Projects By Product: Methodology or Protocol

Landscape Conservation Cooperatives use a collaborative approach to identify landscape scale conservation solutions. LCCs work across jurisdictional and political boundaries to work with partners to: meet unfilled conservation needs, develop decision support tools, share data and knowledge, and facilitate and foster partnerships.

As part of a shared science strategy, LCCs coordinate closely with the National Climate Change and Wildlife Center and the eight regional Climate Science Centers.

Across the Tennessee River Basin is a collaboration within the Appalachian LCC bringing together multiple agencies and stakeholders in a joint effort to plan and deliver landscape conservation actions to protect one of the most diverse areas for aquatic species in North America.

These protocols are intended to identify key questions to be addressed, preferred approaches to addressing these questions, and issues likely to be encountered by scientists studying impacts of wind energy development on sage-grouse.

The emerging multi-LCC Ecological Places in Cities Network integrates the ecological and urban communities to guide and promote conservation practices, such as those across the monarch flyway.

This pilot project will assist the South Atlantic Landscape Conservation Cooperative (SALCC) identify issues dealing with the integration of natural and cultural resource sustainability and recommend optimal strategies for solving impacts associated with landscape stressors like climate change, i

The specific objectives of this project are to a) assemble existing mussel, water quality, and landscape level (e.g., GIS) data bases; b) conduct expert interviews, targeted mussel surveys, and habitat assessments; c) develop an integrated model to predict species occupancy and to identify specif

We will develop SMART-SLEUTH, an advanced spatially explicit modeling framework designed to augment the current SLEUTH model with sophisticated smart-growth capabilities.

Many ecosystem models, particularly those that are “mechanistic” (based on an understanding of processes), are over-parameterized (not identifiable). As a result, model parameters are selected (not estimated using an optimization technique), parameter

Managers and scientists are working together in a new project to understand and optimally manage conservation lands along the Atlanta and Mississippi Flyways to support continental populations of waterbirds.

Marshes are a critical habitat for a diversity of fauna and the ecological functioning of the coast.

The objective is to create a hydrologic foundation for detailed assessment of human and climate impacts on stream and river flows, including the impacts of hydrologic alterations on aquatic habitats.

With support from the North Atlantic LCC and Hurricane Sandy Disaster Mitigation funds the North Atlantic Aquatic Connectivity Collaborative (www.streamcontinuity.org) has developed a regional crossing assessment protocol and database, scoring systems

An urgent need exists to uniformly assess river corridors, including floodplains, and to prioritize areas for protection across the North Atlantic landscape. These are daunting tasks since there are no well-defined methods to delineate and assess scores of diverse river corridors in this region.

The North Atlantic Region of the United States and Canada boasts diverse habitats, from coasts to mountains, that support endemic and rare plant species. However, recent conservation actions and prioritization efforts in this region have neglected to include plants.

The decline in the monarch butterfly has led to it being considered for listing under the Endangered Species Act.

There are myriad barriers to aquatic connectivity beyond dams, with culverts at road crossings primary among them. UGA will lead the effort to develop a database of these non-dam blockages and model the likelihood that each is a barrier to fish movement, including mussel hosts.

The South Atlantic LCC is seeking technical assistance in evaluating the past, current, and future condition of the ecological systems of the South Atlantic.

The Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation – Natural Heritage Program (DCRDNH) and the Florida Natural Areas Inventory (FNAI) at Florida State University (collectively, Project Partners) were funded by the South Atlantic Landscape Conservation Cooperative (SALCC) in April 2015 to deve

Today more than 80% of Americans live in urban areas and by 2050 it is estimated that 70% of the world’s population will call a city ‘home’. Our cities are built on lands and river systems that connect to larger natural areas.

In June 2015, the Eastern Tallgrass Prairie and Big Rivers Landscape Conservation Cooperative (LCC) of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (USFWS) granted $80,000 to the City of St.

Oyster reefs are one of the most important environmental and economic resources within the coastal regions of the United States.  Although oyster reefs in deeper water have been mapped, the extent and condition of intertidal reefs has not been sufficiently inventoried in most states.  Understandi

The Desert Landscape Conservation Cooperative (LCC) is a partnership formed and directed by resource management entities as well as interested public and private entities in the Mojave, Sonoran, and Chihuahuan Desert and montane sky island regions of the southwestern United States and northern Me

The best hope for recovering and maintaining ecosystem function and services for the tallgrass prairie ecosystem is reconstruction.

