SageSTEP protects “the place where the sagebrush grows”
Atop the slopes and rocky foothills of the Great Basin grows sagebrush, one of the largest plant species in North America. Sprawling over 170 million acres in the western U.S., this spindly shrub hosts over 350 plant and animal species and plays a vital role in the ecosystems it inhabits.
A study published in 2022 by the U.S. Geological Survey indicates that 1.3 million acres of sagebrush are dying off every year — half have already vanished from the Great Basin alone. By 2050, what’s left of healthy sagebrush could be lost to the abiotic and biotic factors plaguing the species.
The Sagebrush Steppe Treatment Evaluation Project, dubbed SageSTEP, is actively working to find the most effective methods of preserving and restoring sagebrush to the Great Basin. For 20 years, the project has been collecting data on what land management strategies will best maintain sagebrush according to the location.
Geno Schupp, USU professor and plant ecologist, was one of the original designers for the project. Schupp now helps manage data collection for SageSTEP.
“It’s all focused on threats to sagebrush ecosystems,” Schupp said. “It can be easily argued that this is one of the most threatened ecosystems in North America.”
Mark Brunson, USU professor and social scientist, was on the original research team in 2003. Twenty years later, Brunson now heads the outreach program for SageSTEP.
When the project first began in 2005, Brunson managed the social aspect of the land alteration.
“My original role was to focus on people,” Brunson said. “If we’re making significant changes in what the landscape looks like, it’s useful to find out whether people can accept the changes.”
Within the first five years of the project’s start, Brunson conducted numerous studies on the sociological and economical impacts of different land management strategies.
After securing $13 million worth of funding from federal programs, SageSTEP was set to conduct full scale research at 21 different sites in seven states.
“We have sites in Washington, Oregon, California, Idaho, Utah and Nevada,” Brunson said.
Schupp identified the two biggest threats to sagebrush as cheatgrass in lower elevations and woodland encroachment at higher elevations. According to the Bureau of Land Management, not only is cheatgrass a highly invasive species, but its high flammability greatly increases the risk of wildfires, which can wipe out sagebrush.
Cheatgrass can be found in every state of the U.S., including Alaska and Hawaii. The invasive weed represents a huge problem for native plant species, covering over 50 million acres of land and growing.
According to research from University of Nevada, Reno Extension, woodland encroachment from pinyon-juniper species completely alters shrublands. In competition with pinyon-juniper for resources, sagebrush is quickly eliminated, and the biodiversity of the area greatly suffers.
“At higher elevations, sagebrush is pinched out by woodlands,” Schupp said. “It’s definitely degrading with respect to the quality of habitats for things like sage grouse, which is a concern for a lot of people.”
Sagebrush also acts as a safeguard against erosion.
“When these systems degrade, we lose the ability to hold onto water, and we get a lot more erosion because we don’t have that permanent perennial vegetation,” Schupp said.
According to Schupp, loss of sagebrush contributes to an uptick in wind erosion, scattering dust and pollutants in the air that trigger health problems such as asthma.
“Wind erosion has taken dust to the Wasatch Front,” Schupp said. “It’s sending people to the emergency room with respiratory issues.”
To prevent sagebrush loss, SageSTEP has split research into two experiments based on these threats. The first experiment is the cheatgrass network, with sites located in lower elevation areas most threatened by cheatgrass.
According to the SageSTEP website, the first experiment tests four land management options on these designated sites: “control (no management action), prescribed fire, mechanical thinning of sagebrush by mowing, and herbicide application.” The second experiment is the woodland network, located in higher elevation areas. It follows the structure of the cheatgrass network, with the addition of thinning via chainsaw and without herbicide application.
Wildfire resilience is a specific focus of SageSTEP’s research.
“We’re not trying to stop the fire,” Schupp said. “That’s not gonna happen. We have to learn to live with the fire. We work to make these endangered ecosystems more resilient so when a fire does come through, they will recover to natural functioning.”
