Monitoring
Webinar recording.
Presented by: Matt Reeves
Estimating the number of animals that can be sustainably supported depends on numerous factors such as forage quantities, terrain, distance from water, and the type of vegetation being considered. Historically most approaches to conducting capacity estimates were limited by a paucity of spatially explicit data describing these factors. However, recent advances in remotely sensed data products and modelling ideas have improved our ability to refine these estimates and do it consistently across all lands which has significant implications for future land management plans such as Allotment Management Plans and Annual Operating Instructions (AOI) for federally managed grazing allotments. In this presentation we demonstrate application of our modernized modelling approach and present results of our recent assessment of wild horse and burro capacity in California.
Webinar recording.
Presented by: Crystal Stonesifer
Aircraft are important fire management tools, but their use can bring substantial costs and associated risks. We developed the Aviation Use Summary (AUS), which is a decision support framework to help track the location, timing, and amount of aircraft use in fire suppression; this information is presented in a way that helps guide decision makers through a structured risk assessment and a repeatable check-in process. Extensive use in large fire support has demonstrated the effectiveness of the framework, related limitations, and potential for future improvements and broad adoption in fire management.
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Invasive forb and grass species are likely to expand their ranges and continued increases in temperature, aridity and area burned will increase invasion risk. Monitoring species presence and absence and mapping known and potential ranges with a focus on presence detection, as in our methodology, will aid in identifying new invasions and prioritizing prevention and control.
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We first analyzed interannual trends in six phenological measures as a baseline. We then demonstrated how including annual-resolution predictors can provide more nuanced insights into measures of phenology between plant communities and across the ecoregion. Across the study area, higher annual precipitation increased both peak and season-long productivity. In contrast, higher mean annual temperatures tended to increase peak productivity but for the majority of the study area decreased season-long productivity. Annual precipitation and temperature had strong explanatory power for productivity-related phenology measures but predicted date-based measures poorly. We found that relationships between climate and phenology varied across the region and among plant communities and that factors such as recovery from disturbance and anthropogenic management also contributed in certain regions. In sum, phenological measures did not respond ubiquitously nor covary in their responses. Nonclimatic dynamics can decouple phenology from climate; therefore, analyses including only interannual trends should not assume climate alone drives patterns.
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Across practice types, ≥99% of fields had no evidence of rills, gullies, or pedestaling from erosion, and 91% of fields had <20% bare soil cover, with region being the strongest predictor of bare soil cover. Seventy-nine percent of fields had ≥50% grass cover, with cover differing by practice type and region. Native grass species were present on more fields in wildlife and wetland practices compared to grassland practices. Forb cover >50% and native forb presence occurred most frequently in wildlife practices, with region being the strongest driver of differences. Federally listed noxious grass and forb species occurred on 23% and 61% of fields, respectively, but tended to constitute a small portion of cover in the field. Estimates from edge-of-field surveys and in-field validation sampling were strongly correlated, demonstrating the utility of the edge-of-field surveys. Our results provide the first national-level assessment of CRP establishment in three decades, confirming that enrolled wildlife and wetland practices often have diverse perennial vegetation cover and very few erosional features.
Access the MRLC Rangeland Viewer.
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Highlights:
- Automated and repeatable method to improve scientific integrity of long-term data
- Analyzed long-term data to improve monitoring policies and efforts
- Increased collaborations between federal and state agencies to improve data quality
- Recommendations for managing existing and new long-term monitoring data
- Spatiotemporal heatmap video of Greater sage-grouse counts across North American
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The need for basic information on spatial distribution and abundance of plant species for research and management in semiarid ecosystems is frequently unmet. This need is particularly acute in the large areas impacted by megafires in sagebrush steppe ecosystems, which require frequently updated information about increases in exotic annual invaders or recovery of desirable perennials. Remote sensing provides one avenue for obtaining this information. We considered how a vegetation model based on Landsat satellite imagery (30 m pixel resolution; annual images from 1985 to 2018) known as the National Land Cover Database (NLCD) “Back-in-Time” fractional component time-series, compared with field-based vegetation measurements. The comparisons focused on detection thresholds of post-fire emergence of fire-intolerant Artemisia L. species, primarily A. tridentata Nutt. (big sagebrush). Sagebrushes are scarce after fire and their paucity over vast burn areas creates challenges for detection by remote sensing. Measurements were made extensively across the Great Basin, USA, on eight burn scars encompassing ~500 000 ha with 80 plots sampled, and intensively on a single 113 000 ha burned area where we sampled 1454 plots.
PhenoMap is a new Web-based tool that managers can use to assess the production and location of high-quality forage. It uses satellite imagery to address the need for near-real-time information about plant life cycle events over large spatial areas. “This remote sensing tool can help prioritize management of rapidly degrading resources across the landscape, in near real time,” says Nancy Grulke, a PNW research ecologist with the project. “Tracking resource quality from week to week with imagery can not only support management decisions with empirical evidence, but also provide a visual tool for communication with landowners.”
Webinar recording.
Satellite data can provide weekly updates of phenology (NDVI, a measure of “greenness”) at a resolution of 15 acres. The PhenoMap web map was created to place these greenness images in an interactive format for managers to view local and regional changes in phenology. PhenoMap also helps to place current values of greenness in a historical context so managers can understand how this week’s value compares to previous year greenness values for the same week. In order to see how well the satellite data was capturing “green-up” and “brown-down”, satellite data was compared to cameras capturing changes in phenology in the various vegetation types of the western United States. Additional effort has also been made to compare the satellite data to grass development using rangelands in western South Dakota as a model grassland system. We will introduce the PhenoMap tool and share results from these validation efforts.