Rangeland Health New Methods to Classify, Inventory, and Monitor Rangelands (1994) / Chapter Skim
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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Pages 1-17
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STATE OF RANGELAND ECOSYSTEMS Rangeland degradation reduces the diversity and amount of the values and commodities that rangelands provide, and severe rangeland degradation can be irreversible. Overgrazing, drought, erosion, and other human and naturally induced stresses have caused severe degradation in the past.
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Now, however, the scientific debate over the use of current methods to assess rangeland ecosystems has intensified, leading to disagree
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The importance of the values and commodities provided by rangelands, the history of rangeland degradation, the evidence pointing to ongoing rangeland degradation, and the inadequate data on current conditions at both the local and the national levels suggest that it is unwise to neglect the nation's federal and nonfederal rangelands. PURPOSES OF NATIONAL ASSESSMENTS The choice of methods and criteria to assess rangelands entails a judgment about what information is most important to provide national policymakers, ranchers, environmentalists, and the general public about rangelands.
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An agreed-to standard that can be used to determine whether the capacity of these rangelands to produce commodities and satisfy values is being conserved, degraded, or improved is needed. The lack of a consistently defined standard for acceptable conditions of rangeland ecosystems is the most significant limitation to current efforts to assess rangelands.
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The capacity of rangelands to produce commodities and satisfy values depends on the integrity of internal nutrient cycles; energy flows; plant community dynamics; an intact soil profile; and stores of nutrients and water. Rangeland health should be a minimum ecological standard, independent of the rangeland's use and how it is managed.
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healthy if an evaluation of the soil and ecological processes indicate that the capacity to satisfy values and produce commodities is being sustained; (2) at risk if the assessment of current conditions indicates a reversible loss in productive capacity and increased vulnerability to irreversible degradation; and (3)
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Soil stability, watershed function, nutrient cycling, energy flow, and the mechanisms that enable recovery from stress should be assessed on rangelands. Established criteria are needed to determine, based on the suite of indicators that are sampled, whether the ecosystem is healthy, at risk, or unhealthy.
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The boundaries between healthy, at-risk, and unhealthy states of a rangeland ecosystem should be distinguished based on differences between states in the capacity to produce commodities and satisfy values and on the reversibility of the changes between states. The threshold of rangeland health should define the boundary between unhealthy and at-risk states.
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Soil surface characteristics also give partial evidence of the magnitude of infiltration or runoff from a site. An evaluation of soil stability and watershed function, as determined by the use of soil surface characteristics as indicators of soil erosion and runoff, should become a fundamental component of all inventorying and monitoring programs for federal and nonfederal rangelands.
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Experience with such indicators is limited, but the degree of fragmentation in the distribution of plants, litter, roots, and photosynthetic period may be useful starting points for the development of more quantitative indicators of nutrient cycles and energy flow. RECOVERY MECHANISMS The capacity of rangeland ecosystems to adjust to change in ways that prevent loss of rangeland health depends on the presence or absence of functioning recovery mechanisms.
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Useful indicators may include increasing vegetative cover, increasing plant vigor, change in the kind and number of seedlings, changes in plant age class distribution, and other plant community attributes that will lead to greater soil stability, nutrient storage and cycling, and energy capture. Various indicators of plant demographics have been commonly used in rangeland assessments, and indicators of age class distribution, plant vigor, and the presence and distribution of microsites for seed germination and seedling development would be useful starting points for the development of more systematic indicators of the function of recovery mechanisms on rangelands.
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To build the consistent data set required to assess rangeland health, a small, selected set of indicators should be collected as part of all current and ongoing rangeland management and assessment activities on both federal and nonfederal rangelands. This minimum data set can be augmented with measures of additional indicators of rangeland health that are of particular importance for the assessment of particular classes of rangelands.
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National Sampling System The secretaries of USDA and DOI should develop coordinated plans for implementing a sampling system on federal and nonfederal rangelands that will produce estimates of the proportion of healthy, at-risk, and unhealthy rangelands that are significant at appropriate local, state, regional, and national levels. A national sampling system that coordinates the activities of USDA, DOI, and EPA is needed to collect, analyze, and aggregate data to determine the proportion of federal and nonfederal rangelands that are healthy, at risk, or unhealthy.
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There is much experience with the use of soil surface characteristics as indicators of soil stability and watershed function. The addition of indicators of soil surface condition to all current and ongoing efforts to assess rangelands would be a useful first step toward a more comprehensive system of evaluating rangeland health a step that should be taken
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Basic data including soil surface conditions, erosion rates, plant composition, and biomass production assembled and used to assess rangelands as part of RCA appraisals, RPA assessments, nationalforest planning, environmental assessments, and other assessments offederal and nonfederal rangelands should be made available to the public and the scientific community for independent rev~ew. Independent review and analysis of these data will increase the understanding of and confidence in the results of the assessments of federal and nonfederal rangelands.
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SCS, USES, and BLM should continue current and ongoing range condition (SCSJ and ecological status (USES and BLMJ ratings while the transition to rangeland health assessment is made. The data that have been and continue to be collected for range condition (SCS)
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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 17 most important contribution range scientists and managers can make to resolving the debate over the use and management of federal and nonfederal rangelands. Answering this question will provide the information that is urgently needed by range managers, scientists, policymakers, ranchers, and environmentalists struggling to improve rangelands and range management.
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