Proceedings brand creation for a prescribed fire culture – utilizing key social media parameters. Lars Coleman*1, J. Kelly Hoffman1, Thomas McDaniel1, R. Patrick Bixler2, Urs P. Kreuter1, Morgan Russell3

Tall Forb communities have a complex history of grazing within the Intermountain West.  This complex history of grazing in conjunction with current plant community and ground cover dynamics in many Tall Forb types combined with an increase in public interest in tall forb types has resulted in a need to better understand the effect grazing may have had various tall forb types and the resiliency of these types post-grazing.  Of particular interest is the effect grazing may have had or continues to have on plant community and ground cover dynamics.  This PowerPoint presentation focuses on two areas of current interest within our National Forest Lands – the Wyoming Range of the Kemmerer Ranger District; and the Uinta Mountains of the Evanston-Mountain View Ranger District.  Specifically this monitoring presentation (1) provides findings of more than a decade of monitoring as they relate to plant species composition and ground cover; (2) identifies current drivers affecting plant community and ground cover dynamics within these tall forb types; and (3) discusses the current effect grazing may be having within these Tall Forb types as they relate to these two criteria.  A key part of this presentation includes new and/or updated findings as they relate to relic and reference areas for tall forb communities.

MONITORING RANGELANDS TO MAINTAIN GOALS FOR A WATER AGENCY.
. Theresa Becchetti*¹, Scott Oneto²; ¹University of California, Modesto, CA, ²UCCE, Jamestown, CA

ABSTRACT

East Bay Municipal Utility District (EBMUD) owns the Mokelumne Watershed surrounding Pardee and Camanche Reservoirs in the central foothills of California with a long history of cattle grazing. Pardee Reservoir provides drinking water for 1.4 million people, making water quality the top priority for the agency.  EBMUD recognizes the value of maintaining grazing to manage the watershed for multiple goals.  With changes in the grazing program to ensure high water quality, EBMUD engaged University of California Cooperative Extension (UCCE) to develop a new monitoring program that can help provide information on the watershed scale to aid management decisions.  After four years of Residual Dry Matter (RDM) mapping in every pasture, UCCE is transitioning the mapping process to EBMUD staff.  In doing so, UCCE has begun collecting field data using Collector for ArcGIS on an iPad.  Collector speeds data collection and when downloaded to the Cloud, field data is automatically created into maps, saving time and the need for GIS knowledge to create RDM maps.  Using these maps, UCCE has been able to have discussions about management options such as adding offsite water or supplement placement to improve distribution or invasive weed management control with both EBMUD staff and the ranchers.  RDM mapping allows for quick visual for distribution and use of the pasture.  Management changes were implemented in some pastures and can be seen by following year’s RDM maps. 

MONITORING THE IMPACTS OF CONSERVATION PRACTICES ON ECOSYSTEM HEALTH IN THE RIO PUERCO WATERSHED. Jeremy W. Schallner*¹, Amy C. Ganguli¹, Richard Strait², Nicole Pietrasiak¹; ¹New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, NM, ²USDA-NRCS, Albuquerque, NM

The Rio Puerco Watershed (RPW) is a highly dynamic and diverse ecological system that has a long history of anthropogenic alterations. This landscape has been degraded through historic overutilization exacerbated by periods of prolonged drought. At present, the NRCS and BLM use conservation practices, namely prescribed grazing and brush control throughout the region to improve ecological stability and ecosystem health of private and public lands. The conservation practice of herbicide application serves primarily to decrease brush species while allowing for an increase in herbaceous cover and a decrease in erosion risk. The objectives of this project are to develop a comprehensive monitoring program to investigate the effects of this conservation practice on the plant and soil biological communities and the hydrology of the RPW. Changes to plant and soil biological communities are being monitored utilizing multiple transects across two herbicide-treated areas and two untreated reference areas. To examine the impacts to hydrology and soil health, soil sampling points along with six runoff plots and associated local weather stations were established in the research areas to provide key parameters controlling site potential and erosion risk. The runoff plots employ Upwelling Bernoulli Tubes to measure surface flow that can be linked directly to local precipitation quantities. All field measurements will be used to calibrate a Gridded Surface/Subsurface Hydrologic Analysis for the RPW to illustrate the potential impacts at a larger scale. We will demonstrate how integrating and expanding the plot-level measurements to the watershed-scale provides a better understanding of how this system reacts to conservation practices and can serve as a basis for future range management decisions. If conservation practices on rangelands within the RPW can decrease potential runoff and sediment load, the improvement of the ecological health of the system would provide valuable resources and ecosystem services across the region.

