Providing a Climate Science Foundation for Updating the Integrated Rangeland Fire Management Strategy Actionable Science Plan

The long-term success of management efforts in sagebrush habitats are increasingly complicated by the impacts of a changing climate throughout the western United States. These complications are most evident in the ongoing challenges of drought and altered rangeland fire regimes resulting from the establishment of nonnative annual grasses. The Integrated Rangeland Fire Management Strategy recognized these growing threats to sagebrush habitat and initiated the development of an Actionable Science Plan to help the scientific and management communities address the highest priority science needs to help improve rangeland management efficacy in the West. Since the establishment of the original Integrated Rangeland Fire Management Strategy Actionable Science Plan in 2015, a considerable amount of climate science research has focused on western rangelands. Before the identification of the next set of priorities, there needs to be an assessment of how that science addressed the initially identified set of priorities.

This research project will develop a scorecard that will provide the science and management communities with a clear understanding of how well the initially identified management priorities related to climate change and adaptation have been addressed since 2015. This will provide a baseline for discussions about the actionable science needed to continue to address the issues driving the loss, degradation, and fragmentation of sagebrush habitats in the western United States. The research team will 1) host a series of stakeholder meetings with rangeland researchers and agency managers to compile a set of current science needs related to climate science, 2) refine those needs through community input, and 3) host a series of prioritization meetings with a broadened stakeholder group to identify and update high priority climate science needs around rangeland management. These will form the basis of the next Actionable Science Plan and help focus the science and management communities on funding and implementing science activities that will address these needs in the coming years.