Resources

LCCs have produced a wealth of informational documents, reports, fact sheets, webinars and more to help support resource managers in designing and delivering conservation at landscape scales.

Native grasslands have been altered to a greater extent than any other biome in North America. The habitats and resources needed to support breeding performance of grassland birds endemic to prairie ecosystems are currently threatened by land management practices and impending climate change. Climate models for the Great Plains prairie region predict a future of hotter and drier summers with strong multiyear droughts and more frequent and severe precipitation events.

Date posted: December 11, 2022

Several final products have been submitted to U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in addition to this final report: the Master’s thesis (Mueller 2013) “Effects of temperature, salinity, and suspended solids on the early life history stages of Arkansas River shiner”; and the publication “Sampling efficiency of the Moore egg collector” (available at DOI:10.1080/02755947.2012.741557) by Worthington et al. (2013). These products present completed results for portions of the two major objectives and will not be repeated here.

Date posted: December 11, 2022

A total of 7724 fish were VIE tagged during this study, among these were 1505 Arkansas River Shiner, 5462 Plains Minnow, 757 were Peppered Chub. A total of 129 fish were recaptured after tagging and release. Twenty-one Arkansas River Shiner were recaptured at distances of 13.3- to 213.6-km upstream from the release site. Across all recaptures, including those from an earlier 2009-2010 study, the average rate of movement by Arkansas River Shiner, over a one-year period, is estimated to 0.42 km d-1 . Forty-four Plains Minnow were recaptured in this study.

Date posted: December 11, 2022

The black‐tailed prairie dog (Cynomys ludovicianus) is considered an indicator species for the short grass prairie of North America; however, this species currently occupies an estimated 2% of its original distribution. Persistent and pervasive poisoning, and sylvatic plague have fragmented the remaining populations.

Date posted: December 11, 2022

Habitat fragmentation and flow regulation are significant factors related to the decline and extinction of freshwater biota. Pelagic-broadcast spawning cyprinids require moving water and some length of unfragmented stream to complete their life cycle. However, it is unknown how discharge and habitat features interact at multiple spatial scales to alter the transport of semi-buoyant fish eggs. Our objective was to assess the relationship between downstream drift of semi-buoyant egg surrogates (gellan beads) and discharge and habitat complexity.

Date posted: December 11, 2022

The Southern Great Plains Crucial Habitat Assessment Tool (SGP CHAT) is a dynamic online mapping application created by a coalition of states at the request of the Western Governors Association's Wildlife Council to provide information on lesser prairie-chicken (LEPC) habitat (and other species in coming years) to help facilitate responsible development of natural resources. The SGP CHAT encompasses those portions of Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas that fall within the historic range of the LEPC.

Date posted: December 11, 2022

Stopover use by migrating shorebirds is affected by patch-level characteristics of habitat, but the relative influence of broadscale  factors is poorly understood. We conducted surveys of ten 10-km-radius landscapes in north-central Oklahoma from 2007 through 2009  to examine the influence of the amount and composition of wetland habitats and surrounding land cover on shorebird use during migration.

Date posted: December 11, 2022

Habitat loss and fragmentation are widely recognized as among the most important threats to global biodiversity. New analytical approaches are providing an improved ability to predict the effects of landscape change on population connectivity at vast spatial extents. This paper presents an analysis of population connectivity for three species of conservation concern [swift fox (*Vulpes velox*); lesser prairie-chicken (*Tympanuchus pallidicinctus*); massasuaga (*Sistrurus catenatus*)] across the American Great Plains region.

Date posted: December 11, 2022

Man-made water sources have been used as a management tool for wildlife, especially in arid regions, but the value of these water sources for wildlife populations is not well understood. In particular, the value of water as a conservation tool for Lesser Prairie-Chickens (*Tympanuchus pallidicinctus*) is unknown. However, this is a relevant issue due to a heightened conservation concern for the species and its occupancy of an arid landscape anticipated to experience warmer, drier springs and winters.

Date posted: December 11, 2022

We found few reports in the literature containing useful data on the nesting phenology of lesser prairie-chickens; therefore, managers must rely on short-term observations and measurements of parameters that provide some predictive insight into climate impacts on nesting ecology. Our field studies showed that prairie-chickens on nests were able to maintain relatively consistent average nest temperature of 31 °C and nest humidities of 56.8 percent whereas average external temperatures (20.3–35.0 °C) and humidities (35.2– 74.9 percent) varied widely throughout the 24 hour (hr) cycle.

Date posted: December 11, 2022

Quantitative studies focusing on the collection of semibuoyant fish eggs, which are associated with a pelagic broadcast-spawning reproductive strategy, are often conducted to evaluate reproductive success. Many of the fishes in this reproductive guild have suffered significant reductions in range and abundance. However, the efficiency of the sampling gear used to evaluate reproduction is often unknown and renders interpretation of the data from these studies difficult. Our objective was to assess the efficiency of a modified Moore egg collector (MEC) using field and laboratory trials.