The project incorporates Heiltsuk Traditional Knowledge and Values into ecosystem-based management planning within Strategic Landscape Reserve Design (SLRD) Landscape Units. The SLRD process seeks to identify areas to set aside from logging (harvesting) over short and long term timeframes.

This project will utilize traditional ecological knowledge to establish traditional gathering practices. Interviews will be conducted with traditional gatherers (a.k.a. subsistence) over the last two generations to get baseline data.

This project initiated the first large-scale Tribal government discussions on the relationship of scientific research and traditional knowledge in the activities of the NPLCC. The project: 1.

The project had 2 broad objectives. The first objective was to meet the needs of the Yurok Tribe in collecting and documenting TEK to inform tribal planning related to climate change impacts to culturally significant wildlife and habitats that support these species.

Central Council Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska (Central Council) assisted the Organized Village of Kasaan (OVK) in their NPLCC grant, Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Climate Change project.

Fishery and aquatic scientists often assess habitats to understand the distribution, status, threats, and relative abundance of aquatic resources. Due to the spatial nature of habitats and associated temporal changes, using traditional analytical methods is often difficult.

Vernal or seasonal pools are small, temporary bodies of water that can serve as critical habitat for frogs, salamanders, reptiles, invertebrates, and other species.

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 NCED partnership was initiated through a grant from the US Endowment for Forestry and Communities (the Endowment) to begin the development of a first-ever database covering easement data nationwide.

Foster cross-boundary integration and synthesis of landscape conservation design efforts across LCCs by 1) identifying opportunities and challenges in alternative methodologies for making individual LCC's design efforts compatible and 2) to implement a pilot effort to demonstrate these '

Accurate, high-resolution, spatially consistent information on water quality and aquatic biotas for rivers and streams is needed nationally to improve strategic coordination among agencies and the effectiveness of management and conservation efforts.

Classifying estuarine and marine habitats was identified as a priority need for a variety of purposes in the Northeast.

This project highlights the potential for LCCs to facilitate collaboration among conservation practitioners and research scientists to plan for the future.

This project highlights the potential for LCCs to facilitate collaboration among conservation practitioners and research scientists to plan for the future.

Numerous studies show that ongoing climate change will have major effects on the distribution and conservation status of much of our biodiversity.

Numerous studies show that ongoing climate change will have major effects on the distribution and conservation status of much of our biodiversity.

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

Delivering adequate water supplies to support expanding human enterprise while maintaining the necessary flow regimes to support desired riparian ecosystems and formally protected wildlife species that depend upon them is increasingly difficult in the arid western United States.

The Bird Conservancy of the Rockies will use, combine and optimize an array of remote sensing techniques to identify the most efficient process that characterizes grasslands and level of shrub component in those grasslands.

The importance of riparian ecosystems in semiarid and arid regions has generated interest in understanding processes that drive the distribution and abundance of dominant riparian plants.

As part of the Genoa National Fish Hatchery Native Freshwater Mussel Restoration Program, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service researchers utilized advanced technology in mobile rearing to evaluate how different water sources support growth and survival of young freshwater mussels.

Construct enclosures at Columbia Mine to house approximately 60 turtles (translocated animals) that were collected off of the right-of-way for sections 2 and 4 of I-69.

Despite growing interest in ecosystem services and multi-functional landscapes, there are still relatively few examples of projects that assess the delivery of multiple goods and services and evaluate how multi-objective conservation strategies can improve outcomes relative to single-objective or

Ecosystem services provided by floodplains include removal of nitrogen, phosphorus, and sediments, and sequestration of carbon. Effectiveness of floodplains in providing these services is dependent on the extent and location of connection between floodplain and river.

An Iowa State University research team in collaboration with Neal Smith National Wildlife Refuge and other partners has discovered that strategically adding a little bit of prairie back onto the agricultural landscape can result in many benefits – for water and soil quality, habitat for wildlife

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