountain Lions in Grand Canyon National Park
Desert bighorn sheep populations in the southwestern United States are subject to non-native disease outbreaks, habitat loss, and genetic isolation that can threaten their long-term sustainability. In some regions of the southwest, mountain lion predation on desert bighorn sheep has been found to be the primary source of mortality. Grand Canyon National Park is home to one of the largest desert...
Wildlife use of Highway Underpasses in Southern California
As a result of growing human populations, many areas have become urbanized and highly developed, leaving natural native habitats fragmented across the landscape. In southern California many of the remaining patches on native habitat are bisected by major, multi-lane highway systems. Threats to the long-term sustainability of native wildlife populations include genetic isolation, where inbreeding...
Effects of Nonnative Vegetation Management
The Rio Grande/Rio Bravo (hereafter referred to as the Rio Grande) in the Big Bend region of Texas, USA, and Chihuahua, and Coahuila, MX has substantially narrowed since the early 1900s. This narrowing has been exacerbated by the widespread establishment of non-native giant cane (Arundo donax) and tamarisk (Tamarix spp.), both of which help trap sediment and protect banks from natural erosional...
Desert Tortoise Ecology and Renewable Energy Development
The desert Southwest is experiencing rapid development of utility-scale solar and wind energy facilities. Although clean renewable energy has environmental benefits, it can also have negative impacts on wildlife and their habitats. Understanding those impacts and effectively mitigating them is a major goal of industry and resource managers. One species of particular concern is Agassiz’s desert...
Big Sagebrush Ecosystem Response to Climate & Disturbance
Big sagebrush ecosystems are a major component of landscapes in the western U.S. and provide vital habitat to a wide array of wildlife species. However, big sagebrush ecosystems have been dramatically impacted by disturbances in the past several decades. This collaborative research between USGS and the University of Wyoming focuses on understanding how climatic and soil conditions influence big...
Amphibian Chytrid Fungus Sampling in Arizona and Mexico
Information on disease presence can be of use to natural resource managers, especially in areas supporting threatened and endangered species that occur coincidentally with species that are suspected vectors for disease. A general sense of pathogen presence (or absence) can inform management directed at threatened and endangered species, especially in regions where disease is suspected to have...
Sediment Storage in the Colorado River
The sandbars exposed along the shoreline of the Colorado River represent only a small fraction of the sand deposits in Grand Canyon, most of which are on the bed of the river in eddies and the channel. Current management practice includes efforts to maintain and build sandbars by releasing high flows from Glen Canyon Dam that are timed to coincide with periods of fine-sediment supply from...
Aquatic Insects
Aquatic insects live in the water as larvae most of their lives, then emerge onto land for a brief period as winged adults. Sampling these emerged adults on land is therefore a useful tool for understanding the condition of the aquatic insect population that is in the water, particularly in large rivers where sampling the larvae on the river bed is impractical. Our group uses a variety of methods...
SBSC Updates - Catch Up on Our Activities
SBSC monthly updates highlight new published papers and reports, new research projects, media attention on SBSC science, outreach activities, data, and more. Click on the images to download PDFs of the updates. If you would like the montly updates e-mailed to you each month, please contact Meredith Hartwell (mhartwell@usgs.gov)