The funding will support a post-doctoral researcher for 2 years to work directly on regional projects focused on invasive annual grasses: Combining multiple existing data sets over multiple years from Wyoming, Montana, Utah, Idaho, and New Mexico using a meta-analytical framework to evaluate:1) Relationship between invasive annual grass abundance and desirable plant community characteristics (productivity, diversity, abundance, etc.), 2) Responses of desirable plant communities to invasive annual grass management (herbicides first, then other management methods), and 3) Enhance an existing project to develop an index of sagebrush quality and susceptibility to impacts from invasive annual grasses. The groundwork for this project is already under way, but it needs a focused person to move it forward and make it useful to managers around the west. This person will be stationed at the University of Wyoming, but will directly interface with invasive weed specialists across the region. The projects described above directly relate to priorities 1) current and future threat of annual grasses and 2) assessment of management effects. We lack critical information to support proactive management and landscape-level prioritization for managing invasive annual grasses in the sagebrush biome. Although generalized principles are being developed (see WGA annual grass toolkit), strong supporting science across a wide geography is only available at a cursory level. These projects will strengthen the scientific foundation for a regional effort to effectively manage annual grasses.