Habitat Management

Managing the world’s freshwater ecosystems including lakes, rivers, and springs, and the water they supply to meet environmental and societal needs in a changing climate is one of the biggest challenges for the 21st century.

Alaska is simultaneously a landscape of extremes requiring specialized adaptations by plants and animals to survive the winters and a landscape of abundance that supports breeding birds each summer from as far away as Africa. Terrestrial Alaska also supports iconic species such as caribou and muskoxen whose population dynamics, predator/prey relationships and habitat ecology are researched by USGS...

The Gulf Coast Joint Venture (GCJV) was established in 1988 as a result of the North American Waterfowl Management Plan, which espouses the restoration of continental waterfowl populations through conservation partnerships in priority habitat regions. Since that time GCJV partners have expanded their mission and purpose to include the provision of habitat to support other priority bird species...

Resource management decisions need to be informed by up-to-date, quality science and data. However there is sometimes an overwhelming number of scientific publications for managers to consider in their decisions. This project provides concise summaries of recent, peer-reviewed science and data products about different resources and topics of management concern, integrated into a searchable tool.

USGS researchers, in collaboration with the Wyoming Landscape Conservation Initiative and other partners, are developing a statistically based prioritization tool that will aid agencies in their management decisions.

Drylands (sometimes called ‘deserts’ or ‘arid and semi-arid' ecosystems) are defined by water scarcity. Understanding how land-use activities may effect dryland ecosystems and dryland ecological processes is a high priority for land conservation and management. Grazing by domestic livestock (typically cattle but also sheep and goats) is the most widespread land-use in drylands globally and a large...

USGS scientists are contributing to the development of the Western Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies Sagebrush Conservation Strategy, a strategy intended to provide guidance so that efforts to conserve the iconic greater sage-grouse can be expanded to the entire sagebrush biome to benefit the people and wildlife that depend on it.

USGS scientists are developing multiple products to directly inform the Bureau of Land Management's Sage-grouse Habitat Assessment Framework process.

Recent popular news has implied that Weed-Suppressive Bacteria (WSB) holds promise for cheatgrass control, yet a lack of peer-reviewed research exists to support this claim. USGS researchers stepped up to the challenge of objectively and rigorously evaluating the effectiveness of WSB for controlling exotic annual grasses, such as Cheatgrass and Medusahead, while also examining its impact on native...

USGS is collaborating with Mississippi State University to investigate the effects of fire on Gulf of Mexico marshes. The project will include mapping high marsh and monitoring black rail, yellow rail, and mottled duck responses to prescribed fire application.

USGS and Colorado State University researchers are conducting analyses and predictions of sagebrush recovery in the Great Basin and Wyoming and assess the role of weather, soils, and reseeding treatments.

Prioritizing landscapes for sage-grouse habitat conservation is complicated by long-term changes in climate.