Assessing wildlife habitat suitability for ecological sites and state and transition models

2011 Summer.Includes bibliographical references.Wildlife habitat is an important component of rangeland management plans. Unfortunately, there are few practical tools to assist managers in understanding how management and environmental variation affects habitat suitability. Ecological site descriptions (ESDs) have the potential to fill this role because they contain information on the biophysical features of the land and contain state-and-transition models (STMs) which describe ecological sites in terms of their potential vegetation dynamics. These characteristics can be the primary indicators of suitable wildlife habitat. Researchers and managers using ESDs and STMs have suggested that information on other aspects of ecosystem functions should be included so that they can be evaluated along with soils and vegetation. I developed greater sage grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus) and mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus) habitat models using published literature and a fuzzy logic knowledge representation and evaluation system. The resulting outputs were 0-1 scaled indices representing the relative suitability of habitat based on measured habitat attributes in different states of two ecological sites common in NW Colorado, claypan and mountain loam. In Chapter 1, I tested hypotheses related to the habitat suitability of differing states in these two structurally divergent ecological sites. Results support the hypotheses that states with degraded attributes or that were associated with aerial herbicide spraying are generally lower in habitat suitability, and that states with similar components as the reference state do not have significantly different habitat suitability than the reference states. In Chapter 2, I developed sage grouse habitat maps and compared the results with current habitat mapping procedures. The ecological site/STM framework allowed for an understanding of the distribution, abundance, and value of habitat to be linked to management and environmental variation. This work is an important contribution towards incorporating wildlife habitat information into ESDs and understanding trade-offs in wildlife habitat suitability associated with different vegetation states

Do Livestock and Ecosystem Services Compete? A State-and-Transition Approach

Rangeland managers are charged with managing complex social-ecological systems. While they must be concerned with economic sustainability, they are often under pressure to provide public benefits as well. As the public becomes aware of the additional services these diverse ecosystems provide, land managers are becoming pressured to provide ecosystem services in addition to livestock production. However, there are few tools that provide the type of information rangeland managers need to understand the trade-offs of managing for different ecosystem services in order to make these complex decisions. In 2010, the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), US Forest Service (FS), and Bureau of Land Management (BLM) signed an MOU agreeing to adopt state and transition models (STMs) as a standard basis for rangeland inventory and monitoring. STMs are used to assess current conditions in relation to known ecosystem dynamics, identify management objectives and appropriate monitoring indicators, and assess whether objectives are being met (Bestelmeyer et al. 2003, Bestelmeyer et al. 2004). STMs represent a key tool in the process of adaptive management because they provide a clear representation of the best current knowledge about how a given ecosystem responds to different management and environmental factors. Currently, most STMs are diagrams accompanied by narrative descriptions (see figure 1), and may not be useful in determining ‘optimal’ management strategies. Therefore, our team created a linked ecological-economic simulation model with the goal of using a STM to determine optimal rangeland management given a range of management objectives. We use the STM approach to model decision-making on a typical ranch in the Elkhead Watershed in northern Colorado. The ranch is a collection of ecological sites, or types of land with similar climate, soils and potential vegetation, that can transition between several states based on management and climatic events. We use field data and local knowledge to build the STM of ecological dynamics for each ecological site and determine how likely transitions are given past management and weather. Using an economic model based on the ecological STM and economic data from typical ranches in the region, we examine the decisions that contribute to, and economic outcomes that result from, changes in ecological states. In our framework, past ranch decisions affect existing ecological states, and current decisions play an important role in determining transition potentials. We also examine how current ecological conditions and management decisions influence the provision of ecosystem services other than livestock production

Tools for Resilience Management: Multidisciplinary Development of State-and-Transition Models for Northwest Colorado

Building models is an important way of integrating knowledge. Testing and updating models of social-ecological systems can inform management decisions and, ultimately, improve resilience. We report on the outcomes of a six-year, multidisciplinary model development process in the sagebrush steppe, USA. We focused on creating state-and-transition models (STMs), conceptual models of ecosystem change that represent nonlinear dynamics and are being adopted worldwide as tools for managing ecosystems. STM development occurred in four steps with four distinct sets of models: (1) local knowledge elicitation using semistructured interviews; (2) ecological data collection using an observational study; (3) model integration using participatory workshops; and (4) model simplification upon review of the literature by a multidisciplinary team. We found that different knowledge types are ultimately complementary. Many of the benefits of the STM-building process flowed from the knowledge integration steps, including improved communication, identification of uncertainties, and production of more broadly credible STMs that can be applied in diverse situations. The STM development process also generated hypotheses about sagebrush steppe dynamics that could be tested by future adaptive management and research. We conclude that multidisciplinary development of STMs has great potential for producing credible, useful tools for managing resilience of social-ecological systems. Based on this experience, we outline a streamlined, participatory STM development process that integrates multiple types of knowledge and incorporates adaptive management

Tools for Resilience Management: Multidisciplinary Development of State-and-Transition Models for Northwest Colorado

Building models is an important way of integrating knowledge. Testing and updating models of social-ecological systems can inform management decisions and, ultimately, improve resilience. We report on the outcomes of a six-year, multidisciplinary model development process in the sagebrush steppe, USA. We focused on creating state-and-transition models (STMs), conceptual models of ecosystem change that represent nonlinear dynamics and are being adopted worldwide as tools for managing ecosystems. STM development occurred in four steps with four distinct sets of models: (1) local knowledge elicitation using semistructured interviews; (2) ecological data collection using an observational study; (3) model integration using participatory workshops; and (4) model simplification upon review of the literature by a multidisciplinary team. We found that different knowledge types are ultimately complementary. Many of the benefits of the STM-building process flowed from the knowledge integration steps, including improved communication, identification of uncertainties, and production of more broadly credible STMs that can be applied in diverse situations. The STM development process also generated hypotheses about sagebrush steppe dynamics that could be tested by future adaptive management and research. We conclude that multidisciplinary development of STMs has great potential for producing credible, useful tools for managing resilience of social-ecological systems. Based on this experience, we outline a streamlined, participatory STM development process that integrates multiple types of knowledge and incorporates adaptive management