Beyond Uplands: Integrating Riparian Areas into Sagebrush Conservation Design for a More Resilient West
Mueller, K. R.; Morford, S. L.; Maestas, J. D.; Kimball, J. S.; Olsen, A. C.; Wood, D. J. A.; Naugle, D. E.
Show abstract
Riparian and mesic habitats are essential biological hotspots in the American West, supporting 80% of wildlife, yet they are often assessed in isolation from surrounding uplands. To address this, we developed a framework that complements the Sagebrush Conservation Design to incorporate these habitats into broader landscape conservation planning. By analyzing 40 years of riparian vegetation data alongside sagebrush ecosystems, we classified watersheds into three actionable management tiers based on water availability and vegetation health. This prioritization is operationalized through the Mesic Analysis Platform, an interactive tool that identifies stream reaches with floodplain disconnection as key targets for restoration. Notably, the greatest restoration potential exists on private lands, where 63-65% of identified mesic habitats are found. This framework provides a practical strategy to integrate social feasibility with ecological priority, fostering the multi-jurisdictional partnerships vital to connecting water resources with the broader sagebrush ecosystem.
Matching journals
The top 9 journals account for 50% of the predicted probability mass.
Similar papers in this journal
- Prioritizing conservation actions for Pacific salmon in Canada 91%
- Simulating drying and human impacts on river networks to evaluate biological quality indices performance through the lens of metacommunity theory 91%
- Fit by design: Developing substrate-specific seed mixtures for functional dike grasslands 91%
Similar papers in this journal
- Opportunities and challenges in using remote sensing for identifying grassland restoration sites and invasive tree species management in a global biodiversity hotspot 93%
- Water storage and irrigation practices associated with cannabis production drive seasonal patterns of water extraction and use in Northern California watersheds 91%
- Using Watershed Characteristics for Improving Fecal Source Identification 90%
Similar papers in this journal
- Capturing spatiotemporal variation in salt marsh belowground biomass, a key resilience metric, through geoinformatics 93%
- Phylogenetic diversity efficiently and accurately prioritizes the conservation of aquatic macroinvertebrate communities 93%
- Researcher effects on the biological structure and edaphic conditions of field sites and implications for management. 92%
Similar papers in this journal
- Agricultural margins could enhance landscape connectivity for pollinating insects across the Central Valley of California, U.S.A. 93%
- Vegetation characteristics control sediment and nutrient retention on but not underneath vegetation in floodplain meadows 92%
- Short-term coastal forest responses to a hurricane-scale freshwater and saltwater flooding experiment 92%
"Similar papers" are the closest papers from that journal in the model's embedding space. They show what the match is built on, but the ranking comes mostly from a classifier over the whole training set, not from these examples alone.