Date posted: December 11, 2022

While we assessed the vulnerability of a number of different wildlife and plant species to climate change, none of those species exhibited high vulnerability to changes projected for the region and there was limited differentiation in vulnerability between the individual species. Given this shared level of vulnerability to climate change, we chose to focus our adaptation planning on grassland birds as they represent a large group with a diversity of habitat needs.

Date posted: December 11, 2022

Within grassland communities of the GPLCC one such key indicator species is the Lesser Prairie-chicken (Tympanuchus pallidinctus). Lesser Prairie-chicken range extends across the southern portion of the GPLCC area throughout Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Kansas. Lesser Prairie-chickens are a good target species because they are widely distributed across the southern GPLCC, are a species of conservation concern, have large home ranges, and are likely sensitive to anthropogenic disturbances.

Date posted: December 11, 2022

We used the United States National Grid to develop a sampling grid for monitoring programs in the Great Plains Landscape Conservation Cooperative, delineated by Bird Conservation Regions 18 and 19. Landscape Conservation Cooperatives are science based partnerships with the goal to inform and guide conservation at regional landscape levels. Developing a standardized sampling grid for a LCC is a new endeavor and is designed to reduce program costs, avoid repetition in sampling, and increase efficiency in monitoring programs.

Date posted: December 11, 2022

Playa wetlands on the west-central Great Plains of North America are vulnerable to sediment infilling from upland agriculture, putting at risk several important ecosystem services as well as essential habitats and food resources of diverse wetland-dependent biota. Climate predictions for this semi-arid area indicate reduced precipitation which may alter rates of erosion, runoff, and sedimentation of playas.

Date posted: December 11, 2022

The influence of recent climate change on the world's biota has manifested broadly, resulting in latitudinal range shifts, advancing dates of arrival of migrants and onset of breeding, and altered community relationships. Climate change elevates conservation concerns worldwide because it will likely exacerbate a broad range of identified threats to animal populations. In the past few decades, grassland birds have declined faster than other North American avifauna, largely due to habitat threats such as the intensification of agriculture.

Date posted: December 11, 2022

Genetic, demographic, and environmental processes affect natural populations synergistically, and understanding their interplay is crucial for the conservation of biodiversity. Stream fishes in metapopulations are particularly sensitive to habitat fragmentation because persistence depends on dispersal and colonization of new habitat but dispersal is constrained to stream networks. Great Plains streams are increasingly fragmented by water diversion and climate change, threatening connectivity of fish populations in this ecosystem.

Date posted: December 11, 2022

Species populations are in a state of flux due to the cumulative and interacting impacts of climate change and human stressors across landscapes. Invasive spread, pathogen outbreaks, land-use activities, and especially climate disruption and its associated impacts—severe drought (see Figure 3 or the GPLCC), reduced stream flow, increased wildfire frequency, extended growing season, and extreme weather events—are increasing, and in some cases accelerating. These impacts are outpacing management and conservation responses intended to support trust species and their critical habitats.

Date posted: December 11, 2022

Genetic, demographic, and environmental processes affect natural populations synergistically, and understanding their interplay is crucial for the conservation of biodiversity. Stream fishes in metapopulations are particularly sensitive to habitat fragmentation because persistence depends on dispersal and colonization of new habitat but dispersal is constrained to stream networks. Great Plains streams are increasingly fragmented by water diversion and climate change, threatening connectivity of fish populations in this ecosystem.

Date posted: December 11, 2022

Meso-carnivore Monitoring Workshop: Project Map Dec 9-10, 2015

Date posted: October 5, 2021

The Southwestern Crown Collaborative (SWCC) brings together residents, interested citizens, business enterprises, and conservation organizations to consider creative solutions in the management of National Forests in the Blackfoot, Clearwater, and Swan River valleys. It is an open, independent, volunteer organization that encourages broad participation by all interested parties.

Date posted: October 5, 2021

The Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program (CLFRP) was established by Congress under

section 4003(a) of Title IV of the Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009 to foster collaborative,

science-based restoration on priority forest landscapes across the United States. Section 4003(b)

describes the eligibility criteria for the program that includes the required elements of a landscape

restoration strategy:





 

Date posted: October 5, 2021

Workshop Materials

Date posted: October 5, 2021

Roads are often identified as sources of ecological process disruption. Roads can damage aquatic ecosystems by altering hydrologic, wood, and sediment regimes, degrade water quality, and reduce habitat suitability for aquatic biota. Often sedimentation is singled out as a premiere contributor to degradation. Over the past half century, thousands of miles of roads have been built across federal lands for a variety of purposes.

