Composite estimates of land-health indicators of sagebrush in Wyoming sage-grouse Core and NonCore on Bureau of Land Management lands

Data are composite estimates (and standard errors) of the percentage of sagebrush area in desired conditions for 13 vegetation and soil indicators of land health on Bureau of Land Management (BLM) lands in Wyoming. Composite estimates were obtained using composite estimation to combine estimates from two overlapping BLM terrestrial, field-based monitoring surveys: the Assessment, Inventory, and Monitoring terrestrial survey and the Landscape Monitoring Framework survey. Both are probability sample surveys. The case study area was sagebrush communities in Wyoming Greater Sage-Grouse (sage-grouse) Core and NonCore conservation areas on BLM lands in Western Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies Greater Sage-Grouse Management Zone II (WAFWA MZ II) for the 2015-18 time period. Wyoming state-wide Core and NonCore areas were established to balance sage-grouse population and habitat protection with resource extraction such as oil and gas development. Core areas bound large sage-grouse populations and have stringent stipulations for protecting habitat and populations. NonCore are sage-grouse areas with less stringent protection. Sage-grouse management zones across the western U.S. were delineated based on similarity in floristics to aid in conservation management of the species. Data were used in a demonstration case study to compare the improvement in accuracy and precision of composite (combined) estimates over using estimates of the separate monitoring surveys. Each monitoring survey provided an estimate and variance of the percentage of sagebrush area in desired conditions for each indicator in each conservation area (Core, NonCore). Separately by conservation area and indicator, a variance weighting method was used to combine the two survey estimates, where the estimate with the lowest variance was more heavily weighted in obtaining the composite (combined) estimate. The data set consists of 13 composited indicator estimates and their standard errors in Core and in NonCore for the 2015-18 time period.

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  "010:12"
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  "geospatial"
]