Assessing Whole Landscapes: BLM's Rapid Ecoregional Assessments and the USGS

Aspen landscape near Fairplay, Colorado. Photograph by Tasha Carr, USGS, 2014.

Why look at whole landscapes

Public lands face environmental stresses that cross management boundaries. To meet them, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is developing a Landscape Approach to managing the many uses of public lands and the sustained yield of their renewable resources.

• It uses information at several scales to measure how natural and human influences affect resource conditions and trends.
• Its main goal is to find opportunities for conservation, restoration and development.
• Regional synthesis reveals important resources and effects of environmental change that may not show at finer scales — key wildlife habitats, ecological communities, and pristine or unique areas with high conservation potential.

The approach fits the Interior Department's Landscape-Scale Mitigation Strategy, which aims to move from project-level to broad-scale, science-based management that helps avoid, minimize and compensate for harm to natural resources. Both call for methods that make decisions consistent, identify what makes ecosystems resilient to rapid change, and foster collaboration among land agencies.

Rapid Ecoregional Assessments

A major part of the Landscape Approach is the Rapid Ecoregional Assessment (REA) program. REAs identify important ecosystems and where they are at risk from development, climate change, wildfire, invasive species and other stressors. A central goal is measuring landscape intactness — the condition of the land.

BLM Rapid Ecoregional Assessments initiated or completed as of 2014. Modified from BLM.

• Since 2010, BLM has started or finished 15 REAs, with more planned.
• The first guidelines were deliberately flexible, to meet local needs and encourage innovation. Federal and state agencies and nongovernmental groups advised on methods and reported what worked and what didn't.
• Now BLM and the USGS will systematically compare REA methods to find the most promising landscape tools, and build practical examples of using assessment results — for instance, to weigh the cumulative effects of proposed actions, as the National Environmental Policy Act requires.

The result will be technical guidance for doing and applying broad-scale assessments: scientifically defensible methods, consistent and transparent decisions at many scales, and ways to use regional information within and across jurisdictions.

What the guidance will cover

1. Scoping

Deciding which management issues, species or communities, and stressors to address, and building the ecological foundation for the assessment. Clear selection criteria for priority resources make the process transparent. Scoping needs managers and scientists working together: managers know what information decisions need; scientists judge whether methods are feasible and sound. Repeated feedback on methods and draft products shows they work and builds trust in using them.

2. A common framework

A framework gives a clear overview of the assessment: shared management and conservation questions, common datasets and methods, products usable across regions, a defined workflow, templates for documentation, and clear definitions of terms — consistent across jurisdictions, yet flexible for local needs.

An assessment framework from the Wyoming Basin REA. "Change agents" — development, invasive species, fire, climate change — are the risks or stressors. BLM and USGS.

3. Geospatial methods

• Standard analyses, such as measures of landscape intactness, for consistency among ecoregions; experts in broad-scale modeling will be invited to evaluate methods.
• New standardized indices — such as an index of ecological integrity — to compare across ecoregion boundaries.
• Guidance on the right scale for each analysis, and on the accuracy and resolution of source data, so results are applied at appropriate scales.
• Better understanding of uncertainty, given how limited the data are for most resources and risks.

4. Putting it to use

Managers need help using multiscale information in Resource Management Plans and project reviews. Examples, guidance and test applications of REA data will help them look beyond single projects to issues that span landscapes and administrative lines.

Sonoran desert tortoise in Arizona. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

How this serves the Interior strategy

The Interior Department's strategy aims for a common landscape-scale approach across its bureaus, to balance development with conservation. The Landscape Approach, the REAs and the new guidance support four of its desired outcomes:

• Geospatial assessments: an information system — data, analysis and decision-support tools, and guidelines — to find conservation priorities and development opportunities.
• Landscape-level strategies: tools to apply the avoid–minimize–compensate hierarchy to energy, infrastructure, mineral and water development.
• Compensatory mitigation: accessible, transparent multiscale information, and knowledge of what makes ecosystems resilient, to set landscape goals.
• Monitoring and evaluation: metrics and benchmarks to track changes in land and water condition and measure whether mitigation works.

Sources

Based on Natasha Carr, David Wood, Zachary Bowen and Travis Haby, "Broad-scale assessments of ecological landscapes: developing methods and applications," U.S. Geological Survey Fact Sheet 2015–3007 (2015), with the Bureau of Land Management; a work of the United States government in the public domain. The photographs, map and diagram are taken from the fact sheet's PDF. Photographs credited to Colorado State University and to Mountain Post—Digital Imaging, and two intactness maps modified from NatureServe and the Conservation Biology Institute, are not reproduced.