USGS Biological Science for Nevada, the Silver State

U.S. Geological Survey, Fact Sheet 2017–3075, October 2017.

Nevada's natural wealth

Nevada is rich in minerals, energy, rangeland, mountains, deserts, lakes, fish and wildlife, and much of its economy rests on them:

• Energy: a national leader in geothermal and utility-scale solar, with more than $1.2 million invested in solar development in 2016 alone.
• Agriculture, mainly livestock: more than half a billion dollars a year.
• Wildlife watching, hunting and fishing: more than $1 billion a year.

The USGS Ecosystems Mission Area — the Interior Department's biological research arm — provides science to help Nevada manage and conserve these resources.

A renewable energy powerhouse

Nevada has plenty of geothermal, solar and wind power and aims to be the country's leading renewable producer. The USGS studies how wildlife needs, behavior and movements interact with energy facilities, so developers can produce more power with less harm to Great Basin and Mojave Desert wildlife.

• Solar: methods for counting bird and bat deaths built for utility-scale solar plants.
• Tortoises: a wireless sensor network finds the corridors desert tortoises use between energy installations.

Greater sage-grouse: a sign of the sagebrush's health

A male greater sage-grouse, North America's largest grouse. Tom Koerner, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

The sage-grouse draws birdwatchers and hunters, and it is a sentinel for the sagebrush steppe, an iconic western landscape threatened by invasive grasses and wildfire.

• The USGS built a monitoring approach for populations and habitat that measures whether conservation works and gives early warning of declines, and is improving sage-grouse habitat maps.
• Managers use these to decide where to site development, where to restore habitat, and whether their efforts are working — for the birds and for ranchers and landowners who depend on healthy sagebrush.
• In 2015, USGS research helped determine that federal protection was not needed.

Bringing back bighorn sheep

Bighorn sheep have been part of Nevada's food, culture and identity since its first people. By 1970, fewer than 3,000 were left; a statewide restoration effort has brought them to an estimated 11,700.

USGS scientists are studying mountain lion predation and deadly pneumonia outbreaks. In the aptly named Sheep Range, lions were first blamed for the declines, but joint USGS–Nevada research showed that disease may matter more.

Fighting cheatgrass

Cheatgrass and other invasive grasses crowd out sagebrush plants that livestock and wildlife need, and burn so readily they drive large, frequent fires — hence the nickname "grassoline."

• Traditional weed control has had limited success, and can even make cheatgrass spread faster. The USGS worked out why methods succeed in some places and fail in others, so managers can pick what will work on their site.
• New tools under test: a weed-suppressive soil bacterium, promising for landscape-scale control, and targeted grazing.

Recovering from wildfire

Fire is natural in Nevada's sagebrush, but cheatgrass has changed the fuel, making fires more frequent and catastrophic. Invaders often take burned ground before natives can, feeding a cycle of fire and invasion. In 2016 alone, Nevada had more than 460 wildfires, burning more than 265,000 acres.

With Nevada, the USGS built tools to break the cycle: to choose which habitat to protect from fire and which burns to restore first. A handbook pulls the research together for land managers restoring habitat for sage-grouse, mule deer and pronghorn, and for ranchers and cattle.

Keeping out quagga mussels

Quagga mussels have invaded Lake Mead, where they hurt recreation and threaten the lake's ecosystem and water intakes, and they threaten Lake Tahoe and other Nevada waters — including drinking water and native species. They most likely travel overland on boating and fishing gear, so public education is key. The USGS Nonindigenous Aquatic Species Program supplies reports, distribution maps and information that Nevada biologists use to monitor, watch for new arrivals, and teach boaters and anglers.

Sources

Based on Biological and Ecological Science for Nevada—The Silver State, USGS Fact Sheet 2017–3075, U.S. Geological Survey; a work of the United States government in the public domain. The introduction, the photo captions and the sage-grouse photograph are taken from the fact sheet's PDF, which the import had left out; its other photographs — stock images and ones credited to individuals or the Moapa Band of Paiute Indians — are not reproduced. The fact sheet calls the pronghorn "antelope."