Research ArticleGreater Sage-Grouse and Severe Winter Conditions: Identifying Habitat for Conservation
Section snippets
INTRODUCTION
Climatic seasonality, or within-year variability in precipitation and temperature (Williams and Middleton 2008), is a prominent feature of temperate rangelands. In regions with a pronounced winter season, climatic seasonality is gauged in terms of winter severity or deviation from long-term temperature and precipitation averages. For animal populations, periods of below-average temperature and above-average snow depth can reduce landscape-level availability of food resources or cover, causing
Study Area
The 4 328-km2 study area included portions of the Great Divide Basin in south-central Wyoming, United States (Fig. 1). The terrain was characterized by rolling sagebrush steppe, gently sloping flats, vegetated sand dunes, and badland hills ranging in elevation from 1 933 m to 2 385 m. Average maximum and minimum temperature during winter (1 November–31 March) is 1.7°C and -10.9°C, respectively; average monthly precipitation is 0.81 cm (Western Regional Climate Center 2011). Dominant vegetation
RESULTS
Minimum, maximum, and total (summed) transect length was 12.3, 73.4, and 563.6 km, respectively. We recorded 68 observations of sage-grouse in the study area during aerial surveys. Detection probability ranged from 1.0 on the transect to 0.53 at a perpendicular distance from the transect of 200 m. We estimated location error to be ≤ 100 m given the slow, low flight protocol, and based on visual examination of locations relative to the field notes and the transect buffer. The Hosmer and Lemeshow
DISCUSSION
Conservation of habitat such as severe winter range is a landscape sustainability issue because such habitat functions disproportionately in the persistence of animal populations relative to its spatial extent or frequency of use. Without a place to go when conditions become insupportable, a single climatic event can significantly reduce population size (Barrett 1982; Young 1994), potentially establishing or exacerbating issues that affect conservation in the long term such as genetic
IMPLICATIONS
Management strategies that include identifying and conserving habitat that buffers populations from climate-induced limitation on habitat availability would have general application across taxa and landscape types. Here critical habitat for sage-grouse during severe winter conditions was characterized by an intermediate density of tall sagebrush and other shrubs at the landscape level throughout places where there was little bare ground, a favorable thermal environment, moderately rough
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We thank F. Blomquist, M. Read, and R. Etzelmiller of the Bureau of Land Management, Rawlins Field Office, F. Blackgoat, C. Hedley, and two anonymous reviewers for guidance and helpful suggestions throughout this effort.
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Research was funded by energy industry operators associated with the Continental Divide–Creston Environmental Impact Statement.
Current address: Larry D. Hayden-Wing, PO Box 1690, Laramie, WY 82073, USA.
Current address: Stephen L. Webb, Department of Scientific Computing, Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation, 2510 Sam Noble Parkway, Ardmore, OK 73401, USA.