Resources

Habitat complexity in rivers is linked to physical processes that act at various spatial scales and requires dynamic hydrologic and geomorphic conditions. On regulated rivers in the western United States, tributaries may provide important resource inputs and serve as sources of dynamism on regulated systems, offering blueprints to guide restoration of habitat complexity in riparian areas. We investigated spatial patterns and extent of tributary influence on riparian habitat complexity along regulated reaches of the Colorado and Dolores Rivers in the western United States.

Riparian ecosystems are vital components of the semi-arid landscape because woody riparian plants provide resources that are absent in adjacent vegetation types. Historically, flood played a key role in shaping the composition and structure of riparian forests. In recent decades, however, the frequency and magnitude of floods has decreased and the timing of peak discharge has been altered. In addition, wildfire has increased in importance as an agent of disturbance along many streams.

Climate change predictions include warming and drying trends, which are expected to be particularly pronounced in the southwestern United States. In this region, grassland dynamics are tightly linked to available moisture, yet it has proven difficult to resolve what aspects of climate drive vegetation change.

Woody plant regeneration: post fire woody plant data in Excel.

The Improving Crop Coefficients for the Middle Rio Grande Project (ICCMRG Project) was completed by the New Mexico Office of the State Engineer (NMOSE) under a grant from the United States Bureau of Reclamation. The objective of the ICCMRG Project is to assess actual crop water use for the years 2011 and 2013 through remote sensing technologies that estimate the evapotranspiration (ET) of individual crops within the Middle Rio Grande (MRG).

In 2010, Colorado Front Range National Forests were awarded a Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration (CFLR) grant to facilitate the implementation of restoration treatments across 32,000 acres of ponderosa pine-dominated forests.  Collaborative, multi-party monitoring of the impacts of restoration was a required component of the grant; however, the budget for this work was limited, and initial monitoring plans for the Arapaho-Roosevelt National Forest (AR) and the Pike-San Isabel National Forest (PSI) did not include a strong emphasis on key components of the ecosystem such as wildlife

Climate change is projected to have an enormous effect on water resources in the western US, with cascading effects on river-dependent organisms. Recent studies show that increasing drought will lead to reduced water in many rivers in the southwestern US. For example, streamflow in the warm season has declined over the last century in the western US and is projected to continue decreasing over the next 100 years.

Ongoing and increasing energy development in the west will cause an associated increase in the amount of disturbed land, in turn leading to greater potential for natural resource and wildlife conflicts. Throughout the southwest, renewable energy technologies are being explored, tested, and new facilities are being planned and developed. The existing electric transmission infrastructure will need to be expanded and improved in order to effectively distribute the electricity generated by new renewable power facilities that will be distributing power to consumers across the western states.

The SRLCC provided funds to the states of Arizona, Colorado and New Mexico to support development of the states’ Crucial Habitat Assessment Tools (CHATs) which provide a decision support system to better incorporate wildlife values, sensitive animals and plants, and important ecosystem features into land use decision-making to reduce conflicts and surprises.

Short-term ecological consequences of collaborative restoration treatments in ponderosa pine forests of Colorado

The Gunnison Climate Working Group is piloting a on-the-ground climate adaptation project to build
resilience of riparian areas/wet meadows – priority brood-rearing habitat -- to help the Gunnison Sagegrouse
and other wildlife species adapt to climate change in the Gunnison Basin. Riparian areas have
been impacted by head cuts, erosion, and lowered water tables. These impacts will likely increase with
increased drought and erosion from intense rainstorms, decreasing food and chick survival. After

Our actions today to build ecosystem resilience to climate change will help us protect the Gunnison Basin’s natural resources—clean air and wildlife habitat, and the livelihoods they provide in the future for people. The Gunnison Climate Working Group, a group of public and private partners formed in 2010, is looking to understand the threats posed by climate change, identify strategies to reduce adverse impacts, and promote coordinated implementation of these strategies.

Climate projection data were downloaded from the Climatewizard application for the coastal region for the Gulf of Mexico. Climate projection data represent the monthly, seasonal, and yearly mean for the time period of 2000-2050 for the following variables: AET:PET ratio, Moisture deficit, Moisture surplus, PET, Precipitation, Temperature, Rainfall Anomaly, and Standard Precipitation Index. In addition, models representing change in the average mean from period of (1961-1990) is available for each of the variables.

Attempts to stabilize the shore can greatly influence rates of shoreline change. Beach nourishment in particular will bias rates of observed shoreline change toward accretion or stability, even though the natural beach, in the absence of nourishment, would be eroding. Trembanis and Pilkey (1998) prepared a summary of identifiable beach nourishment projects in the Gulf Coast region that had been conducted before 1996. Those records were used to identify shoreline segments that had been influenced by beach nourishment.

The Protected Areas Database of the United States (PAD-US) is a geodatabase, managed by USGS GAP, that illustrates and describes public land ownership, management and other conservation lands, including voluntarily provided privately protected areas. The State, Regional and LCC geodatabases contain two feature classes. The PADUS1_3_FeeEasement feature class and the national MPA feature class. Legitimate and other protected area overlaps exist in the full inventory, with Easements loaded on top of Fee.

Rates of long-term and short-term shoreline change were generated in a GIS with the Digital Shoreline Analysis System (DSAS) version 2.0, an ArcView extension developed by the USGS in cooperation with TPMC Environmental Services. The extension is designed to efficiently lead a user through the major steps of shoreline change analysis.

This dataset consists of the current distribution (2000s) of mangrove forests in the southeastern U.S. This dataset was created from the current best available mangrove data on a state specific basis. Florida mangrove data was extracted from Florida Landuse Land Cover Classification System (FLUCCS). For Louisiana, we used observations of mangrove stands from aerial surveys by Michot et al. (2010). Mangrove presence in Texas came from maps produced by Sherrod & McMillan (1981) and the NOAA Benthic Habitat Atlas of Coastal Texas (Finkbeiner et al. 2009).

This map layer shows major ports in the United States, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. A port is a city, town, or urban area with a harbor where ships load or unload. This is a revised version of the July 2012 map layer.

GAP species range data show a coarse representation of the total areal extent of a species or the geographic limits within which a species can be found (Morrison and Hall 2002). To represent these geographic limits, GAP compiled existing GAP data, where available, and NatureServe data (Patterson et al. 2003, Ridgely et al. 2007, NatureServe 2010) IUCN data (IUCN 2004), where needed.

1985 Gulf of Mexico Atlas abstract American oyster Crassostrea virginica Ostion americano

This data is the 2010 era and the 1996-2010-era change classification of U.S.Gulf of Mexico region. This data set utilized full or partial Landsat scenes which were analyzed according to the Coastal Change Analysis Program (C-CAP) protocol to determine land cover.

The SE Blueprint 3.0 Development Process is a report that explains how the Conservation Blueprint was created.

We flew aerial line transect surveys between March 30 and May 3, 2012, to estimate the abundance of lesser prairie-chickens (*Tympanuchus pallidicinctus*) and lesser prairie-chicken leks in four habitat regions in the Great Plains U.S. Estimates were supplemented with data from surveys conducted by Texas Tech University in two regions in the Texas Panhandle and surveys conducted by the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation in Oklahoma.