ARS | Publication request: AN LCTA-COMPATIBLE APPROACH TO MILITARY LAND MONITORING

Submitted to: National Military Fish and Wildlife Association Annual Meeting
Publication Type: Abstract Only
Publication Acceptance Date: March 1, 2002
Publication Date: April 2, 2002

Technical Abstract: A recently developed integrated soil and vegetation rangeland monitoring protocol for arid and semiarid grasslands, shrublands and savanna ecosystems has been adapted to generate LCTA-compatible data while generating additional soil and vegetation indicators that are more sensitive to changes in ecosystem function. In this poster, we present the results of three experiments: (1) a comparison between standard LCTA methods and the new protocol in several plant communities in southern New Mexico, (2) a series of studies in which the new indicators are calibrated with more intensive measurements, and (3) an experiment designed to determine the number of measurements required to detect differences with specified alpha and beta. The results indicate that a much broader suite of functions can be monitored with a relatively small increase in time cost over traditional LCTA measurements while maintaining compatibility with existing datasets.