Restoration / Management Tools

The Joint Ecosystem Modeling team will run a suite of 13 ecological models to provide insight into alternative restoration plans' ecological performance, unintended ecological conditions, and potential conflicts with other Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP) goals.

USGS researchers will quantify wetland change and wetland vegetation community type change through the analyses of aerial vegetation survey data and investigate potential relationships between Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and marsh elevation change.

In order to enhance habitat for nesting Brown Pelicans, terns, Black Skimmers, and gulls, the USFWS has contracted with USGS to conduct project monitoring on North Breton Island from FY23 to FY31. Monitoring conducted by USGS will facilitate evaluation of habitat characteristics and determine restoration success or need for adaptive management.

USGS scientists are working with partners at the Puget Sound Partnership and the State of Washington’s Department of Ecology to develop two new tools to help us understand how human disturbance affects life at the top of Puget Sound: a Marine Benthic Index and a graphical causal model.

USGS researchers will examine how hydrology and landscape vegetation changes impact Cape Sable Seaside Sparrow survival and population growth.

USGS will compare the EverForecast hydrologic forecast, the South Florida Water Management District's Position Analysis, and observed water level recordings from gages located across the Everglades landscape to examine which forecast performs better during the wet and dry seasons; wet, dry, or average years; or in different areas of the Everglades.

The Joint Ecosystem Modeling team will be running a suite of ecological models to evaluate scenarios and provide insight into how alternative restorations plans compare, indicate whether alternatives could lead to unintended consequences, and determine effects of alternatives that could conflict with other goals.

Goals of the ATLSS Program are to help achieve a better understanding of components of the Everglades ecosystem, to provide an integrative tool for empirical studies, and to apply these tools to an adaptive management framework.

The USGS partnered with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and its conservation partners to develop 16 Biological Planning Units (BPU) and six Aquatic Extensions and compile population objectives for 166 species that are representative of habitats within each BPU.

WARC researchers partnered with Gulf Sturgeon decision makers and biologists to develop a Bayesian network model that uses habitat characteristics to predict the quantity of juvenile winter foraging habitat under alternative river discharge and timing of juvenile arrival scenarios.

WARC researchers partnered with managers and species experts to develop a Bayesian network model and a geospatial habitat characteristics dataset to predict the number of breeding pairs of Black Skimmer and Gull-billed Tern along the Northern Gulf Coast.

WARC researchers partnered with beach mice managers and biologists to estimate habitat objectives and the amount of effort needed to achieve the habitat objective (i.e., management efficiency) for three beach mice subspecies in Florida’s panhandle.