Landscape Conservation Forecasting for Data-Poor at-Risk Species on Western Public Lands, United States

Abstract

Managing vast federal public lands governed by multiple land use policies creates challenges when demographic data on at-risk species are lacking. The U.S. Bureau of Land Management Cedar City Field Office used this project in the Black Mountains (Utah) to inform vegetation management supporting at-risk greater sage-grouse and Utah prairie dog planning. Ecological systems were mapped from satellite remote sensing imagery and used to model species habitat suitability under two levels of management activity (custodial, preferred) and climate scenarios for historic and two global circulation models. Spatial state-and-transition models of ecological systems were simulated for all six scenarios up to 60 years while coupled with expert-developed habitat suitability indices. All ecological systems are at least moderately departed from reference conditions in 2012, whereas habitat suitability was 50.5% and 48.4% for sage-grouse and prairie dog, respectively. Management actions replaced non-native annual grasslands with perennial grasses, removed conifers, and controlled exotic forbs. The drier climate most affected ecological departure and prairie dog habitat suitability at 30 years only. Different climates influenced spatial patterns of sage-grouse habitat suitability, but nonspatial values were unchanged. Climate impacts on fire, vegetation succession, and restoration explain many results. Front-loading restoration is predicted to benefit under future drier climate.

Assessing Ecosystem Condition: Use and Customization of the Vegetation Departure Metric

“…Depending on its implementation, VDEP can identify and measure threats such as shifts in community composition and structure, invasive species, and the effects of altered disturbance regimes. For land managers VDEP offers specific information from which ecosystem management goals and actions can be developed and supports prioritization efforts [38,60]. Additionally, these methods adhere to relevant indicators in certification and assessment protocols such as the Forest Stewardship Council-US standards [85], the U.S. Forest Service planning rule [86], and those proposed by Nicholson et al within the "Ecological Integrity" component of ecological goal setting [5].…”

“…Current conditions. VDEP can include any number or type (e.g., agriculture) of classes, e.g., [60], but defining mappable classes can be challenging. For example, LANDFIRE defined its current condition structural stages (succession classes) solely based on the overstory vegetation because it is difficult to map under-and mid-story vegetation from remotely sensed images.…”

“…Building on VDEP concepts, Haugo et al [38] combined LANDFIRE and local spatial products to evaluate forest structure restoration needs in Oregon and Washington. Building on the original VDEP concepts, Provencher et al [60] created an expanded VDEP formula called "Unified Ecological Departure" that adjusts the VDEP index based on "undesirable" structural stages (defined by stakeholders), adds a threshold value for specific structural stages, and uses a high-risk function to weight specific structural stages.…”

“…A global set of models would allow for the quantification of reference conditions (defined as any baseline of interest) that could be compared to recent global ecosystem maps such as those by Sayre et al [15] to measure departure. Inspired by Provencher et al [60], we propose departure tracking of additional attributes with the objective of linking them to broad structural stages representing wildlife habitat, ecosystem services, and human-centric values. These linkages would allow for the calculation of additional and nuanced departure values.…”

Carbon Sequestration in Degraded Intermountain West Rangelands, United States

“…Daniel et al (2016, 2018) reviewed landscape simulators for rangelands that model both local vegetation and carbon dynamics and incorporate realistic restoration treatments. While only a few non-rangeland forest simulators are widely used, such as Landis-II that is a cohort-based tree species growth simulator (Scheller et al 2007), less data-intensive state-and-transition simulation models have been primarily used to forecast shrubland, woodland, and forest vegetation dynamics of rangelands and optionally estimate carbon stock and flows, species habitat suitability, or postfire sedimentation in rangelands (Daniel et al 2016, 2018; Provencher et al 2016, 2021; Miller et al 2017).…”