Futures Analysis of Landscape Conservation and Greater Sage Grouse, Their Habitats, and Anthropogenic Influences from Energy Development

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The Service expects that this study will include: 1. Delineation of a broad study area of Federal lands and/or mineral estates, primarily in Management Zones I, II, and IV, essentially considering all areas of the greater sage-grouse range that coincides with major energy development (oil, gas, and wind). Working closely with the FWS to identify those lands on which to specifically develop the risk assessment model. 2. Gathering and assembly of applicable spatial data sets from Federal resource management plans. 3. Analysis of the data to provide a future quantitative description of energy development (anthropogenic) parameters for the study area. 4. Using data from areas where both projected lease data and actual development data exist, construction a model that assesses the risk to sage-grouse habitat for the study area. It is expected that the risk analysis will be represented by thresholds demarcating expected levels of use/occupancy of the subject species. 5. Working with Service database managers to link the model to a spatial analysis and attribute that spatial habitat map with the risk assessment. 6. Ensuring that lease and energy development spatial data layers are in standard GIS format and can be utilized in ARC GIS with other similarly formatted spatial data, such as population demographics, etc. 7. Making recommendations future work to improve accuracy, confidence, and/or to conduct validation. 8. Collaborating with Service experts and others in the publication of the findings.

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