According to Schupp, a healthy understory — a layer of vegetation beneath a plant or ecosystem of plants — is key to wildlife resilience.
“It’s that healthy understory more than the sagebrush that helps keep exotic weeds at bay after a fire,” Schupp said. “If we don’t have a healthy understory, it just converts to cheatgrass.”
SageSTEP’s primary goal is to understand how commonly-used treatments are affecting the plants and wildlife, then provide local resource managers with the knowledge.
“When looking at the ways land managers try to reduce fuel and wildfire hazard we asked, ‘What are the effects on the plants?’” Brunson said. “You don’t only care about the plants, you care about the wildlife and the pollinators.”
Sagebrush provides food, water and a home for a variety of species, the most popular being the fan-tailed white-chested sage grouse.
“Sagebrush is a system that not only supports sage grouse, but nine other dependent species,” Schupp said. “The sagebrush sparrow and pygmy rabbits, for example, depend on sagebrush habitat.”
There are no clear cut answers when it comes to treating sagebrush. SageSTEP has found what treatment is most effective is dependent on the location and the problem.
“I wish we could just tell people from the federal and state governments what to do,” Brunson said. “It depends. For example, sagebrush higher up in mountains recovers faster than sagebrush west of the Great Salt Lake. What we’ve been able to do is describe that variability to land managers.”
One general finding that has come from SageSTEP’s research is the vitality of cheatgrass.
“Where we have any sort of manipulation, we have more cheatgrass,” Brunson said. “We’re also seeing more cheatgrass in the control sites. This means that cheatgrass is a hugely successful species that has proven more hardy than anything that we’ve tried in this experiment.”
When it comes to pinyon-juniper encroachment, SageSTEP has found timing to be a crucial element in reducing sagebrush loss.
“You really shouldn’t wait till it has become a forest with a closed canopy,” Brunson said. “When that happens, fire burns through it faster, and you lose all the plants that would’ve been underneath.”
Scott Shaff is an ecologist with the U.S. Geological Survey and the program coordinator for SageSTEP. Shaff started at SageSTEP in 2006 as a site manager, overseeing site selection and coordinating with federal land managers.
Shaff has spent many days in the field, traveling across the West Coast and working with field crews at some of SageSTEP’s different networks.
“Every year in the fall, I go on a 7,000 mile road trip,” Shaff said. “It’s about 7,000 miles leaving from Corvallis, Oregon to hit all 18 sites and drive back. I see a lot of country on those trips.”
SageSTEP annually hires 10 to 12 recent graduates with a background in biology to make up the field crews collecting data at sites.
“You get some great experience doing different field protocols and see a lot of really cool country,” Shaff said. “We’re the only ones that really get to go out and see this beautiful country because it’s so far off the beaten path.”
In 2024, SageSTEP completed 15 years of post-treatment data collection, adding heaps of new knowledge to existing research around sagebrush restoration.
“What’s unusual about the project is that nobody gets to do research for 20 years straight,” Brunson said. “The Bureau of Land Management has been astonishingly helpful in keeping this going.”
With no ending planned for the near future, SageSTEP aims to keep adding to the data.
“We hope to continue the project for another 10 years to get to that 25 years post-treatment,” Shaff said. “The most important part of this project is our longevity. This is the longest running and largest replicated data set on field treatments in the Intermountain West.”
According to Shaff, long-term data provides a complete understanding of the treatment’s effects rather than a glimpse.
“If you do a treatment and only have two or three years with the data, that really just gives you a picture instead of a video of what’s really happening,” Shaff said.
According to Schupp, sagebrush acts as a source of recreation for hunting, camping and hiking as well as underappreciated natural beauty. SageSTEP seeks to preserve the beauty of where the sagebrush grows for generations to come.
“Some people don’t necessarily think so, but it’s a beautiful place,” Schupp said. “There’s an awful lot of recreation that takes place in sagebrush habitat. It’s a lot more of an enjoyable experience with healthy sagebrush than monotonous brown grass and dust.”