The U.S. Geological Survey is offering a funding opportunity to a CESU partner for developing tool to help understand how sagebrush vegetation dynamics are changing over space and time, naturally, from disturbances, and associated with restoration efforts. These spatial tools could directly inform decisions regarding where and when to plant sagebrush, how retore it effectively and how to manage and treat invasive annual grasses to support sage-grouse conservation and population recovery. Understanding where and when ecosystems are undergoing changes that could result in detrimental consequences to system function is paramount to implementing successful management that helps resist transitions to less desired states. Monitoring changes in vegetation components such as canopy cover of shrubs and annual grasses is central to assessing changes in ecological function. Similarly, knowing where vegetation components are stable can help target limited conservation resources more efficiently, be it for restoration, enhancing conservation effectiveness, or to more effectively implement management efforts that resist ecological transformation. Such management is critically needed within sagebrush ecosystems, which have been drastically reduced and face continuing degradation by a multitude of well-described threats. Thus, developing a biome-wide vegetation change monitoring tools to track changes (losses or gains) in functioning sagebrush ecosystem components measured through vegetation components such as sagebrush cover, connectivity, or invasive annual grasses as fine fuels, could inform BLM decisions regarding conservation and restoration efforts, and directly assist sage-grouse recovery.

To understand the effectiveness of and help guide conservation and restoration efforts, specific studies could focus on sagebrush restoration approaches in post-fire landscapes including, but not limited to: (1) planting sagebrush in previously occupied burned sage-grouse habitat, (2) measuring sagebrush regrowth in post restoration treatments, (3) evaluating the use of revegetated areas by sage-grouse, (4) predicting the success of sage-grouse using revegetated areas, (5) assessing structural and functional sagebrush connectivity across the biome, 6) identifying the anthropogenic and environmental drivers and precinct rates of change in invasive annual grass cover across the sagebrush biome, (7) assessing the effectiveness of treatments for invasive annual grasses, (8) maps of predicted rates of invasion in locations currently uninvaded areas, and/or (9) develop maps of future rates of invasion due to climate change and land-use change.

Collectively, these spatial tools should directly inform decisions regarding where and when to plant sagebrush, guiding fuel break placement and directly assisting habitat restoration and sage-grouse recovery.