Restoration handbook for sagebrush steppe ecosystems with emphasis on greater sage-grouse habitat—Part 1. Concepts for understanding and applying restoration

Pyke, David A.; Chambers, Jeanne C.; Pellant, Mike; Knick, Steven T.; Miller, Richard F.; Beck, Jeffrey L.; Doescher, Paul S.; Schupp, Eugene W.; Roundy, Bruce A.; Brunson, Mark W.; McIver, James D.

doi:10.3133/cir1416

Cited by 36 publications

(39 citation statements)

References 45 publications

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“…Our data for management restoration treatments are based on opportunistic overlap; however, our results are consistent with studies examining restoration success (Pyke et al. , , Knutson et al. , Shriver et al.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 89%

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Fire and development influences on sagebrush community plant groups across a climate gradient in northern Nevada

et al. 2019

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The sagebrush biome covers much of the western United States yet is at risk from ongoing disturbances. Physical disturbances such as fire often overcome the resistance of sagebrush communities to biological disturbances such as invasion by non‐native species, but the impact of burn severity or combined disturbance types on sagebrush community composition remains unclear. We examined the relationship between native functional groups and non‐native annual grass cover to the number of fires, burn severity, anthropogenic development, and vegetation treatments in northern Nevada, USA. We used Bureau of Land Management vegetation monitoring plots and existing climate, fire, and vegetation treatment databases to explore relationships using beta regression. After accounting for mean annual precipitation and temperature, and elevation, we quantified functional group mean cover related to levels of burn severity, numbers of fires, development, and vegetation treatments. Native herbaceous (grass and forb) groups were resilient to fire, but fire caused large declines in shrub and sagebrush cover. Non‐native annual grass cover was associated with higher burn severity and the first fire at a site. We did not find evidence that post‐fire restoration treatments were associated with increased native cover or decreased non‐native cover. However, shrub control and soil disturbing treatments (discing and chaining) were associated with decreased native perennial grass cover and increased non‐native annual grass cover. Functional groups displayed varying patterns related to anthropogenic development and fire. For example, development had a larger impact on non‐native cover at lower levels of burn severity, whereas forbs increased following fire only at lower levels of development. Although in some cases sagebrush communities showed resilience to disturbance, our results showed resistance to invasion by non‐native annual grasses can be overcome by combinations of disturbances at lower levels or by severe events.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 89%

“…, Pyke et al. , but see Davies and Bates ). Restoration is usually more successful at wetter, cooler sites (Davies and Bates ) and associated with limited non‐native cover, whereas low‐elevation sites and sagebrush seedings tend to have limited success (Knutson et al.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 96%

Fire and development influences on sagebrush community plant groups across a climate gradient in northern Nevada

et al. 2019

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“…Understanding the effects of landscape gradients on sagebrush canopy growth is essential as practitioners and land managers navigate a complex decision-making process that must leverage rehabilitation goals against available resources and ecological status of the areas before and after fire (for more explicit descriptions of the planning process and potential limitations, see Pyke et al 2015aPyke et al , b, 2017. The potential to predict areas of greater canopy structure growth based on soil properties has important implications for understanding changing ecological landscapes in semi-arid regions and for management given the availability of soil taxonomic maps.…”

Section: Study Implications and Future Considerationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Soil characteristics are associated with gradients of big sagebrush canopy structure after disturbance

