Sagebrush
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Paleovegetation studies show that even prior to anthropogenic influence, sage steppe communities were dynamic, and in some cases, susceptible to replacement by other vegetation communities (including forests) under changing climatic conditions.
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Public land management agencies are under increasing pressure to consider climate change impacts in their land-use planning process. As a first step, many agencies are conducting vulnerability assessments to identify the components of an ecosystem, or conservation targets, most at-risk from climate change. Vulnerability assessment is the first step towards a climate change adaptation plan.
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Findings of this research suggest that a hedge betting approach (employing more than one restoration method) can increase the probability of successful restoration. Broadcast seeding seed pillows and bare seed over two years resulted in a sagebrush restoration success rate of 86% compared to 36% if only one method was used in one year. Information generated from this study will help land managers successfully restore sage-grouse habitat after wildfires by pairing restoration methods with site characteristics.
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Our results demonstrated that the important predictors from Lidar-derived metrics had a strong correlation with field-measured biomass in the Random Forests (RF) regression models. The Stepwise Multiple Regression (SMR) results were similar but slightly better than RF. Overall, both RF and SMR methods explained more than 74% of the variance in biomass, with the most important Lidar variables being associated with vegetation structure and statistical measures of this structure (e.g., standard deviation of height was a strong predictor of biomass). Using our model results, we developed spatially-explicit Lidar estimates of total and shrub biomass across our study site in the Great Basin, U.S.A., for monitoring and planning in this imperiled ecosystem.
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Models explained much of the variability between predictions and manual measurements, and yet it is expected that future applications could produce even better results by reducing some of the methodological sources of error that we encountered. Our work demonstrates how terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) can be used efficiently to extend manual measurement of vegetation characteristics from small to large plots in grasslands and shrublands, with potential application to other similarly structured ecosystems. Our method shows that vegetation structural characteristics can be modeled without classifying and delineating individual plants, a challenging and time-consuming step common in previous methods applying TLS to vegetation inventory. Improving application of TLS to studies of shrub-steppe ecosystems will serve immediate management needs by enhancing vegetation inventories, environmental modeling studies, and the ability to train broader datasets collected from air and space.
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The Conservation Biology Institute, the Great Basin LCC, Oregon State University, and EcoAdapt hosted a workshop that presented a series of decision support tools for land managers in the PNW. You can access the tools discussed at the workshop, from this webpage.
View webinar recording.
While the number of acres burned annually by uncharacteristic wildfire continues to grow, it is becoming exceedingly important for agencies to identify opportunities to use wildfire to meet multiple land management and resource objectives. When conditions allow for unplanned ignitions to be managed for one or more of these objectives, it may be appropriate to use wildfire during the peak of the traditional fire season. Management response to wildland fire on federal lands is based on objectives established in the applicable Land/Resource Management Plan and/or Fire Management Plan. Objectives are affected by changes in fuels, weather, topography; varying social understanding and tolerance; and involvement of other governmental jurisdictions having different missions and objectives. Coordination with resource specialists and development of mutually agreed to objectives is fundamental to being successful in achieving land and resource objectives with wildfire. This webinar discusses recommendations for implementing this process using case studies incorporating Mexican spotted owl management objectives into wildfire management and post-fire monitoring. Presented by Shaula Hedwall, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service and Wesley Hall, Coconino National Forest.
This webinar describes a project that uses management-related variation in grazing by both feral horses and livestock as well as five years of field work to assess how both greater sage-grouse and the habitats on which they depend might be influenced by grazing.
The research team includes James S. Sedinger, Tessa L. Behnke, Levi Jaster and Phillip A. Street from the University of Nevada Reno.
View workshop resources.
The Conservation Biology Institute, the Great Basin LCC, Oregon State University, and EcoAdapt hosted a workshop to present a series of decision support tools for land managers in the PNW. You can access the tools discussed at the workshop, from this webpage.
- Restoring & managing “Emerald Isles”
- Strategic, multi-scale approach for managing threats to sagebrush ecosystems based on resilience and resistance concepts
The Society for Range Management’s 71st Annual Meeting, Technical Training and Trade Show was at the Nugget Hotel in Sparks, Nevada. The theme for the 2018 conference was Empowerment through Applied Science.