Informing the Habitat Assessment Framework Process—An Assessment to Understand Habitat Patch Composition and Configuration Requirements for Range-Wide Sage-Grouse Persistence

For the Bureau to assess the suitability of habitat patches for sage-grouse and help maintain healthy sage-grouse populations, the Bureau of Land Management requires scientifically based, quantifiable estimates of habitat patch composition and configuration requirements for sage-grouse across the species’ range. These estimates are required by the Bureau of Land Management when implementing the Sage-grouse Habitat Assessment Framework (HAF) 2.0. To address these information needs, USGS scientists are developing multiple products to directly inform the HAF process, including persistence models to identify important patch characteristics affecting lek persistence, thresholds of patch characteristics at which persistence is likely (including potential regional variation), and maps and datasets of patch metrics that could be used for HAF assessments, at appropriate scales.