Integrated Landscape Monitoring Great Basin Pilot

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Integrated Landscape MonitoringGreat Basin Pilot
Carol Schuler Forest and Rangeland Ecosystem
Science Center June 2007
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Purpose and Desired Outcomes

• To inform about the Great Basin Integrated
  Landscape Monitoring Project (GBILM)
• To gain understanding of NPS landscape monitoring
  activities and needs in the Great Basin
• To discuss how to make GBILM useful for the NPS
• Project approach and direction
• Ecosystem drivers
• Management and monitoring questions
• Example projects
• Complement ongoing NPS activities

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USGS Science Thrust

• Pilot new concepts or promote new program areas
• Integrated landscape monitoring
• Reconcile site-specific actions/events with
  landscape-scale processes and functions
• 4 pilots
• Lower Mississippi Valley
• Prairie Potholes
• Puget Sound
• Great Basin

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Integrated Landscape Monitoring

• Goal
• Reconcile site-specific actions/events with
  landscape-scale processes and functions
• Address priority natural resource management and
  policy issues at the landscape scale
• Integrated among government agencies,
  stakeholders, scientific disciplines and across
  political and jurisdictional boundaries
• Landscape spatial and temporal scales
• Monitoring collection and analysis of repeated
  observations to evaluate change

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Great Basin ILM Goal

• Develop and test integrated landscape-level
  monitoring that addresses priority management
  issues and provides capabilities to detect and
  predict landscape change.
• Understand cumulative effects of local
  actions/events
• Understand change at landscape scale
• Develop predictive capability of landscape change
• Develop or refine monitoring strategies
• Prioritize actions such as mitigation and
  restoration

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The Great Basin

• Over 111 million acres
• Five western states
• 78 public lands
• N-S Mountain ranges
• Varied elevational gradients
• Water drains inland

Blue boundary GB boundary Orange boundary GB
with 50 m buffer
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Why Focus on The Great Basin?

• Species of concern (e.g., sage-grouse, pygmy
  rabbit, Brewers sparrow, Virgin River chub)
• 54 of remaining sagebrush
• Diverse accelerating stressors
• Urban expansion
• Limited water supply
• Spread of invasive species
• Altered fire cycle

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GBILM - Phased Approach

• Test approach to understanding change at the
  landscape scale
• Established interdisciplinary team
• USGS, NPS (Marie Denn, Angie Evenden, Debra
  Hughson), BLM, FWS, and EPA
• Develop project scope
• Limited resources
• Mine, evaluate, and analyze existing data
• Website (myUSGS.gov)

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Phased Approach

• Develop conceptual models
• Identify and prioritize ecosystem drivers
• Develop and prioritize management questions
• Develop pilot projects to address management
  questions
• Mine, compile, and analyze existing data
• Develop tools to analyze data
• at multiple scales
• Identify data gaps
• Predict and monitor changes

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Conceptual Models Tools for Understanding

• Describes key ecological components and
  relationships between them
• Used for planning, communicating, and
  prioritizing
• GBILM Models
• Characterize landscape function
• Identify ecological processes
• Develop/prioritize management issues
• Inform monitoring strategy development
• Identify gaps in understanding of ecosystem
  
• function

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Framework Model
Systems Model Dry System
Control Model Sagebrush steppe
Stressor Model Fire/Invasives Interactions
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Ecosystem Drivers

• Ecosystem drivers are any natural or
  human-induced factor that directly or indirectly
  causes a change in an ecosystem.
• Carpenter et al., 2006

Erosion
Altered Flow Regime
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Drivers of Change
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Three Priority Drivers

• Water Extraction (Wet System)
• Fire and Invasive Species Interaction (Dry
  System)
• Land Treatments (Dry System)

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Management Questions

• Why develop management questions?
• Foundation for landscape monitoring program
• Reflect real-life needs of management partners
• Bring focus and relevance to our work
• Provide basis for evaluating interactions among
  management actions, environmental factors, and
  landscape change

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Project Development

• Develop focused projects to address questions
• Data mining and evaluation
• Identify data gaps
• Data analysis to assess status and trends, and
  predict change
• Identify and communicate how results can inform
  management
• Identify research needs
• Develop or refine monitoring strategies

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Example 1 Water Extraction Project

• Management Questions
• How will increased water extraction impact
  phreatophytes?
• Can phreatophytic communities act as indicators
  of impacted groundwater systems?
• Pilot Project
• Identify locations of phreatophytic communities
  and correlate with aquifer flow system
  conditions.
• Identify areas at risk from increased water
  withdrawals.

