Projects By Category: Monitoring

Streams, rivers, and lakes of the Kodiak Archipelago, Alaska, provide essential spawning and rearing habitat for millions of Pacific salmon collectively regarded as a foundation of the regional ecosystem and economy.

One of the major challenges in understanding changes in coastal processes in western Alaska is the lack of measured ocean data in the region.

Permafrost thaw can be a major driver of landscape change.

Water temperature in lakes and lagoons plays a key role in hydrology, water quality, and habitat suitability for aquatic organisms.

Water temperature influences all biological and physicochemical interactions within aquaticsystems. Water temperature monitoring is an essential part of lake management capable of providing early warning signs of climate change using straight-forward, low-cost techniques.

Climate change is likely to alter snow patterns and characteristics, impacting vegetation, hydrology, permafrost condition, wildlife, and the Alaskans who depend on these resources.

HaleNet, the climate network on Haleakalā, Maui, is unique in Hawai‘i for its coverage of highly diverse environments, range different climate variables monitored, high temporal resolution, and longterm record.

In the tropics, ample freshwater is the primary resource supporting thriving human and ecological communities. In the Pacific Islands, many watersheds are threatened by climate change, urban encroachment, and invasion by water-demanding exotic plant species like strawberry guava (SG).

Traditional Ecological Knowledge, or TEK, is “a cumulative body of knowledge, practice and belief, evolving by adaptive processes and handed down through generations by cultural transmission, about the relationships of living beings (including humans) with one another and with their environments.

This project has three objectives: (1) evaluate the abilitiy of dual acoustic-ultrasonic recorders to capture nocturnal calls of birds and bats at wind power sites; (2) relate nocturnal calls to results of facility searches at operational wind farms: (3) evaluate whether call activitiy varies in

In-person workshops will be conducted to bring the results from the USGS Program on Coastal Ecosystems Response to Climate Change's study on projected climate change effects on coastal environments (funded by NPLCC and NW CSC) to managers in their communities.

The goal of this project is to develop a detailed national sampling frame for bat monitoring at various spatial scales similar to the recently designed Amphibian and Reptile Monitoring Initiative, which will allow biologists and managers to assess the status of North American bats.

The LCC Performance Measures Project is intended to: Follow the direction of the LCC Performance Measures Working Group; Assess the needs of individual LCCs specific to Performance Measures (PM); Assess the needs of the LCC network specific to PM; Review PM frameworks from natural resource and so

The Canadian portion of the Crown of the Continent (CCoC) ecosystem has been identified as crucial for wolverines north of the US border to rescue or supply individuals and genes through dispersal to the highly fragmented population in the northern US Rocky Mountains.

This project will focus on analysis of 10 years of GPS telemetry data for 60 grizzly bears across the threatened and fragmented trans-border grizzly bear subpopulations in the Cabinet, Yaak, Purcell, and Selkirk Mountain (Proctor et al.

Within the five states of its range (Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, New Mexico, and Colorado), the lesser prairie-chicken (Tympanuchus pallidicinctus, LEPC) remains present on sand sagebrush (Artemesia filifolia), mixed- and short- grass prairies of western Kansas and eastern Colorado, through portions

Greater sage-grouse genetic connectivity is essential to the species persistence across the Great Northern landscape; without such connectivity the greater sage-grouse may suffer the same fate as many other related species of grouse, which disappeared from the middle and eastern portion of the Un

The goal of this study is to use eDNA as a cost effective tool for documenting the occurrence and distribution of ESA-listed spring-chinook (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha) throughout the Okanogan and Methow watersheds in an effort to map habitat use and connectivity.

Proposed work will monitor for five years vegetation, fuels, wildlife, insects, and weather at 10 Sagebrush Steppe Treatment Evaluation Project (SageSTEP) sites, all of which have been treated to reduce either juniper encroachment (woodland sites) or cheatgrass invasion (sagebrush/cheatgrass site

FY2013
Pion (Pinus spp.) and juniper (Juniperus spp.) (PJ) currently occupy approximately 19 million hectars in the Intermountain West. Prior to 1860, approximately 66% of what is now woodland occurred as sagebrush plant communities.

This watershed scale project:

Rocky Mountain Research Station scientists initiated a study in the 1990s on avian distribution and habitat associations within the Sky Islands.

There is a need to understand how alteration of physical processes on the Rio Grande River have impacted aquatic biota and their habitats, and a need to predict potential future effects of climate change on biotic resources in order to prescribe research and management activities that will enhanc

Assessing the vulnerability of species or ecosystems to climate change and formulating appropriate management responses requires predictions of the exposure and sensitivity of the species or ecosystems to projected changes.

Topock Marsh is a large wetland adjacent to the Colorado River and main feature of Havasu National Wildlife Refuge (Havasu NWR) in southern Arizona. In 2010, U.S.

Sediment and nutrient runoff contributes to loss of agricultural productivity, degradation of local streams, and hypoxia in the Gulf of Mexico. The North Fork Maquoketa Basin has been identified as a major contributor of sediment and nutrients.

In FY12, hydrogeomorphic methodology was being applied along 670 miles of the Missouri River from Decatur, Nebraska to St. Louis, Missouri.

FY2013
Cheatgrass die-offs are unexplained instances of stand failure observed in areas of Nevada and Utah, where cheatgrass fails to grow even though it has been a dominant component of plant communities in the past. The goals of this project are to:

The Navajo Nation covers over 70,000 km2 in the Four Corners area of Utah, Arizona and New Mexico.

University of California Riverside’s Center for Conservation Biology will create a sustainable resource monitoring framework that will provide empirical data identifying if and how climate change is changing the composition and vitality of Joshua Tree National Park.

The USGS and Arctic National Wildlife Refuge Staff operate and maintain a streamgage at Hulahula River near Kaktovik, Alaska.

The Arctic LCC has partnered with USGS to complete a feasibility study that will review current and past efforts to monitor thermokarst at broad spatial and temporal scales, compare relevance, cost, and strengths/weaknesses of the various approaches and techniques.

BioMap Alaska is a citizen science observation and information management tool. BioMap Alaska engages residents of coastal communities to voluntarily report observations and local knowledge of marine life.

This project developed a foundation for monitoring environmental change by identifying where and what to monitor in order to evaluate climate-change impacts.

This project designed a monitoring program and protocol to detect the effects of climate change on tidal marsh bird population abundance and distribution.

If current trends continue, Brooks Range glaciers will disappear over the next century, affecting stream flow regimes, riparian areas, and deltas. In turn, changes in stream habitat will impact local fisheries and the subsistence users who depend on them.

The occurrence of Potentially Toxic Elements (PTEs) in the Arctic and sub-Arctic is of major concern for the sensitive ecosystems and the humans and aquatic flora and fauna in this region.

The Appalachian LCC is currently engaged in an effort to develop a draft regional conservation plan for the Cooperative using an interactive and iterative spatial prioritization framework.

In 2010, FWS provided funds, as a contribution to Arctic LCC activities, to support ongoing stream gaging of the Canning and Tamayariak rivers.

LCC funding for this project helped maintain a network of hydrology monitoring sites in a representative watershed of the Arctic Coastal Plain.

The Anaktuvuk River Fire was the largest, highest-severity wildfire recorded on Alaska’s North Slope since records began in 1956.