Riparian areas provide several essential resources and ecosystem services that allows continued prosperity in the western United States. Riparian systems also play a vital role in supporting domestic livestock on western rangelands. If not managed properly interactions between livestock and riparian systems can have a devastating effect. Because of the large amount of public lands that allow livestock grazing in the West, there needs to be a cost-efficient means to monitor and evaluate large portions of our riparian systems. Remote sensing can allow for a cost-effective approach in gaining a view of entire systems that could otherwise be missed from sample representations. Research using aerial imagery of the Marys River Watershed, located in Nevada, was conducted to provide a novel approach aimed at evaluating riparian systems on different land allotments and grazing strategies within a single watershed. Riparian areas were delineated and assessed on 14 land allotments using classification methods. Riparian vegetation was then compared between allotments as well as between three grazing strategies (controlled, season long, exclosure). Results from this research were successful in showing variations of riparian systems per both individual allotments and grazing strategies. It is the goal of this research to provide an evaluation approach that would be beneficial to land managers in identifying successful strategies and developing new management ideas aimed at insuring the functionality of riparian areas and healthy mitigation with livestock.
Oral presentation and poster titles, abstracts, and authors from the Society for Range Management (SRM) Annual Meetings and Tradeshows, from 2013 forward.