Terrestrial Ecosystems and Restoration

Land managers face tremendous challenges in the future as drought and climate change alter the abundance, distribution, and interactions of plant species. These challenges will be especially daunting in the southwestern US, which is already experiencing elevated temperatures and prolonged droughts, resulting in reduced soil moisture in an already water-limited environment.

The Southwest Biological Science Center (SBSC) conducts and provides scientific information as part of our mission and Federal Trust Responsibility to strengthen relationships and build partnerships with sovereign tribal nations. Here, we highlight a few examples of projects with tribal partners.

In drylands, short-term extreme droughts can have profound ecosystem effects, depending on the timing (seasonality) of drought and the sensitivities of the dominant plants and plant functional types. Past work suggests that cool season drought may disproportionately impact regionally important grass and shrub species. In this study, we are examining the impacts of extreme seasonal drought on...

In drylands, chronic reductions in water availability (press-drought) through reduced precipitation and increased temperatures may have profound ecosystem effects, depending on the sensitivities of the dominant plants and plant functional types. In this study, we are examining the impacts of moderate, but long-term chronic drought using a network of 40 drought shelters on the Colorado Plateau...

Renewable energy development is expanding in southwestern deserts, including in Arizona. Energy developers look to resource management agencies to provide siting guidance on public lands where there might be conflicts with wildlife. Often, agency guidance considers species of conservation concern and economic importance, but information on comprehensive vertebrate biodiversity has been hard to...

What is reclamation? Reclamation means to assist in the repair or recovery of highly disturbed or degraded ecosystems to benefit native plants and animals by setting sites on a trajectory towards functioning habitats and ecological communities that are similar to surrounding, naturally occurring environments. During this process, the impacts of oil and gas development are minimized.

Approximately 35% of the US and approximately 82% of DOI lands are “drylands” found throughout the western US. These lands contain oil, gas, oil shale, shale oil, and tar sand deposits and the exploration for and extraction of these resources has resulted in hundreds of thousands of operating and abandoned wells across the West. These arid and semi-arid lands have unique soil and plant communities...

The Island Night Lizard ( Xantusia riversiana ) was removed from the Federal list of "Threatened" species in May 2014. This rare and unique species represents an ancient lineage whose members are now sparsely distributed across parts of the Southwest North America, south through Mexico to the New World Tropics.

In an era of rapid land use changes and shifting climates, it is imperative that land managers and policymakers have actionable and current information available for decision processes. In this work, we seek to meet these needs through new data products and decision support tools built on digital soil mapping, new vegetation cover maps, agency inventory and monitoring data sets, and cutting-edge...

Grand Canyon National Park is a hotspot for bat diversity. Twenty-two bat species have been documented in the Park, more than any other national park unit.

The saguaro cactus ( Carnegiea gigantea ) is a keystone species that grows only in the Sonoran Desert of northern Mexico and the southwestern United States. The USGS’ Southwest Biological Science Center is working to better understand the species’ biological features, its role as a keystone species that supports greater than 100 other plant and animal species, and its responses to climate change...

Did you know that moths can be pollinators? Even more amazing is that Joshua trees, the scraggly icons of the Mojave Desert, require a single moth species to ensure fertile seed production. The association between the Joshua tree and its pollinating moth is a rare example of an obligate mutualism, which means that the species are entirely dependent upon each other. Joshua trees depend on the moth...