GSDUpdate: All Together Now:
Collaboration in Research and Stewardship
for Our 21st Century Lands
(May 2012):
Sometimes it feels as though problems as large as those affecting our public lands are insurmountable.
But through collaborative consumption, we’ve learned to crowdsource financing, share digital files,
create software, establish lending libraries for hammers, rakes, tractors and even rent spare bedrooms to travelers. The new mindset has opened up the ways we operate to manage our natural
resources, through collaborative studies, stewardship and conservation.
GSDUpdate: The West In Transition –
Costs and Unexpected Benefits of Disrupting Ecosystems (February 2012):
For centuries, the resilience of western ecosystems kept pace with changes in climate, native species and peoples, and other natural
stressors.
With the arrival of European settlers, however, the dynamics began
to change.
Continuing new knowledge is needed to sustain healthy ecosystems
as they undergo rapid changes to meet human needs.
Scientists at USDA
Forest Service Rocky Mountain Research Station’s Grassland, Shrubland and Desert Ecosystem Research Program are investigating
both natural and human-made stressors, and their results could help conserve native species and essential Western ecosystems.
GSDUpdate: Restoration on the Range: Healing America’s Iconic Landscapes (November 2011):
Western rangelands provide the wide-open spaces that are integral to the identity of the American West. Seen as the backdrop to countless western films, these landscapes provide sustenance to the region’s people and its iconic flora and fauna, such as sagebrush, cactus, antelope and roadrunners. But native rangelands have disappeared at an alarming rate over the past century. At least 272 million acres of rangelands that greeted early European settlers have vanished, converted to croplands, forests, urban developments, industrial sites, roads and reservoirs.
Invasive species are the focus of the September 2011 issue of GSDUpdate: What Are Invasive Species? And Do We Really Need to Worry About Them?
An invasive species is any species – non-native or native to a region – that could cause economic or ecological harm to an area.
Invasives can be weeds, shrubs and trees, insects, mollusks, vertebrates and even microorganisms and pathogens such as exotic
bacteria, fungi and viruses.
Are invasive species really that big of a problem?
Yes.
The July 2011 inaugural issue of GSDUpdate: Checking the Range for Signs of Climate Change In the Past, Present and Future, a research review of the Program, focuses on the efforts toward understanding the role of climate in shaping the environment.