Sage-grouse Habitat Use in the Upper Snake River Watershed

The Upper Snake River Basin Sage-Grouse Working Group recognizes multiple information needs and, a consistent view is that no active management can be attempted to improve habitat without information on the current status of potential habitat, particularly winter habitat, which is theorized to be the limiting factor for Jackson area sage-grouse. An inventory and monitoring system for habitat quality, combined with a classification of potential winter habitat from remotely sensed data could provide an initial step to address the identified information needs. For example, questions regarding interactions between habitat and snow (depth and density) would be served by baseline information on plant species composition (native and non-native) and structure (e.g., aerial cover, height, bare ground). These initial data in turn can be correlated with spatial data (e.g., maps and remotely sensed information) to develop probability maps for items of interest (e.g., estimates of the amount of exposed Artemisia spp with varying depths of snow). This project was funded by the Upper Snake River Basin Sage-grouse Working Group ($26,000; 2006), and the research focused on three demonstration study areas of interest to Agency managers: the Blacktail Burn (Grand Teton National Park), Breakneck Flats (Bridger-Teton National Forest), and Boucher Hill/North Gap lek site (National Elk Refuge). On-going analyses show that, during a moderate snow year, sage-brush protruding through the snow can be identified on Landsat imagery with > 70% accuracy, but sage-grouse observation locations do not overlap all areas with potentially exposed sage-brush.

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