FORT >
Science Programs >
Greater Yellowstone Initiative
KEYWORDS
ecosystem science, human impacts, wildlife, National
Parks, National Wildlife Refuges, GIS, information transfer, landscape,
mapping, methods development, modeling, ecosystems, landscape ecology,
biogeography, wildlife, mapping, hydrology, geology
GEOGRAPHIC DISTRIBUTION
Montana, Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, Idaho
Project Description
The Greater Yellowstone Area (GYA) encompasses about
18 million acres and includes adjacent headwaters of the Columbia and
Missouri Rivers in Montana, Idaho and Wyoming. At its geographic core
lie two of the nation's most prominent national parks, Yellowstone and
Grand Teton. Public lands surrounding these parks include six national
forests, two national wildlife refuges, and lands managed by the Bureau
of Land Management and Native American tribes. These borderlands are
interspersed with private agricultural lands, towns, and various other
holdings. This complex of public and private lands offers amenities
that attract people to the region in increasing numbers; clean air and
water, abundant wildlife, scenic vistas, and rural settings are, in
fact, attracting people at a rate that places the region among the five
fastest growing areas in the nation. The natural resources of this area
are beginning to be adversely impacted by unplanned residential growth,
commercial development, and recreational activities. Of immediate concern
are the unique thermal resources of the central plateau, quality of
headwater streams and lakes, integrity of regional wildlife populations,
and fragmentation of formerly continuous biological communities. Management
solutions to these concerns will require a careful balance to maintain
ecological integrity while allowing for continued growth and a good
quality of life. Land management proceeds most effectively when there
is a clear and common understanding of the underlying resource. A foundation
of credible knowledge about the landscape and it component parts is,
therefore, needed to provide a shared basis for planning and decision
making. Some of the requisite information is currently available for
the GYA, but requires identification, processing, archiving, interpretation,
and synthesis to be useful for regional-level planning; some important
gaps will require identification and implementation of new projects
to fill information needs. This project will provide a basis for collating
a shared information base, analyzing resource status and trends, predicting
impacts of human activities and providing decision support tools for
resource managers. Initially, work will address six major objectives,
with an emphasis on developing decision support for management issues
related to wildlife- human interactions in the GYA:
1. Collate existing telemetry data for large mammals
and their predators.
2. Identify and fill high priority spatial data gaps
required for understanding large mammal habitat use patterns.
3. Map and model habitat use patterns of the large
mammal community.
4. Map and model patterns of human activity with
emphases on transportation systems, residential and commercial development,
agriculture, and recreation.
5. Evaluate and compare patterns of interactions
among the large-mammal and human communities.
6. Identify areas of ecological sensitivity, develop
management option scenarios, and provide an information framework
for decision analysis and adaptive management.
Principal Investigator(s)
Douglas Ouren
Kimberly Keating
Don Despain
Peter Gogan
Top of Page
|
Staff Directory
Science
Programs
Aquatic
Systems & Technology Apps
Ecosystem
Dynamics
International
Ctr for Applied Ecology
Invasive
Species Science
Policy Analysis
& Science Assistance
Species
& Habitats of Federal Interest
Science
Support
Product
Library
News & Events
Science
Features
Search FORT
|
|