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QUANTIFYING FORAGE PRODUCTION AND RANGELAND CARBON TO ASSIST FOREST SERVICE PLAN REVISION AND NEPA ASSESSMENT.
Author
Reeves, Matt C.
Publisher
Society for Range Management
Publication Year
2017
Body

The Rangeland Vegetation Simulator (RVS) was applied to the Pacific Southwest (Region 5) and Intermountain West (Region 4) regions of the U.S. Forest Service to aid in NEPA analysis and Forest Plan Revision. In Region 5, grazing allotments are monitored to ensure that best management practices are applied, standards and guidelines are met, and landscapes are meeting or moving towards desired conditions. The Forest Service is required to develop and adhere to an analysis schedule for all of its grazing allotments. However, achieving analysis targets can be impeded for numerous reasons including competing priorities, issue complexity, appeals & litigation, budget direction, and cost. As a result we sought to aid the monitoring and assessment requirements by quantifying production trends across Region 5 grazing allotments and meadows and identify trends that might require further assessment to ensure that best management practices are applied. We applied subroutines of the Rangeland Vegetation Simulator (RVS) to analyze trends in rangeland production and develop indicators of possible vegetation underperformance across all allotments under NFS jurisdiction. This analysis reveals significant downtrends in production on some allotments enabling prioritization of ground reconnaissance. In Region 4, and in other regions, Forest Plan Revisions are underway. The 2012 Forest Planning Rule requires an assessment of carbon stocks. With Forested lands, the Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) Program can be used to estimate carbon stocks but despite the significant need, no equivalent comprehensive, and repeatable sampling program exists for non-forest lands under USFS jurisdiction. As a result, we assisted Region 4 by estimating above and below carbon stocks using the RVS for estimating above ground carbon stocks, and geospatial modeling guided by the Soil Survey Geographic Database (SSURGO) database.

Language
English
Resource Type
Text
Document Type
Conference Proceedings
Conference Name
SRM St. George, UT
Collection
SRM Annual Meeting Abstracts