|
|
Escalated wildfire activity within the western U.S. has widespread societal impacts and long-term consequences for the imperiled sagebrush (Artemisia spp.) biome. Shifts from historical fire regimes and the interplay between frequent disturbance and invasive annual grasses may initiate permanent state transitions as wildfire frequency outpaces sagebrush communities’ innate capacity to recover. Therefore, wildfire management is at the core of conservation plans for sagebrush ecosystems, especially critical habitat for species of conservation concern such as the greater sage-grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus; hereafter sage-grouse). Fuel breaks help facilitate wildfire suppression by modifying behavior through fuels...
Tags: California,
Colorado,
Ecology,
Greater Sage-grouse,
Idaho, All tags...
Montana,
Nevada,
North Dakota,
Oregon,
South Dakota,
USGS Science Data Catalog (SDC),
Utah,
Washington,
Wyoming,
biota,
ecology,
exotic grass,
fires,
fuel breaks,
habitat alteration and disturbance,
human impacts,
land use change,
sage-grouse,
sagebrush ecosystem,
shrubland ecosystems,
vegetation,
western United States,
wildfire,
wildfire suppression, Fewer tags
|
The delineation of priority areas in western North America for managing Greater Sage-Grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus) represents a broad-scale experiment in conservation biology. The strategy of limiting spatial disturbance and focusing conservation actions within delineated areas may benefit the greatest proportion of Greater Sage-Grouse. However, land use under normal restrictions outside priority areas potentially limits dispersal and gene flow, which can isolate priority areas and lead to spatially disjunct populations. We used graph theory, representing priority areas as spatially distributed nodes interconnected by movement corridors, to understand the capacity of priority areas to function as connected...
Types: Citation;
Tags: Arizona,
California,
Colorado,
Idaho,
Montana, All tags...
Nebraska,
Nevada,
New Mexico,
North Dakota,
Oregon,
South Dakota,
Utah,
Washington,
Wyoming,
biota,
environment,
geoscientificInformation,
greater sage-grouse,
habitat,
habitat connectivity,
habitat linkages,
historic range, Fewer tags
|
We partitioned a Mahalanobis D2 model of sage-grouse habitat use into separate additive components each representing independent combinations of species-habitat relationships to identify and map range-wide ecological minimums for sage-grouse. We assumed the states delineations of priority areas capture higher quality habitat and larger numbers of sage-grouse populations across our study area. We randomly selected 1669 points from the priority areas and corresponding variables GIS datasets to calibrate models. We estimated distributions of our variables from 1000 iterative samples created by bootstrapping the calibration data. To better incorporate conditions in both large and small priority areas, we restricted...
Types: Citation;
Tags: Arizona,
CRS,
California,
Colorado,
Ecological Minimums, All tags...
Greater sage-grouse,
Habitat,
Habitat Similarity Index,
Habitat connectivity,
Historic Range for greater sage-grouse,
Idaho,
Montana,
Nebraska,
Nevada,
New Mexico,
North Dakota,
Oregon,
SageDAT-data,
ScienceFramework,
South Dakota,
Utah,
Washington,
Wyoming,
biota,
environment,
geoscientificInformation, Fewer tags
|
Circuitscape software (v4.0, www.circuitscape.org) was applied to a range-wide habitat similarity index map for sage-grouse to model pathways between all priority areas of conservation network. We assumed that individual sage-grouse would move more easily through areas meeting their habitat requirements and used a scaled inverse of our mapped habitat scores as resistance to sage-grouse movements among the priority areas. Resistance values ranged from 1 representing the lowest resistance/highest habitat value to 100 (high resistance/lowest habitat value). Circuitscape (McRae et al. 2008) was run using the pairwise mode to calculate connectivity between all pairs of priority areas. Priority areas were treated as focal...
Types: Citation;
Tags: Arizona,
CRS,
California,
Circuitscape,
Colorado, All tags...
Electric Current Theory,
Habitat connectivity,
Habitat linkages,
Idaho,
Montana,
Nebraska,
Nevada,
New Mexico,
North Dakota,
Oregon,
Priority Areas of Conservation,
Sage-grouse,
SageDAT-data,
ScienceFramework,
South Dakota,
Utah,
Washington,
Wyoming,
biota,
environment,
geoscientificInformation, Fewer tags
|
|
