Projects By Status: In Progress

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.

Training for states and towns to collaboratively increase resiliency and improve standards for culverts and road stream crossings to future floods while restoring aquatic connectivity.

The impact of agricultural drainage and resulting non-point source nutrient export on water quality is a growing concern across the entire Prairie Pothole Region.

Of the vital rates that determine recruitment, breeding propensity (i.e., the proportion of females that lay at least one egg) and nest success appear to have the greatest influence, but breeding propensity remains poorly studied.

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

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

A decline in habitat quality and quantity in the southern Great Plains is a driving factor in population declines of endemic grassland birds, insects, and native plants.

This project will be conducted in 6 phases:

Phase 1: Formulation - Compile a list of all interested stakeholders; work with Foundations of Success facilitators to provide background information, project goals, expectations and deliverables in preparation for Phase 2.

The Rio Grande/Río Bravo is the lifeline of the region, including the Chihuahuan Desert, supplying drinking water for more than 6 million people, including numerous Native American tribes, and irrigating about 2 million acres of land.

We propose to empirically characterize hydrology/fish-production relationships for different ecological groups of fishes living in the Red River and associated reservoir habitats by: 1. Correlating historic hydrologic data with catch curve residuals, and 2.

The Upper Midwest and Great Lakes (UMGL) and the Eastern Tallgrass Prairie & Big Rivers (ETP) Landscape Conservation Cooperatives (LCCs) are convening State Wildlife Action Plan Coordinators in the Midwest states of Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Ohio, and Wisconsin t

Improved Gulf Hypoxia Planning Tool: Landscape scale planning tools focus conservation priorities through a series of region-specific lenses.

Estimates of nutrient loading to the Gulf of Mexico indicate that nine states within the Mississippi River Basin are responsible for approximately 75% of all nitrogen and phosphorus delivered to the Gulf.

This project will use existing climate change scenarios and sea-level rise projections to create a Climate Change Adaptation Plan in collaboration with the Chitimacha Tribe of Louisiana.

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 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

Project 1. Coordinated monitoring of fire impacts throughout the South Atlantic

A strategy has been suggested for developing regionally specific Rapid Assessment Methods (RAMs) to evaluate wildlife-related issues associated with wind development at specific sites.

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.

The goal of the project is to determine biodiversity impacts of land restoration associated with clean and renewable energy development; specifically, natural gas production through anaerobic digestion of hog manure and native plant material, as being forwarded by Roeslein Alternative Energy (RAE

FWS and USGS will collaborate to improve the decision science foundation of the South Atlantic Conservation Blueprint. The Blueprint prioritizes areas for shared conservation action in the South Atlantic geography.

Urban communities are increasingly shaping the conservation future of the South Atlantic. Major metropolitan areas present both direct threats, such as loss habitat and open space, and indirect threats, such as creating barriers to connectivity.

This proposal outlines a collaborative regional effort to build a South Atlantic Ecosystem Model that will facilitate the connection of inland and coastal marine management strategies and actions to potential resource and economic impacts in estuarine and coastal marine environments, with the fol

The Desert Landscape Conservation Cooperative (Desert LCC) is designing a process that will:

Capacity to prioritize barrier removals in the Great Lakes basin is currently limited by lack of data on the passability of road crossings and dams for both unwanted invasive species and desirable native migratory fishes.

Control of invasive sea lamprey recruitment from tributary streams is a major management objective in the Great Lakes, and benefits from barriers that prevent access to spawning habitat.

Habitat fragmentation is considered to be a leading cause that is responsible for the long-term population declines of Northern Bobwhites.

Flow alteration -- from new and existing water supply projects, increased urbanization, and drought conditions -- is a pervasive threat to aquatic wildlife throughout the Gulf Coast Prairie region.

Alligator Gar, *Atractosteus spatula*, is an iconic species native to lowland floodplain river systems where they play an important role as top predators and by linking landscapes through their movement. Alligator Gar is also an important native fisheries species in the Trinity River.

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

This project will result in development of an information management and delivery system to coordinate science communication platforms and to build a catalog inside of the USGS ScienceBase data and information management platform.

The multi-LCC Mississippi River Basin/Gulf Hypoxia Initiative is a joint effort to find the nexus of water quality, wildlife, and people in the Mississippi River Basin.

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

The US FWS Patoka River National Wildlife Refuge is associated with a Lower Wabash River LCD team exploring voluntary conservation on public and private lands in a region with fairly cohesive ecology, issues and practices in mixed habitat types of uplands, wetlands and floodplain forest in the ma

Alaska’s freshwater resources, vitally important for salmon and other species, are vulnerable to changes resulting from climate change.

This project is focused on establishing a statewide framework to improve the hydrography mapping and stewardship in Alaska.

Water temperature is one of the most significant factors in the health of stream ecosystems.

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.

This project supports the technical development of a mobile application for identifying and reporting invasive plant species in Alaska.

Concern about invasive species in Alaska is a growing concern, attracting attention from land managers, politicians and the public.

Research on coastal change in Western Alaska has increased rapidly in recent years, making it challenging to track existing projects, understand their cumulative insights, gauge remaining research gaps, and prioritize future research.

Viable sockeye salmon populations are critical to the economy, culture, and freshwater ecosystems of Bristol Bay in Western Alaska, and it is unclear how populations might respond to warming temperatures during the critical life history stages of spawning and embryo incubation.

The Museum of Northern Arizona will leverage tools previously developed through its Springs Stewardship Initiative to help resource managers in the southwestern U.S.

Northern Arizona University will study how forest treatment practices and climate change may impact water balance across the Kaibab Plateau and critical habitats in lower elevations of the Grand Canyon.

The primary goals of this proposed project are to help identify and prioritize threats to endangered mussels and to determine whether existing environmental concentrations of ammonia, copper, and major ions in sediment pore-water are contributing to the decline of native mussel populations, as in

Great Lakes coastal wetlands provide critical habitat for many species of birds, mammals, reptiles, and amphibians, and provide essential spawning and nursery habitat for many fish species of ecologic and economic importance.

By collaborating with water managers and combining climate modeling and paleoclimate methods, the project team will incorporate prediction tools to assess risk of extreme wet/dry climate conditions for the next 10-15 years (i.e. decadal prediction).