Mapping Tree Canopy Cover in Support of Proactive Prairie Grouse Conservation in Western North America

Falkowski, Michael J.; Evans, Jeffrey S.; Naugle, David E.; Hagen, Christian A.; Carleton, Scott A.; Maestas, Jeremy D.; Khalyani, Azad Henareh; Poznanovic, Aaron J.; Lawrence, Andrew J.

doi:10.1016/j.rama.2016.08.002

Cited by 54 publications

(69 citation statements)

References 49 publications

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“…Pixels were classified as pinyon-juniper if they had >0% cover as designated by Falkowski et al (2017a) or were designated as pinyon-juniper woodlands or juniper woodland and savannah in the LANDFIRE EVT group (GP_N, Rollins 2009, LANDFIRE 2014; Fig. 1).…”

Section: Land Cover Classificationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…To validate the 30-m resolution data, we used a linear regression to compare pinyon-juniper canopy cover estimates from 265 Sagebrush Steppe Treatment Evaluation Project (SageSTEP) plots (McIver et al 2014) to the NAIP-based models of canopy cover (Falkowski et al 2017a). The 265 SageSTEP plots within the modeled canopy cover area were distributed across 14 sites in five states (Appendix S1: Fig.…”

Section: Pinyon-juniper Percent Cover Product and Validationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…S2). Falkowski et al (2017b) used a stratified random sample of pixels from the Falkowski et al (2017a) canopy cover map and predicted tree crown presence/absence which was then visually assessed against NAIP imagery for these samples. Samples with an accurate representation of the tree canopy were then used to train a random forest model of canopy cover based on contemporaneous Landsat imagery and topographic indices.…”

Section: Pinyon-juniper Percent Cover Product and Validationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Landsat 5, 7, and 8 images from the Tier 1 spectral reflectance product were masked for clouds, cloud shadow, and snow using the provided quality assurance band (U.S. Geological Survey 2019a, b). We used the resulting estimates of canopy cover to calculate aboveground biomass of pinyon-juniper woodlands that were outside of the extents of the high-resolution maps created by Falkowski et al (2017a). The vegetation indices included the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI; Rouse et al 1974), Normalized Difference ❖ www.esajournals.org Moisture or Water Index (NDMI; Gao 1996), and the Normalized Burn Ratio (NBR; Key and Benson 2006).…”

Section: Pinyon-juniper Percent Cover Product and Validationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Any pixel that had >0% pinyon-juniper cover in the Falkowski et al (2017a) product was designated as pinyon-juniper regardless of that LANDFIRE classification in that pixel because of the higher carbon content of trees in comparison with other plant functional types. Pixels that were designated as pinyon-juniper in LANDFIRE EVT but were not designated as pinyon-juniper by …”

Section: Pinyon-juniper Percent Cover Product and Validationmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Accounting for aboveground carbon storage in shrubland and woodland ecosystems in the Great Basin

Fusco

Rau²,

Falkowski

et al. 2019

Ecosphere

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Improving the accuracy of carbon accounting in terrestrial ecosystems is critical for understanding carbon fluxes associated with land cover change, with significant implications for global carbon cycling and climate change. Semi-arid ecosystems account for an estimated 45% of global terrestrial ecosystem area and are in many locations experiencing high degrees of degradation. However, aboveground carbon accounting has largely focused on tropical and forested ecosystems, while drylands have been relatively neglected. Here, we used a combination of field estimates, remotely sensed data, and existing land cover maps to create a spatially explicit estimate of aboveground carbon storage within the Great Basin, a semi-arid region of the western United States encompassing 643,500 km 2 of shrubland and woodland vegetation. We classified the region into seven distinct land cover categories: pinyon-juniper woodland, sagebrush steppe, salt desert shrub, low sagebrush, forest, non-forest, and other/excluded, each with an associated carbon estimate. Aboveground carbon estimates for pinyon-juniper woodland were continuous values based on tree canopy cover. Carbon estimates for other land cover categories were based on a mean value for the land cover type. The Great Basin ecosystems contain an estimated 295.4 Tg in aboveground carbon, which is almost double the previous estimates that only accounted for forested ecosystems in the same area. Aboveground carbon was disproportionately stored in pinyon-juniper woodland (43.7% carbon, 16.9% land area), while the shrubland systems accounted for roughly half of the total land area (49.1%) and one-third of the total carbon. Our results emphasize the importance of distinguishing and accounting for the distinctive contributions of shrubland and woodland ecosystems when creating carbon storage estimates for dryland regions.