et al. 2019

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Reestablishing shrub canopy cover after disturbance in semi‐arid ecosystems, such as sagebrush steppe, is essential to provide wildlife habitat and restore ecosystem functioning. While several studies have explored the effects of landscape and climate factors on the success or failure of sagebrush seeding, the influence of soil properties on gradients of shrub canopy structure in successfully seeded areas remains largely unexplored. In this study, we evaluated associations between soil properties and gradients in sagebrush canopy structure in stands that had successfully reestablished after fire and subsequent seeding treatments. Using a dataset collected across the Great Basin, USA, of sagebrush stands that had burned and reestablished between 1986 and 2013, we tested soil depth and texture, soil surface classification, biological soil crusts plus mean historical precipitation, solar heatload, and fire history as modeling variables to explore gradients in sagebrush canopy structure growth in terms of cover, height, and density. Deeper soils were associated with greater sagebrush canopy structure development in terms of plant density and percent cover, coarser textured soils were associated with greater sagebrush cover and density, and more clayey soils were typically associated with greater height. Biological crust presence was also positively associated with enhanced sagebrush canopy growth, but adding more demographically or morphologically explicit descriptions of biocrust communities did not improve explanatory power. Increasing heatload had a negative effect on sagebrush canopy structure growth, and increased mean annual precipitation was only associated with greater sagebrush height. Given that conservation and restoration of the sagebrush steppe ecosystems has become a priority for land managers, the associations we identify between gradients in post‐fire sagebrush canopy structure growth and field‐identifiable soil characteristics may improve planning of land treatments for sagebrush restoration and the understanding of semi‐arid ecosystem functioning and post‐disturbance dynamics.

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“…Sage-grouse are located within sagebrush ecosystems and prefer big sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata) subspecies. These areas typically have hot, dry summers, and cool to cold, moist winters but also include forests at higher elevations, salt deserts in the Great Basin and Colorado Plateau, and a mixture of grasslands in the western Great Plains (Pyke et al 2015). The vegetation communities vary with changes in precipitation, temperature, soils, topographic position, and elevation (Miller et al 2011).…”

Section: Study Areasmentioning

confidence: 99%

Designing multi‐scale hierarchical monitoring frameworks for wildlife to support management: a sage‐grouse case study

et al. 2019

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Population monitoring is integral to the conservation and management of wildlife; yet, analyses of population demographic data rarely consider processes occurring across spatial scales, potentially limiting the effectiveness of adaptive management. Therefore, we developed a method to identify hierarchical levels of organization (i.e., populations) to define multiple spatial scales, specifically intended to help guide appropriate conservation and management actions. This approach can support mobile species with high site fidelity where surveys occur on birthing/breeding grounds or migratory stopovers. Our approach used a graph‐based clustering algorithm (Spatial K'luster Analysis by Tree Edge Removal) that explicitly included habitat selection information at multiple scales and further refined with constraint‐based rules. We applied these concepts to greater sage‐grouse leks (breeding grounds), a species of conservation concern, in two different ecological contexts (Nevada and Wyoming, USA). The constraint‐based rules accounted for inter‐lek movement distances based on literature and field studies in Nevada from 2012 to 2016, included methods to support a spatially balanced monitoring design, and identified barriers to movements among leks based on resistance surfaces. We evaluated the performance of our hierarchical clusters in Nevada using independent data from radio‐marked sage‐grouse, and we found the finest‐scaled cluster level captured ~90% of sage‐grouse movements and mid‐level scales captured ~97–99% of movements. We expected comparable performance for Wyoming, where we lacked radio‐marked sage‐grouse for an evaluation, because genetic studies estimate similar dispersal distances to our ~15 km inter‐lek movement distance in Nevada. For sage‐grouse and other mobile species with high site fidelity, our approach to defining these frameworks could prove valuable for conservation and management applications, such as improving estimation of scale‐dependent population trends and guiding the prescription of management actions at spatial scales that align with identified threats. Specific to sage‐grouse, our analysis sets the stage for designing a monitoring framework that relies on comparison of short‐ and long‐term population trends across our defined spatial scales and identifies and disentangles factors driving local (e.g., habitat quality) and regional (e.g., climate) population changes, thereby supporting scale‐dependent management and research needs for adaptive management practices.

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Restoration handbook for sagebrush steppe ecosystems with emphasis on greater sage-grouse habitat—Part 1. Concepts for understanding and applying restoration

Cited by 36 publications

References 45 publications

Fire and development influences on sagebrush community plant groups across a climate gradient in northern Nevada

Fire and development influences on sagebrush community plant groups across a climate gradient in northern Nevada

Soil characteristics are associated with gradients of big sagebrush canopy structure after disturbance

Designing multi‐scale hierarchical monitoring frameworks for wildlife to support management: a sage‐grouse case study

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