Adaptive Management

Long-term wildlife monitoring is imperative for understanding population changes that can inform managers. However, working with population data collected by different organizations, across multiple jurisdictions, and over long time periods can be challenging due to different data management approaches and organizational priorities. Through this project, we aimed to collaborate with eleven state...

Within areas of overlapping sagebrush and pinyon-juniper ecosystems, wildlife populations are declining due to habitat fragmentation and degradation, changing climate, and human development. However, management to bolster species associated with one ecosystem may result in negative consequences for species associated with the other. Thus, land managers are challenged with balancing which system to...

Wildlife management boundaries frequently lack biological context, such as information on habitat resource availability and wildlife movements. To address this, we developed multiple levels of biologically relevant and hierarchically nested greater sage-grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus) population units that could facilitate management and conservation of populations and habitats.

Renewable energy development, such as solar and wind energy, is growing in the United States and is expected to continue expanding for the foreseeable future. However, renewable energy infrastructure can be a risk to some wildlife including threatened and endangered species. Wildlife managers and energy developers need wildlife risks to be assessed and effective strategies to mitigate those risks...

Southern Arizona’s semi-desert grasslands provides habitat for flora and fauna, regulates rainfall infiltration and overland flow, mitigates surface erosion and dust production, and sequesters carbon. Sustainable management is important to maintain these ecological services and is of concern for the managers, ranchers, and other people associated with the grassland. The Buenos Aires National...

Pink-footed geese in Svalbard are a highly valued resource, but their increasing population causes conflicts with agricultural needs. USGS is devloping population models to help inform management of optimal harvest strategies.

The National Park Service and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service reintroduced wolves into Yellowstone National Park in 1995 and 1996. This study helps assess that population’s recovery and determine factors that affect the population, including diseases, intraspecific strife, and interactions with prey. The restoration has been very successful, and the population has persisted for more than 20 years...

Montane plant communities in widely separated intact natural environments of the world have responded to changes in precipitation and temperature regimes by shifting both margins and core distributional ranges upward in elevation. Reduced evapotranspiration rates in cooler climate zones at higher elevation may compensate for less precipitation and higher temperatures within species’ former ranges...

The presence of top predators is considered an indication of ecosystem health and can play a vital role in ecosystem functioning by promoting biodiversity, and can contribute to regulating prey species abundance, and herbivory. In the intermountain west, the largest mammalian predator and obligate carnivore is the mountain lion, Puma concolor. This elusive and wide-ranging predator occupies a...

Riparian woodlands are highly productive ecosystems that support a disproportionately high fraction of regional biodiversity. They are also one of the most endangered terrestrial systems in temperate North America, and have been reduced to just 5% of their former extent in California and throughout the American southwest. These losses have been accompanied by steep declines in numerous plant and...

Biological production represents the total amount of living material (biomass) that was produced during a defined period of time. This production is important because some of it is used for food and some is valued for recreation, it is a direct measure of total ecosystem processes, and it sustains biological diversity. Production is a measure of energy flow, and is therefore a natural currency for...

Mesic forests of Hawai‘i island provide an ideal system for the study of forest restoration because they have a similar history to other tropical and subtropical forests globally, while maintaining a relatively simple species assemblage. Many of these forests were cleared for grazing, and then later abandoned, to become dominated by pasture grasses that form competitive layers such that native...