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Section: Land Cover Classificationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Pinyon-juniper Percent Cover Product and Validationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Pinyon-juniper Percent Cover Product and Validationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Pinyon-juniper Percent Cover Product and Validationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Pinyon-juniper Percent Cover Product and Validationmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Accounting for aboveground carbon storage in shrubland and woodland ecosystems in the Great Basin

Fusco

Rau²,

Falkowski

et al. 2019

Ecosphere

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A conservation planning tool for Greater Sage‐grouse using indices of species distribution, resilience, and resistance

Ricca

Coates

Gustafson

et al. 2018

Ecological Applications

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Managers require quantitative yet tractable tools that identify areas for restoration yielding effective benefits for targeted wildlife species and the ecosystems they inhabit. As a contemporary example of high national significance for conservation, the persistence of Greater Sage-grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus) in the Great Basin is compromised by strongly interacting stressors of conifer expansion, annual grass invasion, and more frequent wildfires occurring in sagebrush ecosystems. Associated restoration treatments to a sagebrush-dominated state are often costly and may yield relatively little ecological benefit to sage-grouse if implemented without estimating how Sage-grouse may respond to treatments, or do not consider underlying processes influencing sagebrush ecosystem resilience to disturbance and resistance to invasive species. Here, we describe example applications of a spatially explicit conservation planning tool (CPT) to inform prioritization of: (1) removal of conifers (i.e., pinyon-juniper); and (2) wildfire restoration aimed at improving habitat conditions for the Bi-State Distinct Population Segment of Sage-grouse along the California-Nevada state line. The CPT measures ecological benefits to sage-grouse for a given management action through a composite index comprised of resource selection functions and estimates of abundance and space use. For pinyon-juniper removal, we simulated changes in land-cover composition following the removal of sparse trees with intact understories, and ranked treatments on the basis of changes in ecological benefits per dollar-unit of cost. For wildfire restoration, we formulated a conditional model to simulate scenarios for land cover changes (e.g., sagebrush to annual grass) given estimated fire severity and underlying ecosystem processes influencing resilience to disturbance and resistance to invasion by annual grasses. For both applications, we compared CPT rankings to land cover changes along with sagebrush resistance and resilience metrics. Model results demonstrated how the CPT can be an important step in identifying management projects that yield the highest quantifiable benefit to Sage-grouse while avoiding costly misallocation of resources, and highlight the importance of considering changes in sage-grouse ecological response and factors influencing sagebrush ecosystem resilience to disturbance and resistance to invasion. This unique framework can be adopted to help inform other management questions aimed at improving habitat for other species across sagebrush and other ecosystems.

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Tracking spatial regimes as an early warning for a species of conservation concern

Roberts

Uden

Cady

et al. 2021

Ecological Applications

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In this era of global environmental change and rapid regime shifts, managing core areas that species require to survive and persist is a grand challenge for conservation. Wildlife monitoring data are often limited or local in scale. The emerging ability to map and track spatial regimes (i.e., the spatial manifestation of state transitions) using advanced geospatial vegetation data has the potential to provide earlier warnings of habitat loss because many species of conservation concern strongly avoid spatial regime boundaries. Using 23 yr of data for the lek locations of Greater Prairie-Chicken (Tympanuchus cupido; GPC) in a remnant grassland ecosystem, we demonstrate how mapping changes in the boundaries between grassland and woodland spatial regimes provide a spatially explicit early warning signal for habitat loss for an iconic and vulnerable grassland-obligate known to be highly sensitive to woody plant encroachment. We tested whether a newly proposed metric for the quantification of spatial regimes captured well-known responses of GPC to woody plant expansion into grasslands. Resource selection functions showed that the grass:woody spatial regime boundary strength explained the probability of 80% of relative lek occurrence, and GPC strongly avoided grass:woody spatial regime boundaries at broad scales. Both findings are consistent with well-known expectations derived from GPC ecology. These results provide strong evidence for vegetation-derived delineations of spatial regimes to serve as generalized signals of early warning for state transitions that have major consequences to biodiversity conservation. Mapping spatial regime boundaries over time provided interpretable early warnings of habitat loss. Woody plant regimes displaced grassland regimes starting from the edges of the study area and constricting inward. Correspondingly, the relative probability of lek occurrence constricted in space. Similarly, the temporal trajectory of spatial regime boundary strength increased over time and moved closer to the observed limit of GPC lek site usage relative to grass:woody boundary strength. These novel spatial metrics allow managers to rapidly screen for early warning signals of spatial regime shifts and adapt management practices to defend and grow habitat cores at broad scales.

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Mapping Tree Canopy Cover in Support of Proactive Prairie Grouse Conservation in Western North America

Cited by 54 publications

References 49 publications

Accounting for aboveground carbon storage in shrubland and woodland ecosystems in the Great Basin

Accounting for aboveground carbon storage in shrubland and woodland ecosystems in the Great Basin

A conservation planning tool for Greater Sage‐grouse using indices of species distribution, resilience, and resistance

Tracking spatial regimes as an early warning for a species of conservation concern

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