Rangelands encompass approximately 662 million acres in the coterminous US and their extensive area and diverse character create a large array of ecosystem goods and services (EGS). Ecosystem goods and services are supported by rangeland ecological processes while human systems interact with rangelands ecosystems through a variety of social processes. The Sustainable Rangelands Roundtable has developed a series of 64 indicators of rangeland sustainability (http://sustainablerangelands.org/pdf/SM56.pdf) which are meant to identify where the ability of rangelands to sustainably produce desired EGS has been, or may become, compromised. The exceptional variety and value of EGS derived from rangelands obviate the need for periodically evaluating threats to sustainability of these entities. Methods to evaluate the sustainability of EGS, however, are not widely agreed upon or institutionalized. Here, a potential method for quantifying risks to sustainability is presented. This project has three objectives: (1) Identify threats to rangeland sustainability and develop quantitative models (2) Increase awareness of methods for evaluating sustainability (3) Create a spatially explicit database used in the analysis and offer these data to other researchers. Nine data elements linked to rangeland sustainability are evaluated using principle components analysis and unsupervised classification. Results clearly indicate that those counties with a greater abundance of exotic species, declining rangeland base, or high degree of fragmentation are at greater risk of reduced production and maintenance of EGS.
Oral presentation and poster titles, abstracts, and authors from the Society for Range Management (SRM) Annual Meetings and Tradeshows, from 2013 forward.