Friday, September 30, 2005
Interpreting Indicators of Rangeland Health
The USGS is a participant in the release of a new version of a clear, quick method to assess the health of our Nation’s public and private rangelands. A grim projection is that we are losing up to 4,000 acres a day of rangelands in the United States due to a mixture of factors. What is healthy, what is not, and where should we focus stop-loss, preservation, or restoration efforts are daunting questions that this evaluation process can help to address. The process is the result of recommendations of the National Research Council and panels of rangeland research and management experts. They proposed that the status of rangelands could be ascertained by evaluating an ecological site’s potential to conserve soil resources and by a series of indicators for ecosystem processes and site stability. Using these recommendations as a starting point, a team of experts with the USGS, Bureau of Land Management, Natural Resources Conservation Service, and Agricultural Research Service developed and released the first version of the evaluation process in 2002. The following three years were spent testing and evaluating this process, resulting in the 2005 revision. The indicators remain unchanged in the new version, allowing continuation of the evaluation process where it already had begun. Most changes are designed to improve consistency in application of the process. In addition to supporting the technical aspects of evaluation and revision, the USGS continues to provide regular training to managers who use the evaluation process. The evaluation is used widely by the Bureau of Land Management, the Natural Resources Conservation Service and many private rangeland consultants.
Pellant, M., Shaver, P., Pyke, D.A., Herrick, J.E., 2005, Interpreting Indicators of Rangeland Health-Version 4: Bureau of Land Management, National Science and Technology Center Technical Reference 1734-6, p. 122. [FullText] Catalog No: 1385
Contact:
David
Pyke,
541-750-7334,
david_a_pyke@usgs.gov
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