BLM Utah Geospatial Data Layers and Web Interface for Satellite Monitoring of Wildlife Habitat in Utah

Background: Climate and land use change are the major drivers of biodiversity loss and speciesâ¿¿ range contractions in sagebrush ecosystems (Anderson and Inouye 2001). Climate projections for the Intermountain West indicate a warming and drying trend over the coming century (Seager et al. 2012), combined with expansion of water, mineral, and transportation development (Leu et al. 2008, MacDonald 2010). A number of sagebrush-associated species, including Sage Grouse, are of economic and intrinsic concern as they are sensitive to climatic variation and to anthropogenic habitat fragmentation (Lendrum et al. 2013, Stoner et al. 2016). Objectives: The BLM is looking to enter into an agreement with a partner to help better understand how climate variations and vegetation treatments affect land management and land use in order to better identify sites for mitigation and restoration efforts around the state. In order to evaluate the entire state, a geospatial component to monitoring is going to be a necessity to focus on-the-ground efforts and plan future workforce. A geospatial view of vegetation overlaid with species locations could also allow partners to identify migration or corridor barriers and evaluate species demographics. Land mangers could then correlate vegetation treatments and climate changes to those species movements. The BLM, along with its partners through the Watershed Restoration Initiative (WRI) program have been completing vegetation treatments for approximately a decade and BLM Utah is looking for a tool to assist it in evaluating how those treatments have affected the landscape. This tool would allow land managers to 1) Understand how climatic factors affect how species use and move on the landscape, 2) understand if vegetation treatments that have been completed have had any impact on species and their demographics and/or their movements across their range in Utah, 3) If species are moving across the landscape, see if there are any barriers that land managers can mitigate to improve the species habitat, 5) Focus the seasonal restrictions to the habitats that are truly important to the species. Public Benefit: The public benefit of this project is to analyze past, present and forecast future conditions of habitat conditions for target species such as Greater Sage-Grouse, mule deer and elk. With this data the BLM will be able to assess the benefits of the 10+ years of intense vegetation treatments in different habitats and the species response to those treatments. The BLM will also be able to assess if the protections allowed through the land use plans are appropriately applied on the landscape to adequately protect habitat for things such as migration. Through these efforts the BLM can work to better preserve habitats and the species that rely on those habitats for future generations and work to keep species off the endangered species list.