Date posted: October 5, 2021

The end of 2014 marked the five-year point of the US Forest Service’s Collaborative Forest
Landscape Restoration Program (CFLRP). The Southwestern Crown Collaborative (SWCC) was
one of the original ten projects across the country selected to receive CFLRP funding. Since
2010, the SWCC Monitoring Committee has been monitoring restoration treatments conducted
on the Flathead, Lolo, and Helena National Forests. We have begun to see results in both
restoration and monitoring efforts. Our goal is to use those observations in an adaptive

Date posted: October 5, 2021

Water is an extraordinarily precious resource across the United States, particularly in the semi-arid West.  Efforts to manage this resource effectively have often focused on our public lands, which are the source of more than 75% of the water for millions of people.  The challenges associated with managing water sustainably continue to mount with increasing demands, the advent of new stressors like climate change, and other stressors like water quality and habitat degradation associated with expanding watershed development. 

Date posted: October 5, 2021

Executive Summary: This project expands existing efforts and partnerships through citizen science monitoring as a

means to engage and inform local communities about climate and natural resource issues. We believe that resilience

in the landscape and communities can be enhanced through recognition of climate change and a collective search for

adaptation strategies. Coordinators have worked directly with teachers, students, and community volunteers in three

Date posted: October 5, 2021

This document describes the long-term monitoring program of the Southwestern Crown of the

Continent Collaborative (SWCC) developed as part of the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration

Program (CFLRP). It explains the goals, principles, organizational structure, and monitoring approach of

the SWCC. It was developed by the members of the SWCC Monitoring Committee during 2011/2012 and

was reviewed by the full SWCC. It represents a common vision for evaluating and improving forest

Date posted: October 5, 2021

The Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program (CFLRP) is designed to provide up to 10 years of funding to selected initiatives that will implement a landscape strategy to address the risk of uncharacteristic wildfire, restore ecosystems to pre-fire suppression conditions, improve fish and wildlife habitat, improve watersheds, and reduce invasive species. As such, it provides a tremendous opportunity to look collaboratively at a landscape and ask what can be accomplished relative to the CFLRP objectives over a 10 year timeframe.

Date posted: October 5, 2021

Summary: Over the last several decades, tens of thousands of miles of simple dirt and gravel roads have been built across forested public land in the United States. Today, managers from the U.S. Forest Service (and other federal and state agencies) have insufficient funding to maintain these roads and have been directed to begin strategically reducing road densities, despite a lack of public support in many regions.

Date posted: October 5, 2021

This project documented the traditional ecosystem management practices of the Gwich’in and Koyukon community of Beaver, Alaska through the collection of oral histories. The findings provide insight and understanding into the culturally-based rules which guided management and relationships between people, landscapes, and food resources to ensure sustainable yield within the northwest boreal forest and developed a suite of principles for sustainable, productive boreal ecosystems.

Date posted: August 11, 2021

Alaska and Canada’s hundreds of millions of acres of public protected lands are large and currently well-connected, but will face pressures. Providing for landscape connectivity is a core climate adaptation strategy. But shifting treelines, species compositions, and climates make planning for future corridors difficult.Dr. Dawn Magness from the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge uses a method that relies on enduring feature of the landscape that climate change will not change.The project is a collaboration between the NWB LCC and the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge.

Date posted: July 21, 2021

The circumboreal vegetation mapping (CBVM) project is an international collaboration among vegetation
scientists to create a new vegetation map of the boreal region at a 1:7.5 million scale with a common legend and
mapping protocol (Talbot and Meades 2011). The map is intended to portray potential natural vegetation, or the
vegetation that would exist in the absence of human or natural disturbance, rather than existing vegetation that
is commonly generated at larger scales. This report and map contributes to the CBVM effort by developing maps

Date posted: July 21, 2021

The Northwest Boreal Science and Management Research Tool (SMRT) provides the ability to search a vast, curated database for the Northwest Boreal region in one place. Users can explore thousands of curated scholarly articles, state and federal resource reports, land management plans, and unique transboundary datasets. Each entry includes geographic information about the area of study, allowing users to draw a box on a map to narrow searches to information directly related to a specific region in Alaska, the Yukon, British Columbia, and Northwest Territories.

Date posted: July 21, 2021

This pending report will describe and quantify the extent of and trends climate change impacts on fire return intervals in Alaska and Canada's boreal forests.

Date posted: June 13, 2021

This geodatabase contains layers pertaining to the Public Land Survey. It included a pre-settlement landcover polygon shapefile (KankLandcover.shp) for the area of interest in Indiana: Elkhart, Newton, Jasper, Starke, Marshall, and the north and central portion of Kosciusko, and northwest portion of Benton County, Lake, Porter, LaPorte, and St. Joseph Counties as well as the area of interest in Illinois: Will, Kankakee, and Iroquois Counties along with townships within surrounding counties (Grundy, Ford, Vermillion) within the Kankakee watershed .

