Large-Scale Ecology

Migratory wildlife need to balance the benefits of migration and reproduction with the physiological costs. This is particularly challenging in dynamic environments like wetlands, where food levels can vary greatly from year to year. For shorebirds in the Great Basin region, saline or terminal lakes provide essential habitats during their annual life cycle. To understand how changes in hydrology...

The Conservation Efforts Database (CED) is a secure online data repository that collects, stores, and retrieves spatially explicit, spatially obscure, and non-spatial information on species and habitat conservation and management actions. The CED is designed to allow data collection from all interested partners including federal, state, local, non-government organizations, universities, private...

This web-based mapping tool, released in 2024, enables users to identify which threats are driving the current status of Sagebrush Ecological Integrity (SEI), assess if SEI and associated threats, such as invasive annual grass, conifer encroachment, human modification - have changed over time, and visualize spatial trends in SEI and threats. The Sagebrush Ecosystem Trends Module supports managers...

The CED Gunnison Sage-grouse Recovery Module was released in 2020 and is designed to capture any effort designed to benefit Gunnison sage-grouse recovery. This includes habitat restoration and any activities that contribute to the recovery of Gunnison sage-grouse, a federally listed threatened species. While similar to the Sagebrush Module, The Gunnison Sage-Grouse Recovery module contains fields...

The CED Cutthroat Module, released in 2024, is our latest module and is designed to capture any action related to the conservation, enhancement, restoration, or recovery of native, inland cutthroat trout or the habitats and waters that they depend on. The first iteration of this module was designed specifically for the Lahontan cutthroat trout. However, we are currently working on expanding the...

The CED Sagebrush Module, first released in 2014, captures any conservation effort, enhancement, restoration, plan, or action related to the sagebrush landscape or activities that benefit sagebrush-dependent species. The CED was originally focused only on greater sage-grouse and thus, most of the records currently in our database are related to this species, but, starting in 2019, we expanded our...

Land managers require clear, forward-looking information about where and how vegetation treatments may make the greatest difference for drought resilience in sagebrush and woodland ecosystems. We are using soil moisture and vegetation data from SageSTEP-- a long-term ecological study on fuel treatments in the Great Basin-- to analyze soil moisture dynamics and vegetation responses after common...

We are investigating ecosystem transitions and thresholds in the sagebrush steppe, studying factors influencing the shift from native to invaded plant communities after disturbances like fire. Our research tests region-wide resistance and resilience models, focusing on real-world recovery patterns, pre-fire conditions, plant succession, and land management treatments.

Wildfires are increasingly destroying wildlife habitat in sagebrush ( Artemisia species) ecosystems, and managers need approaches to scope the pace and degree to which post-fire restoration actions can re-create habitat in dynamic landscapes. Sagebrush recovery takes a long time, and it can be difficult to anticipate restoration outcomes over large, diverse landscapes that have experienced decades...

Increased wildfire-induced loss of sagebrush in North American shrublands are outpacing natural recovery and leading to substantial habitat loss for sagebrush-obligate species like sage-grouse. Transplanting sagebrush ( Artemisia species) is a possible strategy for revegetating burned areas, but little is known about sage-grouse or other wildlife responses to restoration strategies.

Pre-emergent herbicides applied to soil are a primary tool for reducing exotic annual grasses, such as cheatgrass, in sagebrush steppe rangelands. Effective herbicide application can allow existing perennials to grow and spread to outcompete cheatgrass, preventing reinvasion, but most perennials are slow-growing and require more years of relief from annual-grass competition than standard...

Water resources, riparian areas, and aquatic organisms are of critical importance in natural resource management. Yet, they are difficult to map, monitor, and understand in a spatially explicit and extensive manner as can be done more easily in terrestrial environments.