Graduate Studies, UNL

 

Dissertations and Doctoral Documents, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2023–

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First Advisor

Andrew Little

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)

Committee Members

Daniel Uden, John Carroll, Larkin Powell, Simanti Banerjee

Department

Natural Resource Sciences

Date of this Version

4-6-2026

Document Type

Dissertation

Citation

A dissertation presented to the faculty of the Graduate College at the University of Nebraska in partial fulfillment of requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy

Major: Natural Resource Sciences

Under the supervision of Professor Andrew Little

Lincoln, Nebraska, May 2026

Comments

Copyright 2026, Allsion Joy Barg. Used by permission

Abstract

As competing demands grow on agricultural landscapes, optimizing land use for economic and environmental benefit is crucial. A key way to improve conservation outcomes on working lands is to strategically target conservation efforts to land that is likely to provide the maximum benefit; however, this approach requires sufficient data to predict the outcomes of varying management decisions. Ring-necked pheasants are a recreationally and economically valuable species that were historically abundant in the agricultural regions of North America. The intensification and simplification of farm systems over the last half century have caused pheasant populations to decline, and while conservation programs such as the Conservation Reserve Program and the Conservation Stewardship Program have slowed this loss, populations have been unable to rebound. The potential economic benefit of pheasant conservation makes them an ideal focal species for targeted habitat management. My research aims to develop and test a model that will predict how pheasant populations will respond to spatially targeted conservation by identifying the compositional and configurational landscape features that are driving pheasant abundance in eastern Nebraska and the scale at which pheasant populations respond to changes in habitat management. This project answers fundamental questions of pheasant biology that will guide future monitoring and research, as well as providing novel insights into how pheasants are interacting with modern agricultural landscapes. Finally, I demonstrate the value of spatially targeted conservation by predicting pheasant populations under various future land use scenarios in a northeastern Nebraska landscape.

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