Intense settlement and agricultural development have resulted in a loss of more than half the sagebrush ecosystems in the western United States and Canada. Today, these ecosystems continue to be threatened by a variety of land use practices such as urbanization, road building and road and trail use, grazing and agriculture, and especially, energy development. As a result of these expanding pressures and the habitat fragmentation and other disturbances they create, wildlife species dependent upon sagebrush habitat have experienced considerable declines in numbers and distribution.
The Wyoming Basins Ecoregion Assessment area encompasses some of the most expansive sagebrush communities remaining in North America. With 26 million acres of sagebrush habitat, the Wyoming Basins rank third in the western United States in terms of sagebrush cover, representing 25 percent of all North American sagebrush habitat. The area also possesses significant natural gas resources, which increasingly are being developed as our Nation escalates efforts to capitalize on domestic energy sources.
In the face of these rapid and significant changes, understanding the impacts of land-use changes and practices is crucial to discovering how best to limit the impacts on sensitive species and habitats that are already compromised in Wyoming's wildlife-rich landscape. Land and resource managers have a critical need for scientific information about the wildlife in the region in order to identify and protect sensitive areas where native species, especially those dependent on sagebrush, can thrive.
To address this need head-on, several Federal and State land and resource management agencies-including the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), U.S. Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, U.S. Forest Service, Wyoming Department of Agriculture, and Wyoming Game and Fish Department-have signed a cooperative agreement, the Wyoming Landscape Conservation Initiative. This long-term, science-based effort is taking a regional or "landscape" approach to assessing and enhancing living resources and their habitats in southwestern Wyoming, while facilitating responsible energy development.
In association with partner agencies, investigators at the USGS Fort Collins Science Center and their USGS colleagues have brought biological and ecosystem research and mapping expertise to the partnership to develop and answer key research questions: What is the current status and distribution of habitats and species of conservation concern? What will happen at ecoregional and local scales to species of concern as development occurs? What monitoring infrastructure is needed to evaluate ecosystem changes over time and help implement adaptive management to prevent or mitigate harmful impacts? How does road use influence animal movement and health of breeding populations? How do management strategies, such as grazing and burning, affect vegetation and wildlife communities in the region? How are historical resources affected? These and many other questions are being addressed in a variety of research projects currently underway, with more being developed.
Click here to learn more about specific aspects of this critical work, follow the links by clicking on the associated project titles:
- Developing a Regional Approach for Integrated Monitoring Related to Energy Exploration and Development
- DOI on the Landscape, Sagebrush Ecosystems: Landscape-Scale Modeling to Address Management Priorities for Sagebrush Habitats and Sagebrush-Obligate Wildlife Species
- Ecological Impacts of Roads and Road Use on Wildlife
- Ecoregional Analysis of Sagebrush Ecosystems of the Wyoming Basin and Colorado Plateau
- Evaluating Species Models for the Ecoregional Analysis of Sagebrush Ecosystems within the Wyoming Basins
- Evaluation of the Effects of Energy Development on Mountain Plovers in Wyoming
- Gunnison Sage-Grouse Chick Survival and Landscape Population Modeling
- Healthy Lands Initiative: WLCI Baseline Synthesis
- Healthy Lands Initiative: WLCI Decision-Making and Evaluation
- Healthy Lands Initiative: WLCI Targeted Research and Monitoring
- Mapping Sagebrush Habitats in Human-Influenced Landscapes
- Natural Resources Preservation Program: Gunnison Sage-Grouse Habitat Selection: Developing a Landscape-Level Habitat Map Predicting Sagebrush, Herbaceous, and Bare Ground Cover
- Quantifying the Physical Impacts of Reenacted Mormon Handcart Journeys across the Historic Oregon-California Trail
- Sagebrush Ecosystems Coordinated Research: Range-wide Assessment of Livestock Grazing Across the Sagebrush Biome
- Sagebrush Ecosystems Coordinated Research: Determining the Effects of Energy Development on Sagebrush Ecosystems, with a Focus on Oil and Gas
- Stratton Sagebrush Ecological Research Site: An Experimental Approach to Assess Various Grazing Treatments on Vegetation and Wildlife Communities across Managed Burns and Habitat Controls
U.S. Department of the Interior | U.S. Geological Survey
URL: http://www.fort.usgs.gov/SageEnergy/default.asp
Page Contact Information: AskFORT@usgs.gov
Page Last Modified: 8:26:58 PM
