Elissa M. Olimpi , Tina Mozelewski , Josh Gage , Alexander V. Kumar , Caitlin Littlefield , Kevin Doherty
{"title":"An Interactive Tool to Promote Stepping Down the Sagebrush Conservation Design to Local Conservation Planning","authors":"Elissa M. Olimpi , Tina Mozelewski , Josh Gage , Alexander V. Kumar , Caitlin Littlefield , Kevin Doherty","doi":"10.1016/j.rama.2024.08.002","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Conservation efforts for the sagebrush biome in the western United States have been significant, but habitat loss and degradation are currently outpacing collective conservation efforts. The Sagebrush Conservation Design (SCD), cocreated by scientists and managers working across the biome, issues an urgent call to action to radically reprioritize conservation efforts to save the biome. At the heart of SCD is the “defend and grow the core” strategy, which means prioritizing conservation in intact sagebrush areas with native understories and low levels of threats, as opposed to the business-as-usual approach of treating all threats or focusing on areas with the most severe threats. However, SCD applications are limited by the capacity of land managers to integrate maps of rangeland conditions and threats into planning processes for their management area. To increase the integration of spatial data and help managers and planners step down SCD to local-scale conservation planning, we developed a web application that provides a user-friendly interface. Here, we lay out a guide for web application users, which we hope will empower land managers to make strategic conservation decisions that best protect the sagebrush biome.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":49634,"journal":{"name":"Rangeland Ecology & Management","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.4000,"publicationDate":"2024-10-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Rangeland Ecology & Management","FirstCategoryId":"93","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1550742424001325","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"ECOLOGY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Conservation efforts for the sagebrush biome in the western United States have been significant, but habitat loss and degradation are currently outpacing collective conservation efforts. The Sagebrush Conservation Design (SCD), cocreated by scientists and managers working across the biome, issues an urgent call to action to radically reprioritize conservation efforts to save the biome. At the heart of SCD is the “defend and grow the core” strategy, which means prioritizing conservation in intact sagebrush areas with native understories and low levels of threats, as opposed to the business-as-usual approach of treating all threats or focusing on areas with the most severe threats. However, SCD applications are limited by the capacity of land managers to integrate maps of rangeland conditions and threats into planning processes for their management area. To increase the integration of spatial data and help managers and planners step down SCD to local-scale conservation planning, we developed a web application that provides a user-friendly interface. Here, we lay out a guide for web application users, which we hope will empower land managers to make strategic conservation decisions that best protect the sagebrush biome.
期刊介绍:
Rangeland Ecology & Management publishes all topics-including ecology, management, socioeconomic and policy-pertaining to global rangelands. The journal''s mission is to inform academics, ecosystem managers and policy makers of science-based information to promote sound rangeland stewardship. Author submissions are published in five manuscript categories: original research papers, high-profile forum topics, concept syntheses, as well as research and technical notes.
Rangelands represent approximately 50% of the Earth''s land area and provision multiple ecosystem services for large human populations. This expansive and diverse land area functions as coupled human-ecological systems. Knowledge of both social and biophysical system components and their interactions represent the foundation for informed rangeland stewardship. Rangeland Ecology & Management uniquely integrates information from multiple system components to address current and pending challenges confronting global rangelands.