Ecoregional assessment report: Northern Great Basin rapid ecoregional assessment

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The Rapid Ecoregional Assessment (REA) is the U.S. Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM’s) first step toward a broader initiative to systematically develop and incorporate landscape-scale information into the evaluation and eventual management of public land resources. In response, the BLM launched several REAs to improve the understanding of the existing condition of these landscapes and of how the current conditions may be altered by ongoing environmental changes and land use demands (BLM 2012). These scientific assessments were conducted to increase the understanding of the existing landscapes and how they may be affected and to provide information for future management actions. The purpose of the REA is to identify, assemble, synthesize, and integrate existing information about natural resources and environmental change agents to provide information that will help BLM land managers in the ecoregion understand resource status and the potential for change from a broad landscape viewpoint. The BLM defines landscapes as large, connected geographical regions that have similar environmental characteristics. These landscapes span administrative boundaries and can encompass all or portions of several BLM field offices. REAs provide a tool to identify and analyze the key “management questions” regarding the resources, values, and processes that are fundamental to the conservation of BLM lands. The landscape-scale approach recognizes landscapes are being affected by complex influences that reach beyond traditional management boundaries and across watersheds and jurisdictions. To complete this REA, an Assessment Management Team was established, which was comprised of resource specialists from BLM and other state and federal agencies, and stakeholder scientists and planners. The U.S. Geologic Survey (USGS) provided scientific peer review for the REA process. The team was tasked with identifying the “conservation elements," “change agents,” and management questions specific to the ecoregion and met at each project milestone to coordinate progress, data, and path forward. The conservation elements below represent the core ecological values at the ecoregional level (fine-filter) and all of the predominant ecosystem types and functions that occur within the ecoregion (coarse-filters) (Table ES-1). The core work products developed from the REA are the data packages, presented in Appendix B of this Final Report. Each package includes a detailed overview of the methods and analysis conducted, data collected/available, and geospatial outputs presenting the results. The data packages also present all management questions with responses to help guide the reader. Results are typically presented on map products with a graded high-low scale. Because many of the results are difficult to qualitatively summarize in an Executive Summary, only key results and discussions are presented below. Additional brief summaries of each of the change agents and conservation elements are presented in Chapter 6, and full presentations are included in Appendix B of the Final Report. The greater sage-grouse is iconic to the NGB ecoregion and the subject of several conservation and regulatory planning efforts.The greater sage-grouse is considered an umbrella species for sagebrush-associated vertebrates (Rowland et al. 2006, Hanser and Knick 2011); however, most portions of the identified Preliminary Priority Habitat in the ecoregion are degraded or in a low-quality condition. The analysis has identified greater sage-grouse strongholds in northwestern Nevada, southeastern Oregon and the tri-state region where Idaho, Nevada, and Oregon meet. Focusing conservation and management efforts into these regions may be necessary to prevent further deterioration of habitat. Greater sage-grouse drives major planning and conservation efforts throughout the ecoregion. On a separate parallel track to this REA, the BLM is developing a national strategy to preserve and conserve sagebrush communities and throughout the range of the greater sage-grouse, which includes the development of an Environmental Impact Statement (drafts expected in 2013). The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service published its listing decision for the species as “warranted but precluded” in 2010.

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ELECTRONIC FILE - Ecology

SWAP (2/19/2016) citation:
[SAIC] Science Applications International Corporation. 2013. Ecoregional assessment report: Northern Great Basin Rapid Ecoregional Assessment. Final report. [place unknown]: US Bureau of Land Management. [130 p.]. Contract No.: L10PC00483. [accessed 2015 Nov 23]. http://www.blm.gov/style/medialib/blm/wo/Communications_Directorate/publ...