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At least 433 records · Page 24Linked to original sources
USGS2002

Research plan for lands administered by the U.S. Department of the Interior in the Interior Columbia Basin and Snake River Plateau

This document presents a long-term research strategy designed to address current and future research needs for management of Department of the Interior-administered ecosystems in the Intermountain West. Although the research plan was developed in the context of the Interior Columbia Basin Ecosystem Management Project, the plan addresses many high-priority issues facing land managers throughout the Intermountain West. These issues pose management challenges that may be addressed with applied research both currently and in upcoming decades. Possessing a particular focus on semiarid ecosystems, the plan is a collection of research questions under five categories of research emphases: 1) restoration; 2) rangeland health; 3) aquatic-terrestrial connections; 4) development of monitoring and evaluation protocols; and 5) species and habitats at risk. The goal of the research strategy is to provide ideas for integrating emerging scientific understanding into future management in order to restore and maintain long-term ecosystem health and ecological integrity; provide consistent management direction over broad spatial and temporal scales; emphasize adaptive management over the long term; restore and maintain habitats for plant and animal species; and support economic and social needs of people, without compromising the above goals. Research questions are prioritized into three categories based on the immediacy of their need, feasibility of addressing the question rigorously under varying funding budgets, and magnitude of risk posed by not addressing the issue. The research strategy is intended to support and integrate with existing management efforts and strategies. As such, it melds observational studies with experimental manipulation, treating management actions as experiments whenever feasible. The research strategy focuses on disturbance processes and events that have been the primary drivers of change, to provide a predictive model for future changes. These drivers include fire, nonnative plants, herbivory, roads and associated human influences, and climate change. Whereas management in the western United States has striven to move from an inefficient species-based approach to a habitat-based approach, the plan focuses on ecosystem function and ecological processes as critical measures of habitat response. Because of the large amount and contiguity of public lands in the western United States, the region presents both a compelling opportunity to implement landscape-level science and a challenge to underst

Information and Technology Report↗
USGS1979

Geology, geochronology, and potential volcanic hazards in the Lava Ridge-Hells Half Acre area, eastern Snake River Plain, Idaho

The evaluation of volcanic hazards for the proposed Safety Test Reactor Facility (STF) at the Argonne National Laboratory-West (ANLW) site, Idaho National Engineering Laboratory (INEL), Idaho, involves an analysis of the geology of the Lava Ridge-Hells Half Acre area and of K-At age determinations on lava flows in cored drill holes. The ANLW site at INEL lies in a shallow topographic depression bounded on the east and south by volcanic rift zones that are the locus of past shield-type basalt volcanism and by rhyolite domes erupted along the ring fracture of an inferred rhyolite caldera. The K-At age data indicate that the ANLW site has been flooded by basalt lava flows at irregular intervals from perhaps a few thousand years to as much as 300,000-400,000 years, with an average recurrence interval between flows of approximately 80,000-100,000 years. At least five major lava flows have covered the ANLW site within the past 500,000 years.

Idaho↗