EFFECT OF CLIMATE CHANGE ON RANGELAND IN SUDAN: REVIEW
. Mohammed F. Fatur*; University of Bahri, College of Animal Production, Khartoum, Sudan

ABSTRACT

The importance of rangeland basically comes from its environmental, economic and social importance. The secession of Sudan into two countries has remarkably reduced rangelands areas and shortened mobility of livestock, while arid and semi-arid lands increased as a percentage of total country area. This situation makes the country more affected by climate change as rain-fed subsistence farming and livestock rearing are the main livelihood means for the majority of rural communities. This means that more than 70% of Sudan's population depends directly on resources that are climate sensitive. Estimated area of ​​rangelands in the country, is close to 68.6 million hectares, supporting livestock estimated as 107 million head. Impacts of the climate change on rangeland include Land degradation resulting from imbalanced utilization levels linked with the condition of people displacement. The impact of deterioration of vegetation cover has led to low ability of range to accommodate the number of animals. Preparation of review on Effect of Climate Change on Rangeland in Sudan, is rather important because the information available are scattered or with gaps that need to be addressed and will help to identify important research directions. This will also contribute to identifying and explaining justification for strategies to be adopted in relation to handling climate change related issues along differed mitigation and adaptation options and will inform research directions.

DEGRADATION AND VULNERABILITY TO CLIMATE CHANGE IN HIGH ANDEAN RANGELANDS

This work seeks to identify the most important factors that cause the degradation process of rangelands, assess the degree of degradation and vulnerability to current climate change of these ecosystems; and determine if there is a relationship between the degree of rangeland degradation and vulnerability to climate change in high Andean rangelands. The study was located in the puna region of Ancash, Junín, Pasco, Huancavelica and Lima and involved the design of a framework to assess rangeland degradation based on field information and Landsat satellite products that was, contrasted with socioeconomic, ecological and location variables.  The estimation of vulnerability to climate change was assessed with the Analytic hierarchy process (AHP) in a Geographic Information Systems (GIS) platform. The main factors in order of importance associated with the serious and extreme degradation process were the loss of vegetation fractional cover (VFC) from previous years, increments in the annual average temperature, high animal density, poor protection policies, high population density and low rock weathering index. Around 80% of the rangelands were classified as extreme and serious degraded, where the district of Santa Ana, Huancavelica, was the most degraded (extreme), and the district of Olleros, Ancash, less degraded (serious) with a tendency to increase the degraded areas. Extreme and heavy vulnerability was around 85%, and the main factors in order of importance associated with this index were low FCV, high slope, low rock weathering index, low precipitation, long distance to water sources, high population density, high annual average temperature and high animal density. Tomas district, Lima, was the most vulnerable, and Canchayllo, Junín, the least vulnerable, with a vulnerability tendency to keep increasing. Lastly we found a positive spatial correlation between degradation and vulnerability to climate change in high Andean rangelands (Pearson = 0.67, Spearman = 0.61).

ELEVATED DUST EMISSIONS ON THE COLORADO PLATEAU: ROLE OF GRAZING, VEHICLE DISTURBANCE, AND INCREASING ARIDITY. Travis W. Nauman*¹, Michael C. Duniway¹, Nicholas Webb², Jayne Belnap¹; ¹US Geological Survey, Moab, UT, ²USDA-ARS Jornada Experimental Range, Las Cruces, NM

ABSTRACT

Dust from drylands are of major concern to human society. Dust deposition onto snowpacks can hasten melt rates, resulting in lowered inputs into major rivers. Blowing dust can result in traffic accidents, respiratory disease, and high economic costs. To abate dust emissions, it is necessary to examine suspected sources such as unpaved roads and grazing lands. We measured aeolian sediment mass fluxes in low elevation rangelands and unsurfaced roads on the Colorado Plateau in Utah, USA. Empirical spatial modeling suggests that rangelands are producing ~92-93% of regional dust and roads ~7-8%. Measured ‘hot spots’ in sediment mass flux at 100 cm height rival the highest ever recorded including 7,460 gm-2day-1 (spring 2009) in an off-highway vehicle (OHV) area near Hanksville, UT, but were more commonly 50-2,000 gm-2day-1  in areas with heavy grazing or OHV use.  The overall mean measured rangeland sediment mass flux at 100 cm height was 5.14 gm-2day-1, considerably lower than grazed areas (~8-20 gm-2day-1) and OHV areas (414 gm-2day-1). In contrast, a similar area monitored with minimal soil disturbance averaged 1.60 gm-2day-1 from 2007-2015. Annual sediment mass fluxes on all rangeland land use types (light/not grazed, moderately and heavily grazed, and OHV) generally increased with increasing annual temperature, increased winds, and decreasing precipitation. Mass fluxes measured just downwind of unpaved road sites averaged 13.14 gm-2day-1 with a maximum observed seasonal flux of 128.0 gm-2day-1 along a producing oil well access road. Four of the five highest road flux values (n=33 total) measured were adjacent to roads primarily used to access oil or gas well-pads, while one was a road servicing both recreation and well-pads. These findings suggest that predicted future regional mega-droughts may increase dust emissions already elevated due to land management, potentially further compromising air quality, hydrologic cycles, and other ecological services linked to dust.

