Climate change impacts on plant communities in the sagebrush region—A science synthesis to inform Bureau of Land Management resource management:

This report synthesizes current (2024) science-based knowledge related to the impacts of climate change on big sagebrush vegetation in Western North America. This effort was conducted through the U.S. Geological Survey working with the Bureau of Land Management as part of multiple science syntheses to aid management agencies developing environmental impacts assessments in response to human-related or caused events. This report reviews the potential impacts climate change may have on sagebrush vegetation and related management decisions. The body of the synthesis introduces the diverse impacts of climate change across the region by first focusing directly on what climate change may entail in terms of altered temperature and precipitation patterns. The report then discusses how these changes could likely affect individual plant species based on experimental results and scale the impacts to species distributions and community composition. The synthesis section ends by surveying efforts to model potential future changes in habitat. The report goes on to link the synthesis conclusions to individual land uses or land management decisions, such as forage resources, restoration or fuel treatment. Finally, the report provides a section that discusses the pros and cons of available datasets that model the potential future of vegetation in the sagebrush region.