The USDA-Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) has allocated extensive resources for brush management (removal) as a conservation practice to control woody species encroachment on rangelands.� The NRCS Conservation Effects Assessment Project on Grazing Lands (CEAP-GL) has been tasked with determining how effective the practice has been, however, conservationists and land managers lack a cost-effective means to conduct these assessments at the necessary spatial and temporal scales.� An ArcGIS-based decision support tool was developed through a collaboration with NRCS CEAP-GL and the USDA-Agricultural Research Service.� The toolbox uses a remote sensing-based approach combining no-cost, high resolution National Agriculture Imagery Program (NAIP) aerial photography and medium resolution Landsat satellite imagery to produce large-area temporal maps of woody canopy cover.� This operational product will allow land managers and NRCS to assess spatial and temporal changes in woody vegetation over large heterogeneous landscapes, and provide them with a tool to assess where the greatest need for treatment exists.
Oral presentation and poster titles, abstracts, and authors from the Society for Range Management (SRM) Annual Meetings and Tradeshows, from 2013 forward.