LINKING NATIVE AMERICAN CULTURE WITH THE RANGELAND RESOURCE ON THE WIND RIVER RESERVATION OF WYOMING

. Colleen T. Friday*, John D. Scasta; University of Wyoming, Laramie, WY

The Wind River Indian Reservation (WRIR) in Wyoming is more than 2.2 million acres and shared by the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho tribal nations.  In 1960, an inventory was conducted of the plants in Paradise Basin and Saint Lawrence Basin in the Wind River Mountain Range of the WRIR.  This initial inventory is severely lacking in applicable value for several reasons including that the inventory: (1) only included the presence or absence of 74 species, (2) made no estimate of species abundance, (3) made no differentiation between the two basins relative to the presence of a species, and (4) did not measure any other ecological explanatory information to explain species occurrence.  In the time since this inventory, researchers, policy makers and natural resource managers have begun to recognize the long-term value of using Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) for the management of natural resources.  TEK is an accumulation of place-based knowledge, practice, and belief about relationships between living beings and their environment that is transferred to subsequent generations.  On the Wind River Indian Reservation (WRIR), TEK is structured from an indigenous paradigm that respects and represents the cultural and linguistic specificity of the two tribes.  The Bureau of Indian Affairs at Wind River Agency has a trust responsibility to assist the tribes in land and resource management.  Data which explains rangeland plant communities in these high elevation basins and includes abundance data to assess rangeland health and condition increases the agency’s ability to fulfill this trust responsibility.  We are conducting a vegetation inventory to enhance rangeland management of these high-elevation basins and to facilitate the documentation and sharing of TEK within the Wind River tribal community.

TESTING RANGELAND HEALTH THEORY IN THE NORTHERN GREAT PLAINS. Kurt O. Reinhart*, Matthew J. Rinella, Lance T. Vermeire; USDA-ARS, Miles City, MT

ABSTRACT

Correctly assessing whether rangeland ecosystem services are stable, improving, or degrading is of local to global importance.  In the USA, several plant and soil properties are measured as part of a standardized system for assessing rangeland health.  Here a series of field experiments were used to test the reliability of a primary putative indicator (i.e. soil aggregate stability) of rangeland management and ecosystem function in the Northern Great Plains.  First, we tested whether livestock grazing pressure consistently reduced soil aggregate stability.  Second, we tested whether appreciable variation in soil water transport (infiltration) was explained by aggregate stability.  Data from a multi-factor field experiment was used to determine the best predictor(s) of infiltration and contributed to a meta-analysis that tested the generality of the expected positive aggregate-infiltration association.  In one of two field experiments, livestock grazing pressure tended to reduce the stability of small (easily erodible fraction) macroaggregates (0.25-1 mm).  In the other experiment and for larger macroaggregates (1-2 mm), grazing had no appreciable impact on aggregate stability.  The multi-factor field experiment affected several plant and soil properties.  Multiple regression analyses of these data determined that variation in infiltration was best explained by plant community composition variables but not soil properties.  With a meta-analysis of these and other data from the Northern Great Plains, we found no general aggregate-infiltration association.  Our findings counter prevailing scientific and management expectations on the functioning of key soil health indicators but support plant species-infiltration linkages consistent with bioturbation theory.  Designing rangeland health monitoring systems with empirically validated predictors of ecosystem function is a logical next step towards better health assessment.

DIMA.TOOLS: AN R PACKAGE FOR WORKING WITH THE DATABASE FOR INVENTORY, MONITORING, AND ASSESSMENT. Nelson Stauffer*, Sarah McCord; USDA-ARS Jornada Experimental Range, Las Cruces, NM

The Database for Inventory, Monitoring, and Assessment (DIMA) is a Microsoft Access database used to collect, store and summarize monitoring data. This database is used by both local and national monitoring efforts within the National Park Service, the Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management, Agricultural Research Service, non-profit organizations, and land management agencies globally, including Mongolia. The Access format permits long-term storage of large datasets and enables electronic data capture in the field, sophisticated error checking procedures, and a graphical user interface, however analysis of large amounts of data in one or more DIMAs is difficult. Therefore, further analysis and the production of quality monitoring information often requires interacting with DIMA via other software interfaces such as R.

