Priority Landscapes
Priority Landscapes
Much of the work done by USGS WARC scientists occurs in areas of management concern, such as the Mississippi River Delta and the Florida Everglades. This place-based research focuses on understanding the biological and physical processes that influence change to inform management strategies across these large geographic areas.
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Strategic Habitat Conservation for Brown Pelican
WARC researchers partnered with managers and species experts to develop a Bayesian network model and a geospatial habitat characteristics dataset to predict the number of Brown Pelican breeding pairs on islands in the northern Gulf of Mexico.
Carbon and Water Budgeting Along Upper Estuaries: Developing Linkages to Environmental Change
WARC Researchers are studying carbon, water, and nutrient cycling in upper estuarine wetlands.
Assessing Environmental Stress in Mature Mangrove Stands: Linkages to Nutrient Loading
WARC Researchers are comparing tree and root growth, soil CO2 flux, and surface elevation change between fertilized and unfertilized mangrove forests to assess the potential impact of increased nutrient loading and to help rate mangrove stand vulnerability.
Wetland Methane Emissions: Functional-type Modeling and Data-driven Parameterization
To better understand the environmental drivers of methane emissions in tidal saltmarsh, tidal freshwater swamp forest, tidal freshwater marsh, and non-tidal freshwater marsh habitats, researchers are collecting observations of CH4 emissions and porewater concentrations at research sites representative of each of these habitats.
Wetland Carbon Working Group: Improving Methodologies and Estimates of Carbon and Greenhouse Gas Flux in Wetlands
WARC researchers are working to quantify the impacts of future climate and land use/land cover change on greenhouse gas emissions and reductions.
Wetland Carbon Cycling: Monitoring and Forecasting in a Changing World
WARC's wetland carbon cycle science team is working to improve model parameterizations and formulations and reduce forecast uncertainty in ecosystem modeling.
Understanding Impacts of Sea-Level Rise and Land Management on Critical Coastal Marsh Habitat
To ensure successful restoration of coastal wetlands, WARC researchers will measure carbon cycling processes that indicate ecosystem health and sustainability.
Understanding Avian Habitat Availability and Use After Barrier Island Restoration in Coastal Louisiana
Using ecological and geographical data, WARC researchers and their partners are analyzing avian and benthic sampling on Whiskey Island and Caminda Headland to compare pre- and post-restoration aspects of habitat occupancy, habitat availability, habitat use, and kernal density estimation.
A Multiscale Approach to Understanding Migratory Landbird Habitat Use of Functional Stopover Habitat Types and Management Efforts
USGS scientists are using a spatially-explicit Bayesian network model to predict the difference between energetic value and energetic demand for stopover habitats for migrating landbirds.
Capture-Mark-Recapture of Treefrogs at Bayou Teche National Wildlife Refuge
WARC researchers are gathering amphibian data to better understand the impact of natural disasters on treefrog populations and examine post-event processes.
Critical Coastal Habitats: Sustainability, Restoration and Forecasting
USGS WARC scientists are monitoring both the long- and short-term effects of coastal restoration efforts on ecosystem health in coastal habitats of Louisiana’s Barataria Basin.
Impacts of coastal and watershed changes on upper estuaries: causes and implications of wetland ecosystem transitions along the US Atlantic and Gulf Coasts
Estuaries and their surrounding wetlands are coastal transition zones where freshwater rivers meet tidal seawater. As sea levels rise, tidal forces move saltier water farther upstream, extending into freshwater wetland areas. Human changes to the surrounding landscape may amplify the effects of this tidal extension, impacting the resiliency and function of the upper estuarine wetlands. One visible...