The focus of the first Midwest Urban Conservation Workshop was to understand the challenges stakeholders are facing, define the needs for collaboration and best management practices, establish a platform for conversation focusing on learning from each other and creating an opportunity for collabo
Projects By Status: Completed
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.
Rocky Mountain Research Station scientists initiated a study in the 1990s on avian distribution and habitat associations within the Sky Islands.
Freshwater systems are critically imperiled and continue to be threatened by human encroachment and water development.
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
Texas Tech University will conduct quantitative and predictive analysis of the connectivity of isolated desert "wetlands", that include tinajas, the name for eroded pools in bedrock, for 20 wildlife species over the Sonoran desert ecoregion.
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 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.
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.
Projected water deficits mean that land and water managers must be proactive in their management of rivers and shallow aquifers, if they want to maintain the ecosystems dependent upon them.
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.
A strong data foundation is needed to inform science-based decisions for fisheries management at a watershed level.
Provide decision support through develpoment of models and DSTs that inform conservation delivery for easements and habitat management within the LCA that address population and habitat objectives for surrogate species.
The Grassland, Shrubland, Desert Program of the U.S.
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.
In February 2014, taking action to implement a 2012 U.S.-Mexico agreement on the Colorado River known as Minute 319, International Boundary and Water Commissioners (IBWC) Edward Drusina and Roberto Fernando Salmon Castelo announced plans to move forward with a one-time pulse flow (a release of wa
Creating a detailed vegetation classification and digital map for Squaw Creek National Wildlife Refuge to use for habitat management decisions and tracking land use changes.
Overgrazing and fire suppression have led to a loss of deep soils and vegetative cover in the 420,000 acre Alamosa Creek watershed in southwestern New Mexico.
The efficiency and effectiveness of aerial photography by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Midwest Aviation Program has been improved with upgraded components for the Applanix DSS 439 Camera System, including a 60 millimeter lens and gyro-stabilization mount. Both are installed and in use.
Our approach will include sampling a wide range of habitats and environmental conditions throughout the middle and lower Pecos River basin, across an 18 month time-span to account for seasonal and phenological events.
Researchers with U.S.
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.
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
University of Arizona will conduct an ecosystem conservation assessment for the lower San Pedro (LSP) watershed.
Hardware to collect infrared digital imagery during periods of peak vegetative growth to develop a cover map for the Mississippi River floodplain from Minneapolis, Minn. to the Ohio River confluence.
The substantially natural hydrography of the upper Gila River supports one of the highest levels of aquatic and riparian biodiversity in the region, including the largest complement of native fishes and some of the best remaining riparian habitat in the lower Colorado River Basin.
To better understand the motivations of landowners, specifically farmers, to participate in programs that improve wildlife habitat and water quality in the region. The LCC is working with U.S. Geological Survey to evaluate factors influencing landowners’ enrollment in U.S.
Southern Nevada Water Authority will add new modeling and analytical capabilities to tools developed as part of a previous WaterSMART Climate Analysis Tools Grant that assessed impacts of climate change on water quality and sediment transport in Lake Mead.
Seven Landscape Conservation Cooperatives (LCCs) are working together to identify key scientific uncertainties associated with design and management of a sustainable ecosystem/floodplain landscape that provides multiple benefits for agricultural productivity, water quality, and wildlife conservat
Museum of Northern Arizona, Inc. will leverage tools previously developed by the Springs Stewardship Initiative to help resource managers in the southwestern U.S.
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.
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.
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.
Despite the lack of surface flows, the Colorado River riparian corridor in Mexico has proven to be ecologically resilient. Floods in the 1980s and 90s in the region brought back large swaths of native riparian habitat, which still persist today in some areas along the river.
Accurate estimation of evapotranspiration (ET) is essential for assessments of water balance and hydrologic responses to forest restoration treatments in uplands adjacent to the Desert LCC.
A combination of citizen science inventories and expert assessments will be used to collect critical baseline information on known spring and seep resources using the Spring Ecosystem Inventory and Assessment Protocols and adapting them as needed for the unique arid Sky Island ecosystems.
Perennial streams in the Desert LCC support riparian trees such as cottonwood (Populus spp) and box elder (Acer negundo) that are critical components of habitat for riparian obligate birds and other wildlife species (Webb et al. 2007).
Riparian vegetation provides crucial habitat for wildlife and is a high conservation priority for land managers throughout the Southwest but a central scientific challenge is to generate quantitative predictions of how changes in water availability will affect the amount and quality of riparian w
The Desert LCC identified the need for a Protected Areas spatial database that showed land ownership, management designations and conservation status for lands in the United States and Mexico.
Riparian ecosystems are among the most productive and diverse ecosystems in desert biomes. In the Sonoran, Chihuahuan, and Mojave deserts of the United States and Mexico, riparian ecosystems support regional biodiversity and provide many ecosystem services to human communities.
The Navajo Nation covers over 70,000 km2 in the Four Corners area of Utah, Arizona and New Mexico.
The project objective is to transfer to California a previously developed prioritization framework that combines intraspecific genetic and morphological variation with traditionally used indices of biodiversity, and test its general utility for conservation prioritization.
Rainwater Harvesting and Stormwater Research is a priority research area identified by the Arizona Governor's Blue Ribbon Panel on Water Sustainability, which recommended that universities take the lead to identify regulatory barriers, cost and benefits, water quality issues and avenues for incre
This project supports a collaborative, multi-stakeholder effort led by the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) to develop a largescale vulnerability assessment and associated adaptation strategies for focal resources of the Sierra Nevada.
In practice, there are a number of challenges associated with formal consideration of the environment in water planning in large parts of the Desert LCC region.
To be successful, natural resource managers need to synthesize diverse information on the effects of management actions, climate change and other stressors on wildlife populations at appropriate scales.
Freshwater fishes are globally among the most imperiled major biodiversity groups and they are especially endangered in the North American deserts of the vast binational Desert LCC.
Phase 1 (2013): The Northern California Coastal Forest ecoregion is dominated by coast redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) covering 13,300 km2 from just north of the California-Oregon border to Santa Cruz County, California, extending ~60 km inland.
In the desert southwest biodiversity is facing a changing landscape due to human population growth, expansion of energy development, and from the persistent effects of climate change among other threats.