Lesser prairie-chicken (Tympanuchus pallidicinctus) populations have declined rangewide, and one of the principal causes is thought to be low nest success. Little is known about the relationship of vegetation structure and human intrusion to lesser prairie-chicken nest location and success. We conducted our study from 1997 to 2002 in southwestern Kansas, USA, on 2 sand-sagebrush (Artemisia fili...

Sagebrush (Artemisia spp.) communities constitute the largest temperate semidesert in North America and provide important rangelands for livestock and habitat for wildlife. Remote sensing methods might provide an efficient method to monitor sagebrush communities. This study used airborne LiDAR and field data to measure vegetation heights in five different community types at the Reynolds Creek E...

Nesting success of greater sage-grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus) influences annual reproductive success and population dynamics. To describe nesting habitat and measure the effects of vegetation characteristics on nesting outcomes, we sampled 87 sage-grouse nests during 2004 and 2005 in the Montana Mountains of northwestern Nevada. Within a 78.5-m 2 circular plot surrounding each nest, we qua...

First posted March 11, 2021 For additional information, contact: Director, Fort Collins Science CenterU.S. Geological Survey2150 Centre Ave., Building CFort Collins, CO 80526-8118 The sagebrush (Artemisia spp.) biome, its wildlife, and the services benefits it provides people local communities are at risk. Development in for many purposes, has resulted multiple often cumulative negative impacts...

Methods: Field data on sagebrush species and structural characteristics collected in 2005 were regressed against spectral values and transformed indices derived from Landsat TM data. Step-wise regression methods were used to build (1) a combinedmodel that ignored species and physical differences in sagebrush, and (2) four different models that took those differences in account. Parsimonious mod...

Sagebrush cover is often estimated with the use of the line intercept method. However, a lack of standardized protocols may lead to variable estimates of sagebrush canopy cover. Our objectives were to determine the influence of gap size on 1) sagebrush canopy cover estimates, 2) time needed to read a transect, and 3) among-observer variability in sagebrush canopy cover estimates. We utilized 5-...

Airborne communication between individuals, called "eavesdropping" in this paper, can cause plants to become more resistant to herbivores when a neighbor has been experimentally clipped. The ecological relevance of this result has been in question, since individuals may be too far apart for this interaction to affect many plants in natural populations. We investigated induced resistance to herb...

FARSITE fire area simulator was used to test the effectiveness of a small mechanical fuel treatment in a bitterbrush/sagebrush shrubland in the Eastern Sierra Nevada. Custom fuel models were created for input into FARSITE using a combination of data obtained from the Southwestern Fuels Photo Series and fuels data collected at the study site for treated and untreated areas. Fuels data were calib...

Plant canopy nitrogen (N) is associated with ecosystem processes such as photosynthetic and aboveground net primary production, particularly in forested ecosystems. Sagebrush N is directly relatable to wildlife nutritional status and contributes to assessments of habitat quality, productivity, plant / soil water dynamics and controls on canopy photosynthesis. Hyperspectral remote sensing studie...

List Five Relevant Publications in Last Five Years Banner, R.E., J. Rogosic, E.A. Burritt and F.D. Provenza. 2000. Supplemental barley and charcoal increase intake of sagebrush by lambs. J. Range Manage. 53:415-420. Villalba, J.J., F.D. Provenza and R.E. Banner. 2002a. Influence of macronutrients and activated charcoal on intake of sagebrush by sheep and goats. J. Anim. Sci. 80:2099-2109. Villa...