The Great Lakes-Northern Forests CESU and USGS are offering this grant to identify priority conservation areas in the Midwestern United States.

Goals:
-Provide appropriately qualified, trained and experienced personnel in order to perform its obligations under the Agreement;
-Ensure that personnel associated with USGS funded activities are adequately briefed regarding the activities, objectives and goals;
-Be responsible for the performance and conduct of all personnel involved with the activities.
-Be responsible for all administrative costs associated with the activities.
-Ensure that the performance and impact of all activities are adequately and effectively monitored and assessed and comply with local and federal regulations

Research objectives are as follows:

Objective 1: Visualize past and future landscape condition with respect to climate change, urban sprawl, and agricultural land use change in relation to current NWRS holdings in Region 3 to determine which stressor has the most influence in a given time period.

Objective 2: Compare and evaluate the interaction between climate change and land use change (using scenarios to look at a range of potential futures) and how it might affect existing refuges, wetland management districts, and the Partners for Fish and Wildlife program.

Objective 3: Estimate the effects of land use change and climate change on selected response indicators (species with differing vagilities) in regard to movement among and between protected areas and wintering and breeding grounds.

Objective 4: Explore the importance of extreme climate events and of rarely used habitats/refugia during extreme events.

Objective 5: Identify potential priority areas for protection in the face of projected radical landscape change.