Conserving and enhancing Sage-Grouse habitat requires accurate and precise delineation of sagebrush and other functional ground cover conditions. With a spatially precise representation of habitat - wildlife managers can create plans and that focus on conserving high value habitat, enhancing moderate habitat, while identifying poor habitat. Thus, plans can be created that have the greatest effects on sage grouse populations. Ideally, the efficacy and success of these plans should then be assessed. Using 4,000 radio telemetry Sage-Grouse observations Open Range Consulting created habitat maps from two remotely sensed data sets. The first dataset was the 30m Landfire EVT that is generally being used by the federal agencies to assess sage grouse habitat. The second dataset was Open Range Consulting's (ORC) 1m Earth Sense Technology (EST). ORC's EST provided the accurate and precise delineation of functional ground cover conditions that is necessary in making, implementing, and monitoring Sage-Grouse management plans at the spatial scales described in the Sage-Grouse Habitat Assessment Framework.
Oral presentation and poster titles, abstracts, and authors from the Society for Range Management (SRM) Annual Meetings and Tradeshows, from 2013 forward.