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ARS Home » Pacific West Area » Boise, Idaho » Northwest Watershed Research Center » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #261096
Title: Optimizing regional collaborative efforts to achieve long-term discipline-specific objectives

Author
item Pierson Jr, Frederick
item ROBICHAUD, PETER - Us Forest Service (FS)
item SPAETH, KENNETH - Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS, USDA)
item Williams, Christopher - Jason
item AL-HAMDAN, OSAMA - University Of Idaho

Submitted to: Society for Range Management Meeting Abstracts
Publication Type: Abstract Only
Publication Acceptance Date: 10/5/2010
Publication Date: 2/6/2011
Citation: Pierson, F.B., Robichaud, P.R., Spaeth, K., Williams, C.J., and Al-Hamdan, O.Z. 2011. Optimizing Regional Collaborative Efforts to Achieve Long-Term Discipline-Specific Objectives. In: Abstracts of the 64th Annual Meeting of the Society for Range Management, February 6-10, 2011, Billings, MT.

Interpretive Summary: Current funding programs focused on multi-disciplinary, multi-agency approaches to regional issues can provide opportunities to address discipline-specific advancements in scientific knowledge. Projects funded through the Agricultural Research Service, Joint Fire Science Program, and the Natural Resources Conservation Service have resulted in an extensive dataset for predicting rangeland hillslope runoff and erosion responses to management treatments and natural disturbances. Hydrologic experiments funded through these projects have investigated the hydrologic impacts of fire, soil water repellency, plant community transitions, and other disturbances across local and regional spatial scales. The distribution of the study sites associated with these projects span the western United States. Research programs at the USDA-ARS Northwest Watershed Research Center (NWRC) in Boise, Idaho, demonstrate how involvement in such regional, multi-disciplinary, multi-agency efforts can be used to develop broadly applicable rangeland management tools. Two decades of NWRC research focused on vegetation management, wildfire, and woodland encroachment effects on runoff and erosion from rangelands have been largely funded by collaborative efforts and results are now being pooled with similar efforts elsewhere to parameterize and advance rangeland hydrologic modeling. These advancements have broad application across western rangelands and provide useful predictive tools for rangeland scientists and managers alike. We suggest that such approaches provide not only project-specific multi-disciplinary knowledge advancement, but can be used, over a period of time, to advance discipline-specific knowledge.

Technical Abstract: Current funding programs focused on multi-disciplinary, multi-agency approaches to regional issues can provide opportunities to address discipline-specific advancements in scientific knowledge. Projects funded through the Agricultural Research Service, Joint Fire Science Program, and the Natural Resources Conservation Service have resulted in an extensive dataset for predicting rangeland hillslope runoff and erosion responses to management treatments and natural disturbances. Hydrologic experiments funded through these projects have investigated the hydrologic impacts of fire, soil water repellency, plant community transitions, and other disturbances across local and regional spatial scales. The distribution of the study sites associated with these projects span the western United States. Research programs at the USDA-ARS Northwest Watershed Research Center (NWRC) in Boise, Idaho, demonstrate how involvement in such regional, multi-disciplinary, multi-agency efforts can be used to develop broadly applicable rangeland management tools. Two decades of NWRC research focused on vegetation management, wildfire, and woodland encroachment effects on runoff and erosion from rangelands have been largely funded by collaborative efforts and results are now being pooled with similar efforts elsewhere to parameterize and advance rangeland hydrologic modeling. These advancements have broad application across western rangelands and provide useful predictive tools for rangeland scientists and managers alike. We suggest that such approaches provide not only project-specific multi-disciplinary knowledge advancement, but can be used, over a period of time, to advance discipline-specific knowledge.