Adaptive Management

Dauphin Island, Alabama, is the only barrier island providing protection to much of Alabama's coastal natural resources. Severely impacted by repeated extreme events, like Hurricane Katrina and Deepwater Horizon oil spill, USGS and partners are conducting a joint study to evaluate the feasibility of certain alternatives to increase resiliency and sustainability of the island.

The Mississippi barrier islands are dynamic coastal landforms that are the first line of defense between the Gulf and the Mississippi mainland coast. These islands are experiencing changes in structure (land area and habitat) and geomorphic processes (erosion and accretion) due to frequent intense storms, relative rise in sea level, and changes in sediment supply. A long-term monitoring and...

The Southwest Montana Sagebrush Partnership (SMSP) team, including land managers, landowners, and scientists, is implementing conifer removal projects encompassing over 55,000 acres of private, state, and federal lands throughout the region. To date, little place-based information exists regarding likely vegetation and bird responses to such treatments in Southwestern Montana. To address this...

The Conservation Efforts Database (CED) is a secure online data repository that collects, stores, and retrieves spatially explicit, spatially obscure, and non-spatial information on species and habitat conservation and management actions. The CED is designed to allow data collection from all interested partners including federal, state, local, non-government organizations, universities, private...

Managing wildland fuels and post-fire environments are key strategies to reduce the risk and negative impacts of wildfire, and can even promote beneficial effects of wildfire. Researchers from the U.S. Geological Survey are reviewing, summarizing, and analyzing what is currently known about fuel treatment and post-fire treatment effectiveness in the United States. Monitoring and evaluating the...

The Restoration Assessment and Monitoring Program for the Southwest (RAMPS) seeks to assist U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) and other land management agencies in developing successful techniques for improving land condition in dryland ecosystems of the southwestern United States. Invasion by non-native species, wildfire, drought, and other disturbances are growing rapidly in extent and...

This web-based mapping tool, released in 2024, enables users to identify which threats are driving the current status of Sagebrush Ecological Integrity (SEI), assess if SEI and associated threats, such as invasive annual grass, conifer encroachment, human modification - have changed over time, and visualize spatial trends in SEI and threats. The Sagebrush Ecosystem Trends Module supports managers...

The CED Gunnison Sage-grouse Recovery Module was released in 2020 and is designed to capture any effort designed to benefit Gunnison sage-grouse recovery. This includes habitat restoration and any activities that contribute to the recovery of Gunnison sage-grouse, a federally listed threatened species. While similar to the Sagebrush Module, The Gunnison Sage-Grouse Recovery module contains fields...

The CED Cutthroat Module, released in 2024, is our latest module and is designed to capture any action related to the conservation, enhancement, restoration, or recovery of native, inland cutthroat trout or the habitats and waters that they depend on. The first iteration of this module was designed specifically for the Lahontan cutthroat trout. However, we are currently working on expanding the...

The CED Sagebrush Module, first released in 2014, captures any conservation effort, enhancement, restoration, plan, or action related to the sagebrush landscape or activities that benefit sagebrush-dependent species. The CED was originally focused only on greater sage-grouse and thus, most of the records currently in our database are related to this species, but, starting in 2019, we expanded our...

USGS is identifying, testing, and verifying rapid methods for rangeland assessment and restoration monitoring. Our methods complement existing monitoring frameworks, providing land management agencies with timely information that can be used to determine if restoration investments are successful, and why. Standardization, validation, repeatability, data management, and training are at the core of...

In 2021, the Fort Collins Science Center initiated a research effort to estimate road age and annual traffic volumes across the majority of roads in Wyoming for assessing impacts to wildlife. Data on roads often focus on the ‘where’ (for example, spatial features) but neglect the ‘when’ (for example, road age) or ‘how much’ (for example, traffic volume). Knowing these characteristics is critical...