Great Plains Grassland Summit: Challenges and Opportunities from North to South

Summit Objectives

The objectives of the 2018 Great Plains Grassland Summit are to have participants learn more about and contribute science needs, ideas, and plans for managing, conserving and restoring grasslands at landscape scales and across boundaries in the Great Plains. Managers, researchers, and practitioners from all regions of the Great Plains and beyond are encouraged to attend.

Invited plenary experts will establish the context for the Summit by identifying challenges and opportunities focused around six themes:

• Working Lands
• Native Species and Biodiversity
• Invasive Species
• Wildland and Prescribed Fire
• Energy Development
• Climate, Weather and Water

Subsequent thematic breakout sessions will allow workshop participants to contribute ideas, issues, needs and steps towards an action plan to conserve, manage and restore Great Plains grasslands. A poster session will allow participants to contribute information on their own projects. A Summit report will be produced, based in large measure on feedback received during the breakout sessions, and additional synthesis papers will be published.
Great Plains Grassland Summit Steering Committee Members 

Summit Presentations

Click here to view the Summit Agenda, Speaker Biosketches, and Speaker Abstracts.

Summit Posters

Poster PDFs will be posted as they become available. Posters are listed alphabetically by lead author.

• Abegglen, Jeff – Grassland Restoration –The Importance of Partnerships and Momentum, Nebraska National Forests and Grasslands –Sandhills Units
• Alba, Christina – Increasing the value of plant collections for understanding grassland biodiversity in Colorado
• Baldwin, Heather Q. – Annual Brome Adaptive Management Project: Development of an adaptive resource management framework for National Parks within the Northern Great Plains
• Bauman, Pete – Alternative Methods for Determining Land Use History in South Dakota and Minnesota
• Bower, Andy – Know your zone: geo-query of provisional seed zones
• Brennan, Jameson – Impact of fire and heavy winter grazing on livestock use patterns
• Bruno, Jasmine E. – A systematic review of North American rangeland social science
• Dewes, Candida F. – Downscaled Projections of Extremes in Evaporative Demand
• Driscoll, Katelyn – After Fire: Toolkit for the Southwest
• Duchardt, Courtney – Disturbance drives avian communities on a grassland – sagebrush ecotone
• Dueker, Brittany – The Effects on the Management of Private Rangelands and Grasslands through Cost-Share Programs
• Dwyer, Angela – Private Lands Stewardship: Implications for Avian Conservation in the West
• Fogarty, Dillon T – Juniper Invasion Alters Grassland Ecosystem Services in the Great Plains
• Ford, Paulette – The Rangeland Vegetation Simulator: A system for quantifying production, succession, disturbance and fuels in non-forest environments
• Haefele, Michelle – Economic Value of Ecosystem Services Supported by Dryland and Grassland Environments
• Hobbins, Mike – Evaporative Demand Drought Index (EDDI)
• O’Malley, Robin – The North Central Climate Science Center: Delivering actionable science to help fish, wildlife, water, land, and people adapt to a changing climate
• Owen, Rachel K. – Playa Ecosystem Vulnerability in Future Climates: Taking Science to Stakeholders in the Great Plains
• Parker, Ryan – Trophic Ecology Warrants Multi-Species Management in a Grassland Setting: Modeling Swift Fox-Burrowing Owl-Mountain Plover Interactions on Black-Tailed Prairie Dog Colonies
• Reeves, Matt – Rangelands at Risk: A Geographic Analysis of Sustainability Indicators
• Schrader-Patton, Charlie – Rangeland phenology assessment using PhenoMap
• Sebastian, Derek – Seed Bank Depletion: The Key to Long-Term Invasive Winter Annual Grass Control
• Seedorf, Rachel – Comparing Natural Area Herbicides for Residual Weed Control and Native Species Tolerance
• Sketch, Mary – Understanding social factors to foster participation and post-program management behavior in the Conservation Reserve Program
• Symstad, Amy – Developing and Integrating Science for Decision Support Tools to Inform Bison and Ecosystem Management at Badlands National Park
• Wood, Clay W. – Needles in a Haystack: Identifying Thresholds in Annual Grass-Dominated Rangelands
• Yocum, Heather M. – Stakeholder engagement and application for the Evaporative Demand Drought Index (EDDI)
• Zhai, Xiajie – The creation of “Ecosystem Core” hypothesis to explain ecosystem evolution