Management Technologies for Conservation of Western Rangelands
The conceptual framework for our research program (Fig. 1) is based on the notion that ecological sites--kinds of land that differ in potential plant communities and responses to management--provide a useful basis to conduct research on key ecological processes operating within rangelands and to inform management based on that knowledge (USDA-NRCS 2003, Bestelmeyer et al. 2003, 2009). Ecological sites are recognizable, repeating land units that occur within a MLRA (i.e., a region with similar physiography, weather patterns, and land uses) and serve as a framework for explaining historic, current, and future vegetation state changes (USDA-NRCS 2003, Bestelmeyer et al. 2004, 2009, Steele et al. 2012). Spatial and temporal variation in state changes are the result of temporal context and environmental drivers (e.g., precipitation, temperature, human activities) interacting with spatial context (patch characteristics, adjacency, contingency), transport vectors (wind, water, animals), and the soil geomorphic template (soils, landforms) to influence resource redistribution within and across a range of scales, from individual plants to groups of plants and landscape units (Fig. 1a). These variations are represented for management applications via ecological site concepts, soil and vegetation spatial data, and state and transition models developed for specific ecological sites and groups of sites (USDA-NRCS 2003, Bestelmeyer et al. 2003, 2004, 2011b, Briske et al. 2008). Because ecological sites are already widely recognized in the management community, they provide a useful basis for science-management linkages and the judicious extrapolation of scientific results. The Research Unit based at the Jornada has developed research objectives that couple this framework to expected products and outcomes (Fig. 1b). All elements of Figure 1b are directly linked to our project objectives.
During the next five years we will focus on the following objectives and subobjectives based upon this conceptual framework and rationale:
Objective 1: Develop data-driven approaches in the production of ecological site descriptions that guide rangeland conservation and management practices within MLRAs of the western U.S., including New Mexico, Arizona, Oregon, North Dakota, Wyoming, Montana, and Oklahoma.
Objective 2: Improve techniques, including remotely sensed methodologies, for rangeland monitoring and assessment applicable to landscapes within MLRAs, and more broadly for regional and national scales of assessment.
Objective 3: Evaluate effectiveness of historic, current, and new grassland restoration practices for dominant ecological sites within specific MLRAs of New Mexico, Arizona, Oregon, and Wyoming.
Objective 4: Evaluate livestock management practices suitable for conserving and restoring rangelands within selected MLRAs of the southwestern U.S.
Objective 5: Develop mechanistically based predictions of vegetation state changes and sitebased wind erosion susceptibilities for landscapes within selected MLRAs under alternative land use-climate change scenarios.
We will build upon information collected since 1912, complemented with ongoing and new research, to address our objectives. We will integrate short- and long-term data sets with simulation modeling, geographic information systems, and remote sensing tools. Our approach will combine short-term experiments to test specific hypotheses with synthetic experiments requiring a more complex integration of ecosystem components and drivers. Although this is an ambitious proposal, it reflects the singular efforts of a collaborative, interdisciplinary group of 11 ARS scientists at the JER working towards a common goal.