Healthy big sagebrush habitat is essential for the persistence of many high value conservation species across the Western U.S. To gain confidence in predictions of climate change impacts on existing populations of big sagebrush, we compared output from four modeling approaches, each based on different data and assumptions. The models consistently predicted that rising temperatures will decrease sagebrush cover and biomass only in the warmest portions of the region, but will have neutral or even positive effects on sagebrush across much of its current distribution. All locations where our models agree on negative impacts fall within areas classified as having low resistance and resilience to plant invasions and fire. These results indicate that climate change will not undermine investments in sagebrush conservation and restoration except in the warmest and least resilient portions of the region. An important caveat is that our models do not consider how climate change will interact with the invasive grass-fire cycle, which is a high priority for future research.
Oral presentation and poster titles, abstracts, and authors from the Society for Range Management (SRM) Annual Meetings and Tradeshows, from 2013 forward.