NRCS Conservation Practices and Materials
Prairie & Savanna Restoration (MO)
Job sheet
Map of NRCS States Opting In/Out of WLFW Northern bobwhite
In February 2021, NRCS requested that 30 state offices within the northern bobwhite current or historic range submit a final decision to National Headquarters on opting in or out of WLFW Northern bobwhite, Grasslands and Savannas. The decisions were completely voluntary and dependent on each states interest and ability to commit. These maps depict the distribution of states and their responses. Note that Oklahoma has now joined (and we need to updated this map)!
645 Covey Headquarters Planning Job Sheet (MO example)
645 Quail Covey Headquarters Planning example from Missouri NRCS
314-Brush Management: Quail (GA and SE example)
314- Brush Management Practice. This job sheet has been specifically modified for Northern Bobwhite in the Southeastern United States.
647 Early Successional Habitat Management
674 Early Successional Habitat Management Job Sheet. This job sheet was modified for Bobwhite management in the Southeastern United States.
666-Forest Stand Improvement for Bobwhite Quail
666- Forest Stand Improvement. This job sheet has been modified specifically for the management of Bobwhite Quail and other early successional species in the Southeastern United States. • Follow state Best Management Practices (BMPs) for forestry and all applicable laws and regulations. Creating and maintaining open canopy pine savanna with the implementation of proper thinnings in combination with frequent prescribed fire and/or brush management (see job sheets for Prescribed Burning for Bobwhite Quail-338 and/or Brush Management for Bobwhite Quail-314) will provide the required conditions needed for a host of species dependent or favored by early successional habitat such as quail, deer, turkey, songbirds, small mammals, native grasses and wild flowers, pollinator insects and plants.
338-Prescribed Burning
338-Prescribed Burning. This job sheet has been modified for Bobwhite Quail management in the Southeastern United States. Caution: Prescribed burning should be conducted only by those who are trained and experienced in its use. The landowner is responsible for obtaining all permits and clearances as required by law.
FY17-21 WLFW-Northern bobwhite Map
This map was current as of FY21 for NRCS WLFW-Northern bobwhite but updated for FY22 based on the NRCS state offices that opted into the Northern bobwhite, Grasslands and Savannas Framework partnership (by FY22 there will be 24 states).
WLFW Science to Solutions: Economics of NWSG Forage
This fact sheet is part of a WLFW series called Science to Solutions which seeks to share technical information in a format that's user-friendly. Prepared by University of Tennessee professors Dr. Pat Keyser of the Native Grasslands Management Center and Dr. Chris Boyer, an economist.
Bobwhite-specific Ranking Tool (GA example)
This ranking tool was used in Georgia when they had a separate fund pool for a special bobwhite project.
General/Terrestrial Ranking Guidance (GA example)
Whether a NRCS state has ranking fund pools or guidance that is bobwhite specific varies, many simply have a terrestrial ranking/funding pool. This is an example of ranking guidance for a general terrestrial sign-up in Georgia.
Multi-State WHEG (based on GA's)
The attached WHEG was developed in GA but later shared and adopted by many other NRCS states.
Progress, Goal-Setting Spreadsheet, & Next Steps: Bridgett Costanzo
Bridgett Costanzo presenting at the WLFW Northern Bobwhite, Grasslands and Savannas National Partnership Meeting. February 24, 2021. Bridgett is the Regional Coordinator for WLFW, NRCS
WLFW Field Perspective: J.B. Daniel
J.B. Daniel presenting at the WLFW Northern Bobwhite, Grasslands and Savannas National Partnership Meeting. February 23, 2021. J.B. is a grazing specialist with NRCS.
Small carpetgrass (Arthraxon hispidus)
Small carpetgrass is also known as hairy joint and/or joint head grass. It is a low-growing, sprawling annual grass. Small carpet grass grows up to one and a half feet in height. Stems root at nodes and have bright green clasping leaves which are often sparsely hairy on the margins. This grass grows in wet areas such as stream banks, shorelines, flood plains and wet meadows. It prefers sunny, moist areas.
Carol Denhof: The Longleaf Alliance
Carol Denhof, President of the Longleaf Alliance, discusses landscape-level conservation of longleaf pine ecosystems across the Southeast and the role of collaboration between the Alliance, landowners/farmers, NRCS, and others.
Doerr, Maria
Maria supports strategic coalition building within the Landscape Partnership
Expertise
Watershed and water delivery management (dams, reservoirs) (incl. dam removal/fish passage) Urban development (incl. zoning) Climate/Earth and Atmospheric Science Adaptation (management response and facilitation) Community relations, facilitation, conflict resolution Structured decision-making and risk-management analysisUSDA Launches Strategy to Continue Conserving the Gopher Tortoise and its Critical Habitat
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) has released its new 5-year plan to conserve the Southeast’s threatened gopher tortoise by focusing on the conservation and restoration of its key habitat, the longleaf pine forests. Acting NRCS Chief Kevin Norton told Southeast AgNet the fate of the gopher tortoise is linked to habitat quality, and efforts to conserve habitat on private lands will be critical to its continued survival.