Here we present an package for R, dima.tools, containing functions which simplify direct user access to raw data tables within DIMAs and combining data from multiple DIMAs. Additionally, common data manipulation functions are available in the package for low-level tasks like tidying data and joining data to metadata as well as higher-level functions for tasks like producing standard indicators and quality assurance and quality control checks. Together, these provide a reproducible framework for users to compute their own custom indicators and to complete complex analyses using other functions and packages in R.

SMALL SCALE RESTORATION: IMPROVING NATURAL BEAUTY AND WILDLIFE HABITAT THROUGH LARGE SCALE STUDENT INVOLVEMENT
. Mitchell J. Greer*¹, Curtis J. Schmidt², Morgan A. Noland¹; ¹Fort Hays State University, Hays, KS, ²Sternberg Museum of Natural History - Fort Hays State University, Hays, KS

ABSTRACT

Numerous studies have shown that students who work actively to research, discuss, and perform experiments gain a deeper understanding of concepts within the field of rangeland sciences. To increase the number of students reaching this deeper level of understanding in the rangeland program at FHSU, we implemented a small-scale restoration project that allows students to experience firsthand the research design and data collection process, practice species identification of numerous organisms, gain field experience and skills, and relate information learned in classrooms to real world settings. The Howard Reynolds Natural Area (HRNA) was created on Sternberg Museum of Natural History property in 2010 and since its establishment has been in a continual state of decline. The HNRA is currently undergoing numerous restorations activities to increase the ecological integrity of the area and make it more appealing to both the citizens of Hays and native wildlife. Our objective is to determine if these restoration activities will have an influence on any of the biological communities present in the area. To determine these restoration activities have an effect on the small mammal community preliminary trapping data was collected. Our trapping seasons resulted in the capture of five different species. Initial data collection has been expanded to include amphibians and reptiles, ground beetles, ants, mosquitos, plants, and soil microbial communities. These restoration and data collection efforts have engaged seven different undergraduate student researchers who have or will present their results at professional meetings and over forty student volunteers. This project is a win-win-win-win situation for the students, the HNRA, the community of Hays, and the biological communities. This ongoing project will provide years of research and field experience to the undergraduate and graduate students as well as opportunities to mentor younger students and educate the public. 

SAGE GROUSE HABITAT CONSERVATION AND RESTORATION THROUGH CONSISTENT, COLLABORATIVE MONITORING

One aspect of many habitat restoration projects that is sometimes overlooked or may be removed from restoration project activities given the current status of federal, state agency or other project proponent budgets is implementation of a statistically robust and ecologically meaningful monitoring protocol. In Nevada, the Nevada Department of Wildlife houses the Nevada Partners for Conservation and Development (NPCD). The NPCD is implementing vegetation, avian and species specific monitoring pre and post restoration treatment across Nevada using the Utah Watershed Restoration Initiative’s (WRI) example. In Utah, the WRI implements a state wide vegetation and animal monitoring program largely focused on habitat projects. Utah’s Division of Wildlife Resources has a long history of providing a variety of monitoring services to the various land management and private entities in Utah. Developing a coordinated and well thought out monitoring program provides a number of important services. First, this gives States an opportunity to provide leadership on habitat projects and encourages better communication with private and federal partners. Second, the monitoring program allows us to bring researchers, graduate students and undergraduates into habitat projects providing valuable, real world experience. Third, NDOW/NPCD is providing important project effectiveness information to agencies so that the best science is being used for a variety of land management decisions. Finally, by rigorously monitoring outcomes of projects, we can better guide future restoration design and implementation.

LONG-TERM EFFECTS OF BIOSOLIDS APPLICATION ON GRASSLAND SOIL QUALITY AND PLANT SPECIES COMPOSITION. Emma M. Avery*¹, Maja Krzic¹, Brian Wallace², Reg Newman²; ¹University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, ²Ministry of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development, Kamloops, BC

ABSTRACT

The land application of biosolids (composted sewage solids) has been shown to improve forage production on semi-arid grasslands. In 2002, an experiment was established on a ranch in the central interior of British Columbia to evaluate the long-term effects of a one-time biosolids surface application on grassland soil quality and the plant community. Two treatments were evaluated: surface biosolids application at 20 Mg ha-1 and a control (no biosolids). Both treatments were replicated in four blocks which were excluded from grazing.

RESPONSE OF ARID RANGELANDS TO DEFERRED GRAZING IN SOUTHERN TUNISIA