Additional mapping tools for Great Basin wildfire and conifer management to increase operational resilience: integrating sagebrush ecosystem and sage-grouse response

Conservation planning efforts for sagebrush ecosystems of western North America increasingly focus on enhancing operational resilience though decision-support tools that link spatially explicit variation in soil and plant processes to outcomes of biotic and abiotic disturbances spanning large spatial extents. However, failure to consider higher trophic-level fauna (e.g. wildlife) in these tools can hinder efforts to operationalize resilience owing to spatiotemporal lags between slower reorganization of plant and soil processes following disturbance, and faster behavioral and demographic responses of fauna to disturbance. These spatial products provide additional examples for managers of sagebrush ecosystems and greater sage-grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus) populations in the Great Basin to aid with decisions regarding: 1) wildfire prevention, suppression, and management; and 2) removal of encroaching conifers. These products integrate models of ecological resilience mapped to variation in soil moisture and temperature regimes, wildlife risk and recovery processes, and potential ecological traps with measures of sage-grouse habitat selection and abundance. Please refer to Ricca and Coates (2019) and examples within for further details on methodology.