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Current and projected sagebrush ecological integrity across the Western U.S., 2017-2100 (ver. 2.0, February 2025)

Understanding how climate change will contribute to ongoing declines in sagebrush ecological integrity is critical for informing natural resource management. We assessed potential future changes in sagebrush ecological integrity under a range of scenarios using an individual plant-based simulation model, integrated with remotely sensed estimates of current sagebrush ecological integrity. The simulation model allowed us to estimate how climate change, wildfire, and invasive annuals interact to alter the potential abundance of key plant functional types that influence sagebrush ecological integrity: sagebrush, perennial grasses, and annual grasses. We provide GeoTIFFs of biome-wide projections of future sagebrush ecological integrity (as described in Holdrege et al., 2024) under two representative concentration pathways (RCP4.5 and RCP8.5) and time-periods (2031-2060 and 2071-2100) and we provide these projections for multiple model assumptions. Additionally, this data set provides accompanying projections of three of the components of sagebrush ecological integrity, which are the Q (‘quality’, see Doherty et al., 2022) scores for sagebrush, perennial forbs and grasses, and annual forbs and grasses. Additional GeoTIFFs included provide current (2017-2020) Q scores and sagebrush ecological integrity, as well as projected changes in the extent of Core Sagebrush Areas, Growth Opportunity Areas, and Other Rangeland Areas.

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Author(s) Martin C. Holdrege, Daniel R Schlaepfer orcid, Kyle A. Palmquist orcid, David M Theobald orcid, John B Bradford orcid
Publication Date 2024-06-28
Beginning Date of Data 2017
Ending Date of Data 2100
Data Contact
DOI https://doi.org/10.5066/P13RXYZJ
Citation Holdrege, M.C., Schlaepfer, D.R., Palmquist, K.A., Theobald, D.M., and Bradford, J.B., 2024, Current and projected sagebrush ecological integrity across the Western U.S., 2017-2100 (ver. 2.0, February 2025): U.S. Geological Survey data release, https://doi.org/10.5066/P13RXYZJ.
Metadata Contact
Metadata Date 2025-02-18
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Citations of these data No citations of these data are known at this time.
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License http://www.usa.gov/publicdomain/label/1.0/
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Harvest Source: ScienceBase
Harvest Date: 2025-02-19T05:11:15.014Z