Sagebrush ecosystems in North America have experienced extensive degradation since European settlement. Further degradation continues from exotic invasive plants, altered fire frequency, intensive grazing practices, oil and gas development, and climate change – adding urgency to the need for ecosystem-wide understanding. Remote sensing is often identified as a key information source to facilita...

The boundary for the Wyoming Basins Ecoregional Assessment (WBEA) was largely determined by the co-occurrence of some of the largest tracts of intact sagebrush (Artemisia spp.) remaining in the western United States with areas of increasing resource extraction. The WBEA area includes two ecoregions in their entirety, Wyoming Basins and Utah-Wyoming Rocky Mountains, and portions of two others (S...

The heritability of diet selection for mountain big sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata Nutt. ssp. vaseyana [Rydb] Beetle) by grazing sheep was estimated from fecal samples collected from 549 Rambouillet ewes. Fecal samples were collected in September and October during 1996 and 1997 from free-grazing ewes on intermountain sagebrush-bunchgrass rangelands at the U.S. Sheep Experiment Station in Idah...

The heritability of diet selection for mountain big sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata Nutt. ssp. vaseyana [Rydb] Beetle) by grazing sheep was estimated from fecal samples collected from 549 Rambouillet ewes. Fecal samples were collected in September and October during 1996 and 1997 from free-grazing ewes on intermountain sagebrush-bunchgrass rangelands at the U.S. Sheep Experiment Station in Idah...

Wyoming big sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata ssp. wyomingensis Beetle & Young) communities frequently are mowed in an attempt to increase perennial herbaceous vegetation. However, there is limited information as to whether expected benefits of mowing are realized when applied to Wyoming big sagebrush communities with intact understory vegetation. We compared vegetation and soil nutrient concentr...

Fire is thought to profoundly change the ecology of the sagebrush steppe. The Idaho National Laboratory provides an ideal setting to compare the effects of fire and physical disturbance on plant diversity in high-native-cover sagebrush steppe. Seventy-eight 1-hectare transects were established along paved, green-striped, gravel, and two-track roads, in overgrazed rangeland, and within sagebrush...

Habitat fragmentation can change the community composition of species in remnant habitat patches. We studied the impacts of fragmentation by agriculture on the bird community in heavily fragmented areas of the sagebrush shrubsteppe in western North America. We examined whether bird communities in sagebrush habitat near orchards and vineyards were different from the community in interior sagebru...

The Wyoming Basins Ecoregional Assessment (WBEA) area in the western United States contains a number of important land cover types, including nearly one-fourth of the sagebrush (Artemisia spp.) in North America. Although relatively unap-preciated until recent decades, the broad open landscapes dominated by sagebrush communities have received increasing attention for their ecological value and t...

Wyoming big sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata wyomingensis) treatments are often implemented to improve breeding habitat for greater sage-grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus), a species of considerable conservation concern. In 2008 and 2009, we measured vegetation structure available to sage-grouse for breeding at 19 sites that were prescribed burned during 1990–1999 and 2000–2006, 6 sites that wer...

In this article we develop a simulation model to evaluate the economic efficiency of fuel treatments and apply it to two sagebrush ecosystems in the Great Basin of the western United States: the Wyoming Sagebrush Steppe and Mountain Big Sagebrush ecosystems. These ecosystems face the two most prominent concerns in sagebrush ecosystems relative to wildfire: annual grass invasion and native conif...