Re: General Scoping Recommendations/Discussion
Q&A notes as shared by Tall Timbers on today's (08.26.2020) technical review call: 1)How are you spatially assigning active fire detections with burned area products? We have not developed a methodology to do that at this time, however this is of interest as we continue to explore how active fire detections may contribute to burned area products and might be used as ancillary data. 2) How did you tag active fire detections with FFS OBA? Through temporal matching and then visual analysis. No automated method with our approach, although an automated approach would need to be developed for larger regional analysis. Given the issues with OBA’s we would have to evaluate if this would be a useful exercise. 3) How does Tall Timbers get around the inherent problems with the prescribed fire records? We acknowledge the limitations of these data and use them as general location of the treatment. Depending on the source, many of the fire records do not represent the true area that was burned. 4) Is there a leading fire mapping standard in use which would support improved compatibility? – Considering both RS and stakeholder database systems. Fire mapping standards vary between agencies and private landowners with regards to mapping and attribution. There have been some efforts to combine UDSA (FACTS) and DOI (NFPORS) treatment datasets using WFM RD&A’s Fuel Treatment Integrator so data can be standardized for applications such as IFTDSS, WFDSS, EGP, etc. For RS datasets and products, each has standardized attribution specific to the sensor or product. 5) Can FL database be a surrogate for other state permitting systems? The FL database is a remote sensing application that produces fire history metrics based on burn probability from LANDSAT BA products. Each state has it’s own system for tracking burn authorizations. A standardized permitting system might be best coordinated through the Southern Group of State Foresters. 6) Could TTRS potentially create some kind of a fire probability layer? This could be done by examining convergence of all fire detections or potentially by assigning probability to the modelling process. Very good question and the short answer is yes Tall Timbers is working on prescribed fire probability mapping based on RS data as well as climatology, fuels, vegetation, etc. This is active but unpublished research currently being conducted by our Fire Science folks. 7) Would it be worth considering including in the final scope of work a requirement to assess which burn permits were fulfilled (or a subset of permits)? That would allow statements like “Of the X burn permits in 2020, Y% of permits actually resulted in a fire. Of those, Z% were detected by satellites.” This would be challenging as there is no reporting mechanism for state burn permits to be reported complete or acres burned verified. Additionally, spatial accuracy of the permit location is problematic given that burn permits can be up to 2km from actual permitted location and single points representing multiple burn units can be up to ~ 10 km away [Nowell et al., 2018] The use of reference imagery would be insufficient to overcome these challenges. 8) Incorporating permit data will be critical to attribute the satellite-based fire/burned area detection as prescribed fire. Agree that permit data would be the best source of attribution but unsure of how to overcome challenges. 9) Is the focus of the SE FireMap and current scoping effort focused on only prescribed fire? No, we accept that the final product will be RS based and there is not differentiation between wildfire and prescribed fire. The interim report may have been confusing in this aspect as we used permit records and prescribed fire landowner records as a focus for detection analysis. We recognize that both wildfire and prescribed fire result in ecological change on the landscape and are both important. 10) TTRS should consider evaluating commercial RS products as part of the scoping process. Tall Timbers has conducted literature review of several mapping efforts using commercial satellites. We are aware of several studies that have successfully used commercial products to produce burned area and burn severity maps of small scale plots, we have seen no regional applications. The reason for this is the high cost of commercial imagery. For example, WorldView-3 that has been used in several studies by Tall Timbers collaborators in the New Jersey Pine Barrens cost ~$22.50 per SqKm. Considering that Florida is 170,000 SqKm alone and revisit time of < 2 days, obtaining even 1 year of imagery would be cost prohibitive for the SE. Additionally, beyond a more in depth literature review and providing commercial pricing for sensors to the TOT, Tall Timbers does not have access to commercial imagery to further evaluate. 11) SEFireMap product definition should include additional target accuracy metrics. In addition to the current desired detection threshold for fire size (5-10 acres), consider omission/commission error and how to appropriately set bounds We would defer to the published accuracy assessments of sensors and products reviewed in the scoping phase and NRCS to set appropriate bounds for the SE FireMap. 12) Consider fostering discussion with DOD about accessibility of military satellite data? Andy Beavers shared contacts and offered to reach out... Tall Timbers would be happy to review any DOD remotely sensed burned area or fire detection products. Once we have a chance to assess the products we would certainly be interested in a discussion of how military satellite data could be incorporated into the SE FireMap.
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