Location: Great Basin Rangelands Research
Project Number: 2060-21500-001-016-I
Project Type: Interagency Reimbursable Agreement
Start Date: Aug 1, 2023
End Date: Jul 1, 2025
Objective:
The objective of this project is quantify the effects of management practices on components of the water budget and the phenology of meadow systems. The cooperator will analyze long-term datasets that address plant phenology, and soil and snow dynamics.
Approach:
An existing long-term watershed, the Porter Canyon Experimental Watershed, will be maintained with instrumentation to measure components of the water budget with long-term woody plant removal treatments. A grazing project in the Haypress meadows complex will be instrumented with eddy covariance towers to complement existing phenology cameras and weather stations. This project will synthesize data sets of plant water use, soil moisture, snow depth, and weather data from multiple locations. The cooperator and the ARS PI anticipate the following peer-reviewed papers to come from this project 1. long-term dynamics of soil moisture, soil temperature, and snow depth in woodland plots, woodland plots where trees have been removed, and a sagebrush plot, 2. the expansion or contraction of grazed and ungrazed meadows systems in response to management and variable weather, and 3. water-use of mountain mahogany trees. Following publication, all data and modeling scripts will be uploaded to a data archive website for public access.
