Education
Ph.D. 2006, University of Wyoming
M.A. 1996, University of Wyoming
B.S. 1989, Michigan State University
Postdoc (2009) The Nature Conservancy - U.S. Forest Service Northern Research Station
Specialty
Fire ecology, landscape ecology, restoration ecology, plant ecology, landscape modeling
Invasive annual grasses, such as cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum) and medusahead (Taeniatherum caput-medusae), are one of the most significant stressors to rangeland ecosystems in the western U.S. Their expansion and dominance across this area are the most damaging ecosystem agents on this iconic landscape.
Understanding how fire and other disturbances affect ecosystem health and resiliency is critically important for land managers and for society as a whole.
Fuel loads are important drivers of fire behavior, and fire is an important natural process that can also be used as a tool for ecological restoration purposes. Land managers and fire experts attempt to track and manipulate fuel loads in order to assess fire risk, control fire behavior, and restore ecosystems. Thus, understanding the relationships between fire, vegetation dynamics, and fuel...
Models can be used to investigate changes in ecosystems and disturbance regimes across large landscapes and over long periods of time, i.e., at spatial and temporal scales that are typically not possible or practical using field-based observational or experimental methods. These spatially explicit models can also be used to investigate complex relationships and interactions among various...
Disturbance is an important process in most natural communities, shaping ecosystem composition, structure, and function. Studying and quantifying natural disturbance regimes (e.g., fire) often reveal complex relationships with climate, vegetation, and topography, as well as with other disturbance agents (e.g., insects and wind). Characterizing and quantifying past disturbances regimes is also...
Ecosystem dynamic models are useful for understanding ecosystem characteristics over time and space because of their efficiency over direct field measurements and applicability to broad spatial extents. Their application, however, is challenging due to internal model uncertainties and complexities arising from distinct qualities of the ecosystems...
Pandit, Karun; Dasthi, Hamid; Glenn, Nancy; Flores, Alejandro; Maguire, Kaitlin C.; Shinneman, Douglas; Flerchinger, Gerald; Fellow, Aaron Species that are primarily seral may form stable (self-sustaining) communities under certain disturbance regimes or environmental conditions, yet such populations may also be particularly vulnerable to ecological change. Aspen (Populus spp.) are generally considered seral throughout the northern hemisphere, including P. tremuloides, the most...
Shinneman, Douglas; McIlroy, Susan Species distribution models (SDM) that rely on regional-scale environmental variables will play a key role in forecasting species occurrence in the face of climate change. However, in the Anthropocene, a number of local-scale anthropogenic variables, including wildfire history, land-use change, invasive species, and ecological restoration...
Requena-Mullor, Juan M.; Maguire, Kaitlin C.; Shinneman, Douglas; Caughlin, T. Trevor Fuel breaks are increasingly being implemented at broad scales (100s to 10,000s of square kilometers) in fire‐prone landscapes globally, yet there is little scientific information available regarding their ecological effects (eg habitat fragmentation). Fuel breaks are designed to reduce flammable vegetation (ie fuels), increase the safety and...
Shinneman, Douglas; Germino, Matthew J.; Pilliod, David S.; Aldridge, Cameron L.; Vaillant, Nicole; Coates, Peter S.
The Fuels Guide and Database (FGD) is intended to provide fuel loading and vegetation information for big sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata) ecological sites in the Morley Nelson Snake River Birds of Prey National Conservation Area (hereinafter the NCA) in southern Idaho. Sagebrush ecosystems in the NCA and throughout much of the Great Basin are...
Shinneman, Douglas J.; Welty, Justin L.; Arkle, Robert S.; Pilliod, David S.; Glenn, Nancy F.; McIlroy, Susan K.; Halford, Anne S. Unique responses to climate change can occur across intraspecific levels, resulting in individualistic adaptation or movement patterns among populations within a given species. Thus, the need to model potential responses among genetically distinct populations within a species is increasingly recognized. However, predictive models of future...
