Biology subjects

Reinhardt, J. R.

Publications and source records attributed to Reinhardt, J. R..

3 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2025

Estimating rangeland fractional cover and canopy gap size class with Sentinel-2 imagery

Rangelands are extensive ecosystems, providing important ecosystem services while undergoing continuous change. As a result, improved monitoring technologies can help better characterize vegetation change. Satellite remote sensing has proven effective in this regard, tracking vegetation dynamics at broad and fine scales. We leveraged the spatial, spectral, and temporal resolution of Sentinel-2 satellites to estimate fractional cover and canopy gap across rangelands of the western United States. We produced annual, 10 m spatial resolution estimates of fractional cover and canopy gap size class for years 2018 to 2024. Fractional cover estimates include that of common plant functional types (annual forb and grass, bareground, littler, perennial forb and grass, shrub, tree) and select genera (including invasive annual grass species, pinyon-juniper species, and sagebrush species); canopy gap size classes include gap sizes 25 to 50, 51 to 100, 101 to 200, and greater than 200 cm. We make these data available as Cloud Optimized GeoTIFFs, organized as 75x75 km tiles covering the 17 western states of the United States.

ecology↗

bioRxiv2024

A Spatial Prioritization of Conifer Management to Defend and Grow Sagebrush Cores

Sagebrush ecosystems across the western U.S. are in decline due to numerous threats, including expansion of coniferous woodlands and forests. The interagency Sagebrush Conservation Design effort recently quantified sagebrush ecological integrity (SEI) to map remaining core sagebrush areas (relatively intact and functional sagebrush ecosystems) and understand spatial and temporal patterns of change relative to primary threats. This work identified conifer expansion as the second leading cause of decline in sagebrush ecological integrity biome wide. Here, we sought to create a spatial prioritization of conifer management that maximizes return-on-investment to defend and grow core sagebrush areas. Multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) was used to incorporate a series of biome-level inputs including SEI, invasive annual grass cover and risk, structural connectivity, and conifer cover and expansion vulnerability into a single prioritization based on collaborative expert input. Our analysis identifies priority areas for conifer management across the sagebrush biome, simulates conifer treatments based on those priorities, and estimates potential changes in SEI as a result of targeted treatment. At a broad scale, we found that the highest priority areas for conifer management were largely located east of the Rocky Mountains. This represents a departure from recent landscape-level trends conifer management efforts in sagebrush systems, which were focused primarily pinyon-juniper expansion in the Great Basin. A majority (52%) of the highest priority areas are managed by the Bureau of Land Management, followed by a large proportion (26%) of priority areas located on privately-owned land - particularly in Wyoming and Montana. Targeting simulated conifer treatments using our prioritization resulted in higher within-core targeting percentages ([≥]93%) than business-as-usual efforts (23.8%), which would result in a four- to eight-fold reduction in the time to treat priority areas within cores. Finally, we demonstrate that these simulated treatments, targeted with our prioritization, have the capacity to improve SEI in and around treatment areas. This work provides an actionable path to "Defend the Core" as outlined by the Sagebrush Conservation Design effort by helping conservationists more efficiently address conifer expansion in and around core sagebrush areas.

ecology↗

bioRxiv2022

Optimizing targeting of pinyon-juniper management for sagebrush birds of conservation concern while avoiding imperiled pinyon jay

Contemporary restoration and management of sagebrush-dominated (Artemisia spp.) ecosystems across the intermountain west of the United States increasingly involves the removal of expanding conifer, particularly juniper (Juniperus spp.) and pinyon pine (Pinus edulis, P. monophylla). The impetus behind much of this management has been the demonstrated population benefits of sagebrush restoration via conifer removal to greater sage-grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus), a species of conservation concern. One of the challenges with scaling up from a focal-species approach to a community-level perspective, however, is balancing the habitat requirements of different species, some of which may overlap with sage-grouse and others which may have competing habitat needs. Here, we use a systematic conservation planning approach to compute spatial optimizations which prioritize areas for conifer removal across the sage-grouse range while incorporating woodland and sagebrush songbirds into decision-making. Three of the songbirds considered here, Brewers sparrow (Spizella breweri), green-tailed towhee (Pipilo chlorurus), and sage thrasher (Poocetes gramineus), are sagebrush-obligates, while another is a woodland-obligate, the pinyon jay (Gymnorhinus cyanocephalus). We find that the inclusion of sagebrush-obligates expands the model-selected area of consideration for conifer management, likely because habitat overlap between sagebrush-obligates is imperfect. The inclusion of pinyon jay, a woodland-obligate, resulted in substantial shifts in the distribution of model-selected priority areas for conifer removal - particularly away from pinyon jay strongholds in Nevada and east-central California. Finally, we compared the conifer optimizations created here with estimates of ongoing conifer removal efforts across the intermountain west and find that a small proportion (13-18%) of management efforts had occurred on areas predicted as being important for pinyon jay, suggesting that much of the ongoing work is already successfully avoiding critical pinyon jay habitat areas.

ecology↗