The USGS is offering a funding opportunity to a CESU partner to support a collaborative research effort with USGS scientists to the past and the present to understand fire ecology in sagebrush habitats of the Gunnison sage- grouse.
The researchers will work with USGS FORT scientists to collect,
prepare, and analyze tree-ring fire-scar samples from in the upper Gunnison Basin, as well as collect and analyze vegetation data on fire effects in sagebrush ecosystems, which are habitat for Gunnison sage-grouse.
This work will increase our understanding of multi-century climate-fire-vegetation dynamics in sagebrush/forest ecotones in the upper Gunnison Basin, which has direct relevance for sagebrush ecosystem dynamics and sagebrush-dependent biota, including the threatened Gunnison sage-grouse.