Public land management agencies utilize Ecological Site Descriptions (ESDs) and their associated state-and-transition model (STM) for determining the ecological health or state of rangelands. ESDs synthesize information concerning soils, hydrology, ecology, and management into a user friendly document, whereas the STM identifies the various alternative vegetation states, describes the disturbances that cause ecological thresholds to be breached and the restoration activities needed to restore plant communities and rangeland function. Ecological thresholds associated with excessive and chronic herbivory typically occur slowly over many years and indicators of degradation may go unnoticed prior to a threshold event. STMs provide managers with an ecologically sound tool for multiple applications including determining current ecological state, designing monitoring or habitat restoration objectives and setting carrying capacity at landscape scales. ESDs and STMs in combination with vegetation monitoring can be utilized to determine the current condition of Herd Management Areas, identify impending and irreversible ecological thresholds and to set ecologically sound Appropriate Management Levels.
Oral presentation and poster titles, abstracts, and authors from the Society for Range Management (SRM) Annual Meetings and Tradeshows, from 2013 forward.