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LOCALIZING THE RANGELAND HEALTH METHOD FOR SOUTHEASTERN ARIZONA
Citation:
Buono, J., P. Heilman, E. Carrillo, D. Robinett, AND M. S. NASH. LOCALIZING THE RANGELAND HEALTH METHOD FOR SOUTHEASTERN ARIZONA. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, DC, 2008.
Impact/Purpose:
The goal of this Technical Note was to localize the rangeland health method for two key ecological sites in southeastern Arizona. Using two of the most extensive ecological sites in southeastern Arizona as case studies, our objectives were 1) to reach a consensus on how these sites are assessed, 2) to incorporate all relevant and available data and, 3) to document the approach as a model for other ecological sites.
Description:
The interagency manual Interpreting Indicators of Rangeland Health, Version 4 (Technical Reference 1734-6) provides a method for making rangeland health assessments. The manual recommends that the rangeland health assessment approach be adapted to local conditions. This technical note describes the field methods and results of localizing the rangeland health method to two ecological sites in southeastern Arizona: Loamy Upland and Sandyloam Upland, both in Major Land Resource Area 41-3, Southeastern Arizona Basin and Range, Semidesert Grassland. The products of the effort are reference sheets that describe the condition of areas with little or no departure from reference conditions (the historic climax plant community) as well as evaluation matrices that describe five departure categories for each of the 17 indicators. For a number of indicators the departures in the evaluation matrix were found to be nonlinearly related to the departure categories. Expanding this effort to document reference sheets and evaluation matrices for other ecological sites would require substantial effort, but would facilitate consistent interagency application of the Rangeland Health method.