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Water Extraction Project

• Pilot Project Tasks
• Map phreatophytic land cover by categorizing
  evapotranspiration as a function of critical
  characteristics
• Geomorphology, vegetation species composition,
  elevation, hydrology
• Map groundwater change over time
• Evaluate change over time to phreatophytic land
  cover
• Applicability to Management Questions
• Provides assessment of status and trends of
  groundwater
• Establishes dataset of phreatophyte coverage
  across Great Basin
• Identifies environmental areas of concern or
  sensitivity
• Addresses utility of phreatophytes as indicators
  of impacts to groundwater system
• Develop tools that help to predict and manage for
  the effects of
  groundwater extraction across the Great Basin

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Potential Phreatophytic Land Cover
Map scale is 11,500,000
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Example 2 Fire and Invasive Species

• Management Questions
• How should managers prioritize efforts to manage
  fire cycles with the goal of retaining and
  restoring desired plant communities?
• Pilot Project
• Use spatial patterns of fire and landscape
  characteristics to evaluate how invasive plants
  have altered fire regimes
• Create models and a sampling design to monitor
  and assess changes in fire regimes and vegetation
  over time

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Fire and Invasive Species

• Pilot Project Tasks
• Create maps of fire distributions over time in
  the Great Basin
• Evaluate hypotheses on how invasive plants have
  altered fire regimes and how these relationships
  may change in the future
• Create models and a sampling design to monitor
  and assess changes in fire regimes and vegetation
  over time
• Applicability to Management Questions
• Develop tools to monitor and predict fire regimes
  among major vegetation types
• Evaluates and predicts trends for altered fire
  regimes among major vegetation types
• Assesses vegetation types at risk to altered fire
  regimes due to invasive species, landscape
  characteristics, and climate change scenarios
• Prioritizes major vegetation types for
  suppression and mitigation actions designed to
  prevent the establishment of grass/fire cycles

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Fire and Invasive Species
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Example 3 Land Treatments

• Management Questions
• How are different land treatments influencing
  vegetation and wildlife habitats?
• How and where can land managers use land
  treatments to achieve multiple objectives,
  including maintaining and restoring wildlife
  habitat?
• Pilot Project
• Synthesis of monitoring efforts in the Great
  Basin
• Assess and predict effects of land treatments at
  various scales on wildlife
  habitat
• Initial focus on areas in Utah and the tri-states
  targeted for HLI
  funding
• Eventually expand to rest of Great Basin

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Land Treatments

• Pilot Project Tasks
• Create relational database of treatment
  information (1950 to present)
• Treatment description, monitoring information,
  spatial data, reference photos, etc.
• Develop predictive models on effects of
  treatments on wildlife habitats
• Evaluate which land treatments can be used to
  improve habitat connectivity and where they can
  be placed (in a landscape context)
• Management Application
• Establishes a common database and maps of land
  treatments across Great Basin
• Provides predictive models that estimate
  effects of land treatments on wildlife habitats,
  particularly sage grouse and other high profile
  species
• Provides information on treatment effectiveness

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Land Treatments Database
Source Five Mile Mountain Sagebrush Restoration
Project EA
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Long-term Value

• Builds understanding of ecosystem processes
• Identifies priority management issues and ensures
  research is relevant
• Can address additional management questions and
  drivers
• Fill data gaps and identify new research needs
• Informs management issues and practices at
  landscape scales
• Develops or refines long-term monitoring
  strategies
• Ultimately, provides a
• predictive capability of
• landscape change

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Discussion Topics Seeking Your Advice

• What are the collaboration opportunities between
  NPS and USGS?
• Focusing on most appropriate management
  questions?
• Addressing high priority monitoring needs?
• Making results more accessible and useful?
• Who should we communicate with to build buy-in
  and obtain input?

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