Land Use and Habitat Conditions Across the Southwestern Wyoming Sagebrush Steppe: Development Impacts, Management Effectiveness and the Distribution of Invasive Plants

For the past several years, USGS has taken a multi-faceted approach to investigating the condition and trends in sagebrush steppe ecosystems. This recent effort builds upon decades of work in semi-arid ecosystems providing a specific, applied focus on the cumulative impacts of expanding human activities across these landscapes. Here, the authors discuss several on-going projects contributing to these efforts: 1. mapping and monitoring the distribution and condition of shrub steppe communities with local detail at a regional scale, 2. assessing the relationships between specific, land-use features (for example, roads, transmission lines, industrial pads) and invasive plants, and 3. monitoring the effects of habitat treatments on the ecosystem. This research is focused on the northern sagebrush steppe, primarily in Wyoming, but also extending into Montana, Colorado, Utah and Idaho. In a separate but linked study, the authors also sampled native and invasive composition of recent and historic habitat treatments. Here, they summarize findings of this ongoing work, highlighting patterns and relationships between vegetation (native and invasive), land cover, landform, and land-use patterns in the sagebrush steppe.