Landscape Change

Wildfires cost billions of dollars to suppress annually, yet they still devastate lives, communities, and ecosystems. While wildfire is a natural phenomenon, learning to live with wildfire is a social issue – so we need a social solution.

Habitat models can provide critical information on the current and potential distribution of plant species, as well as help target and support conservation efforts. Despite their potential utility in public land management, model use may be constrained by a variety of factors including staff access to and trust in models. In this project, we seek to bring together model users and model developers...

This interdisciplinary project combines expert judgment on treatment costs with spatially explicit ecological modeling to estimate the financial resources needed to address the threat of invasive annual grass across the entire sagebrush biome. Results of the assessment will provide economic insights that can inform cost-effective resource allocation to efficiently achieve sagebrush conservation...

Through a collaborative effort with multiple state and federal agencies, university researchers, and individual stakeholders, we are producing a set of predictive seasonal habitat maps for greater sage-grouse ( Centrocercus urophasianus) spanning the entirety of the species’ U.S. distribution. This is the largest habitat modeling effort of its kind for the species and uses a large, compiled...

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...

Atmospheric nitrogen deposition, changing environmental patterns, and recreation are rapidly altering high elevation ecosystems. This project will evaluate long-term biogeochemical, hydrological, and ecological trends in Rocky Mountain National Park to understand the causes and rates of change in alpine and subalpine waters, soils, and vegetation. Resource managers of high-elevation, protected...

USGS researchers are using remote-sensing and other broadscale datasets to study and predict recovery of sagebrush across the sage-grouse range, assessing influence of disturbance, restoration treatments, soil moisture, and other ecological conditions on trends in sagebrush cover. The results will be used to inform conservation prioritization models, economic analyses, projections of future...

In partnership with the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, and other partners, scientists from USGS Fort Collins Science Center are working to create a suite of prioritization scenarios that will inform adaptive management for Gunnison sage-grouse.

Sagebrush ecosystems represent one of the most imperiled systems in North America and face continued and widespread degradation due to multiple factors including invasive species and increased human development. Effective sagebrush management must consider how to best conserve and restore habitats to stem the decline of species that rely on them, especially given limited conservation resources. To...

Widespread anthropogenic development in the sagebrush steppe and shifting drought and wildfire patterns have contributed to the observed dramatic declines of the greater sage-grouse since the 1960s. Alteration of the sagebrush habitat can affect many aspects of the species life history, including survival and local resource use. Over many years, the combined effects of landscape composition on...

Many revegetation projects are intended to benefit focal wildlife species. Yet, few scope the ability of revegetation efforts to yield habitat. To investigate the ability of alternative sagebrush planting strategies to recover habitat conditions for wildlife like sage-grouse,  USGS and Colorado State University scientists developed a spatial vegetation-habitat recovery model. Scientists combined...

To support strategic ecosystem management across the imperiled sagebrush steppe in Wyoming, USA, we developed an extension of the Prioritizing Restoration of Sagebrush Ecosystems Tool (PReSET). Our expanded tool leverages emerging spatial data resources to provide a structured but customizable set of scenarios that can guide landscape-scale planning efforts by prioritizing conservation and...