Date posted: May 7, 2021

Grasslands provide important habitat for monarch butterflies and other pollinators in the southern Great Plains. The main objective of this project was to provide baseline data for assessing the contribution of grassland management practices to monarch/pollinator habitat.

Date posted: February 23, 2021

This region-wide coordinated bird monitoring program, supported by state, federal, tribal, nongovernmental organizations, and two statewide bird conservation partnerships, is designed to provide spatially-referenced baseline data for science-based biological planning and conservation design for the Great Northern LCC and its partners that is directly comparable with other landscapes and BCRs.

Date posted: February 23, 2021

This report summarizes the methods and results of utilizing the Edwards to Gulf Conservation Blueprint to achieve specific tasks for various conservation entities. The goal of this effort is to provide real world examples of the use of our spatial products to ensure that stakeholders understand how to use and incorporate the blueprint into their own decision-making processes. This report covers a suite of demonstration projects that illustrate a variety of tasks likely to be of interest to the broader stakeholder community.

Date posted: February 23, 2021

The Western Gulf Coast (WGC) is home to approximately 90% of the worldwide population of mottled ducks (Anas fulvigula), a non-migratory species that must satisfy its annual cycle needs within a small geographic range. Available population data suggest the WGC mottled duck population has experienced a slight to moderate decline across its range since 1985 (Gulf Coast Joint Venture [GCJV] Mottled Duck Working Group, Unpublished report). Because of its population status and reliance on a restricted geography, the mottled duck has been identified as a focal species for the U.S.

Date posted: February 23, 2021

This spatially-explicit decision support tool identifies wetlands and grasslands that are currently suitable for mottled duck nesting and brood rearing activities as well as identify areas that are priority for grassland establishment and freshwater enhancement for mottled duck nesting and brood rearing activities in the Western Gulf Coast. The identification process is based on key biological parameters such as patch size, land use type, distance to habitat, etc.

Date posted: February 23, 2021
Preview image of CCAST Webinar_July 2020.pdf

CCAST Non-Native Aquatic Species Webinar Series

Webinar recording link here

Date: Thursday 23 July 2020

Presenters: Betsy Grube and Brett Montgomery, Arizona Game and Fish Department, Phoenix, AZ 

Date posted: July 27, 2020
Preview image of CCAST Webinar_June 2020.pdf

CCAST Non-Native Aquatic Species Webinar Series

Webinar recording link here

Date: Tuesday, 23 June 2020

Presenter: Audrey Owens, Ranid Frogs Project Coordinator, Arizona Game and Fish Department

Date posted: June 23, 2020
Preview image of CCAST May 2020 Webinar.pdf

CCAST Non-Native Aquatic Species Webinar Series

Webinar recording link here

Date: Tuesday, 19 May 2020

Presenter: Heidi Blasius, Fisheries Biologist, Bureau of Land Management, Safford Field Office, Arizona

Date posted: June 18, 2020
Preview image of CCAST_April_2020_Webinar.pdf

CCAST Non-Native Aquatic Species Webinar Series

Webinar recording link here

Date: Thursday, 9 April 2020

Presenter: Brian Healy, PhD Candidate, Utah State University and Fisheries Program Manager, Native Fish Ecology and Conservation Program, Grand Canyon National Park

Date posted: June 5, 2020

The Desert Landscape Conservation Cooperative Land Cover Map shows land cover at a regional scale (1:2,500,000).  The files provided are graphic design files that can be used to plot a publication-quality, poster-size map.



Scale: 1:2,500,000 



Map poster dimensions: 34 x 44 inches 



Data sources:

Date posted: May 28, 2020

The Desert Landscape Conservation Cooperative Shaded Relief Map shows political and physiographic features. The files provided are graphic design files that can be used to plot a publication-quality, poster-size map. 



Scale: 1:2,500,000



Map poster dimensions: 34 x 44 inches



Data sources:

Date posted: May 28, 2020

The Desert Landscape Conservation Cooperative Watersheds Map shows hydrographic features including watersheds, streams and lakes at a regional scale. The files provided are graphic design files that can be used to plot a publication-quality, poster-size map. 



Scale: 1:2,500,000



Map poster dimensions: 34 x 44 inches



Data sources: 

Date posted: May 28, 2020

Desert Landscape Conservation Cooperative Boundary delineates the spatial extent of the DLCC. The vector boundary is available as both a shapefile and KML file. This is a derivative product of the LCCs shapefile produced by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, accessed from http:/http://www.fws.gov/GIS/data/national/ in 2014.



Date posted: May 28, 2020