Maguire, Kaitlin C.; Shinneman, Douglas; Potter, Kevin M.; Hipkins, Valerie D.
Interactions between fire and nonnative, annual plant species (that is, “the grass/fire cycle”) represent one of the greatest threats to sagebrush (Artemisia spp.) ecosystems and associated wildlife, including the greater sage-grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus). In 2015, U.S. Department of the Interior called for a “science-based strategy to...
Shinneman, Douglas J.; Aldridge, Cameron L.; Coates, Peter S.; Germino, Matthew J.; Pilliod, David S.; Vaillant, Nicole M. Terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) has been shown to enable an efficient, precise, and non-destructive inventory of vegetation structure at ranges up to hundreds of meters. We developed a method that leverages TLS collections with machine learning techniques to model and map canopy cover and biomass of several classes of short-stature vegetation...
Anderson, Kyle E.; Glenn, Nancy F.; Spaete, Lucas P.; Shinneman, Douglas; Pilliod, David S.; Arkle, Robert; McIlroy, Susan; Derryberry, DeWayne R. Terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) provides fast collection of high-definition structural information, making it a valuable field instrument to many monitoring applications. A weakness of TLS collections, especially in vegetation, is the occurrence of unsampled regions in point clouds where the sensor’s line-of-sight is blocked by intervening...
Anderson, Kyle E.; Glenn, Nancy; Spaete, Lucas; Shinneman, Douglas; Pilliod, David S.; Arkle, Robert; McIlroy, Susan; Derryberry, DeWayne R. Our study objectives were to model the aboveground biomass in a xeric shrub-steppe landscape with airborne light detection and ranging (Lidar) and explore the uncertainty associated with the models we created. We incorporated vegetation vertical structure information obtained from Lidar with ground-measured biomass data, allowing us to scale shrub...
Li, Aihua; Dhakal, Shital; Glenn, Nancy F.; Spaete, Luke P.; Shinneman, Douglas; Pilliod, David S.; Arkle, Robert; McIlroy, Susan IntroductionClimate change is expected to impose significant tension on the geographic distribution of tree species. Yet, tree species range shifts may be delayed by their long life spans, capacity to withstand long periods of physiological stress, and dispersal limitations. Wildfire could theoretically break this biological inertia by killing...
Campbell, John L.; Shinneman, Douglas Sagebrush steppe of North America is considered highly imperilled, in part owing to increased fire frequency. Sagebrush ecosystems support numerous species, and it is important to understand those factors that affect rates of post-fire sagebrush recovery. We explored recovery of Wyoming big sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata ssp.wyomingensis)...
Shinneman, Douglas; McIlroy, Susan
Aspen is generally considered an early-seral species that benefits from fire, but increases in fire activity across the western United States could affect aspen in unpredictable ways.
The sagebrush-steppe in western North America is a spatially heterogeneous ecosystem shaped by complex dynamics, making modeling characteristics such as ecosystem primary production extremely difficult.
In a chapter of The Encyclopedia of World’s Biomes titled “North American Sagebrush Steppe and Shrubland,” USGS Research Fire Ecologist Doug Shinneman documents the unique characteristics of the sagebrush biome.
Recent declines in aspen populations have occurred in the western U.S., especially along drought-sensitive margins of its range or where fire exclusion and herbivory have promoted community transition.
Species distribution models help researchers explore how environmental conditions influence the spatial pattern of species occurrence over large areas.
USGS researchers created an interactive Fuels Guide and Database, providing vegetation and fuel loading information and photographs for big sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata) ecological sites in the Morley Nelson Snake River Birds of Prey National Conservation Area (NCA) in southern Idaho.
Linear fuel breaks have long been used to help suppress fire in the Great Basin, and thousands of miles of new fuel breaks may be constructed in coming years to protect sagebrush ecosystems, including greater sage-grouse habitat.