A Different Way to Prioritize Land Management
The SageSHARE partnership, composed of federal, state and nonprofit scientists and land managers, developed the Threat-based Land Management approach to help stakeholders distill the complex ecology of sagebrush-steppe ecosystems into a few bins that can be easily understood and matched to pressing management needs.
The approach focuses on how invasive annual grasses, conifer encroachment and their interactions together and with wildfire are the most pressing threats facing sagebrush steppe. Because of the scope and scale of these threats, land managers need to address them before they can consider implementing other actions. Threat-based Land Management helps practitioners address these issues in a logical and systematic way.
To support widespread adoption of this approach, the SageSHARE partnership has created a detailed Manager's Guide that narrates the theory behind the approach, and a condensed and weatherproof Field Guide ready for users to bring into the field. You can find a white paper description of the Field Guide here.