Maps of habitat suitability improvement potential for the Dove Creek Gunnison Sage-grouse (Centrocercus minimus) satellite population in Southwestern Colorado

Habitat restoration efforts to conserve wildlife species are often conducted along a range of local site conditions, with limited information available to gauge relative outcomes for habitat suitability among sites and identify those that may lead to the greatest returns on restoration investment. We leveraged existing resource selection function models to generate heatmaps of spatially varying habitat suitability improvement potential for the Gunnison Sage-grouse (Centrocercus minimus) based on a suite of habitat restoration actions deployed across crucial habitats within six remaining satellite populations. We first simulated expected change in model covariates (habitat features) from a suite of restoration actions (increasing sagebrush, herbaceous, or litter cover, non-sagebrush shrub management, installation of mesic improvement structures, and removal of invasive plants) to generate modified input layers for each. We then reran the original models using these modified layers and calculated the predicted change in habitat suitability across space. The resulting heatmaps identify areas with the greatest improvement potential for each restoration action to help guide strategic restoration planning for the species. This data release, for the Dove Creek satellite population, includes a set of 8 total raster files. These include: 4 uncategorized heatmaps illustrating predicted change in Gunnison Sage-grouse habitat suitability across space following habitat restoration actions (either single or combined), and 4 categorized heatmaps additionally showing areas where 1) new habitat was created, 2) non-habitat remained non-habitat despite management interventions, or 3) negative changes in suitability were observed. Habitat restorations vary by population depending on the reference model. We only ran management action simulations when the reference model had covariates suitable for the simulation (for example, pinyon juniper removal was only run when pinyon juniper was a covariate; See Saher and others (2022) for model details). Note that Saher and others (2022) indicated that there was insufficient Gunnison sage-grouse use data to develop a summer model for that population. Consequently, we do not present the effect of management actions on sage-grouse habitat for that population during the summer season. Raster file names are coded as follows: DCb = Dove Creek Breeding ahrb_rm = annual herbaceous removal (decrease in cover) combo = combined actions mes_impr = mesic improvements (increase in area) pos_incr = increase percent other sagebrush (non-big sagebrush) C = CATEGORIZED Maps V = UNCATEGORIZED Maps

[
  "010:12"
]

[
  "geospatial"
]