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Sagebrush-Steppe Cooperative Habitat Condition Class Assessment Project

Cooperative partners; Blankenship, Kori
11/1/2010
link DOWNLOAD FILE: DOWNLOAD FILE (3,648K)

Sage-steppe habitat is declining or disappearing across much of its range due in part to weed invasion, juniper expansion and altered fire frequency. The decline and fragmentation of this habitat impacts wildlife and livestock who use it for forage. An assessment of habitat condition is needed to help the Cooperative prioritize its work and determine appropriate management actions. Few data sources are available to make an assessment across the area of interest. The LANDFIRE project provides the only dataset of vegetation conditions (Fire Regime Condition Class, or FRCC) for the entire project area, but the dataset is calculated at a broad scale that is not suitable to meet the goals of the Cooperative. The Cooperative decided to use LANDFIRE’s map of current vegetation and its models of reference conditions to calculate a related measure of departure called Succession Class Relative Amount (SCRA). SCRA depicts the departure of current vegetation conditions from reference conditions for individual seral-stages within a vegetation type (Biophysical Setting, or BpS).

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