Threat Forecasting

Bats are essential contributing members of healthy, functioning ecosystems. They perform numerous ecosystem services like insect pest control and plant pollination, and provide enormous economic benefits through ecotourism, medical research, and novel biotechnologies. North American bats face unprecedented threats including habitat loss and fragmentation, white-nose syndrome, and wind energy...

USGS is creating spatially and temporally explicit inputs to improve avian influenza transmission risk modeling. This project places special emphasis on wild bird distribution and abundance models as well as avian influenza prevalence models.

USGS researchers are using telemetry to improve our understanding of how wild birds move throughout their environments and the potential implications for disease transmission within and to domestic poultry.

Southeast Asia has long been the epicenter of AIV emergence. However, as demonstrated by H5NX, these viruses can quickly reach global spread and have significant impacts on poultry production and human health. Researchers at the USGS Eastern Ecological Science Center have two ongoing efforts funded by the National Science Foundation to help improve our understanding of AIV emergence, spread, and...

Southeast Asia has long been the epicenter of AIV emergence. However, as demonstrated by H5NX, these viruses can quickly reach global spread and have significant impacts on poultry production and human health. Researchers at the USGS Eastern Ecological Science Center have two ongoing efforts funded by the National Science Foundation to help improve our understanding of AIV emergence, spread, and...

INHABIT is a desktop-optimized web application and decision support tool with mapped and tabular summaries of habitat suitability models for over two hundred fifty terrestrial invasive plant species of management concern across the contiguous United States. It is the product of a scientist-practitioner partnership and is designed to facilitate enhanced invasive species management actions...

Invasive annual grasses can replace native vegetation and alter fire behavior, impacting a range of habitats and species. A team of researchers from the U.S. Geological Survey, Colorado State University, the Bureau of Land Management, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service are working to identify factors that influence changes in the distribution and abundance of invasive annual grasses (IAGs)...

USGS is studying the spread and effects of “blotchy bass syndrome” on black basses ( Micropterus spp). USGS and state agencies have partnered with citizen scientists and recreational organizations to create a continent-wide biosurveillance network to monitor the syndrome.

Siren: the National Early Detection and Rapid Response (EDRR) Information System is an online resource for invasive species information sharing and collaboration that serves as the information hub of the National EDRR Framework.

This project analyzes on-the-ground plant monitoring data across sagebrush and rangeland ecosystems to examine how fire, climate, topography, and plant communities influence the success of invasive annual grasses after fires.

The coronavirus pandemic, Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) in white-tailed deer, and white-nose syndrome in bats have spawned great interest in diseases of native fish and wildlife. Many aspects of widely known diseases of wild (as opposed to domestic) animal populations are poorly understood, including their ecology, incidence, distribution, and methods for reducing effects of disease on culturally...

Wetland and Aquatic Research Center and Fort Collins Science Center are coordinating a long-term, landscape-scale Burmese python research strategy for South Florida.