Location: Range and Meadow Forage Management Research
Project Number: 2070-21500-001-009-S
Project Type: Non-Assistance Cooperative Agreement
Start Date: Sep 15, 2023
End Date: Sep 30, 2025
Objective:
The Sagebrush Conservation Design (SCD; Doherty et al. 2023) indicated that over the last 20 years the sagebrush biome is losing approximately 1.3 million acres of largely intact sagebrush plant communities on an annual basis. The major drivers of this loss included expanding populations of native conifers and invasive annual grasses, and the growing presence of wildfire on western landscapes. Together, these change factors are the catalysts for dramatic and spatially pervasive negative impacts on rangeland agriculture, as well as habitat for sensitive wildlife species such as sage-grouse; the latter having the potential to compound regulatory factors limiting rangeland agriculture. These changes are occurring despite billions of dollars in conservation, restoration, and fire suppression investment in recent years, indicating that contemporary investments of money and logistical effort have been insufficient to stave-off a rate of habitat degradation that is significant enough to call into question the sustainability of the sagebrush biome over an extended time horizon.
Recent advances in geospatial technology are making it possible for both management agencies and practitioners to strategically allocate conservation effort to areas where preventing undesired change is most needed and where restoration of degraded areas is most likely to succeed. A strategic framework of this nature has potential to greatly increase efficacy and economy of restoration efforts while helping to ameliorate loss of intact sagebrush plant communities. To that end, Burns ARS will continue and expand an ongoing relationship with the University of Montana (UM) by pairing research-based knowledge of the ecology of sagebrush plant communities with geospatial tools produced by UM to produce a framework that informs future conservation efforts. Specifically, the objective of this work is to produce a geospatial framework to inform strategic spatial allocation of restoration and conservation efforts across the sagebrush biome.
Approach:
Significant advances in big data and remote sensing analyses have increased the ability to assess and monitor rangelands and ecological relationships at multiple scales. Utilizing the latest machine learning technology, UM is able to combine thousands of ground-based vegetation measurements with decades of satellite imagery and climate data and other abiotic variables to produce annual, moderate resolution (30m) maps of rangeland functional group cover (0-100%) from 1984 to present. Such an advancement creates the ability to analyze and monitor rangelands at pasture, landscape, and regional scales; plan management and conservation strategies; and evaluate management and conservation outcomes through time.
Significant advances in big data and remote sensing analyses have increased the ability to assess and monitor rangelands and ecological relationships at multiple scales. Utilizing the latest machine learning technology, UM is able to combine thousands of ground-based vegetation measurements with decades of satellite imagery and climate data and other abiotic variables to produce annual, moderate resolution (30m) maps of rangeland functional group cover (0-100%) from 1984 to present. Such an advancement creates the ability to analyze and monitor rangelands at pasture, landscape, and regional scales; plan management and conservation strategies; and evaluate management and conservation outcomes through time.
Research will involve generating multiple overlays describing current biotic and abiotic conditions and likelihoods of success associated with different potential conservation actions. These overlays will then be combined with priority areas for conservation identified in the SCD to create a response surface illustrating optimal allocation of conservation effort across the sagebrush biome.
