Characterization of standing herbaceous biomass on rangeland is complicated by both temporal and spatial variability that results from patchiness in vegetation. These patches often cause nonuniform levels of grazing by livestock. Currently accepted methods for estimation of forage, and its utilization, assume a normal distribution. This assumption may not be appropriate if the frequency distribution of amount of biomass becomes skewed as grazing occurs. We evaluated the 3 parameter Weibull distribution as an alternative to the normal distribution in modeling the frequency distributions of plant height and biomass as a function of grazing intensity over time in a shortgrass steppe. Weibull distributions, estimated by probability weighted moments, fit all observed plant height and biomass data distributions at the alpha = 0.05 level of significance. In contrast, the normal distribution fit only 25% of the data sets. This material was digitized as part of a cooperative project between the Society for Range Management and the University of Arizona Libraries. The Journal of Range Management archives are made available by the Society for Range Management and the University of Arizona Libraries. Contact lbry-journals@email.arizona.edu for further information. Migrated from OJS platform August 2020
Scholarly peer-reviewed articles published by the Society for Range Management. Access articles on a rolling-window basis from vol. 1, 1948 up to 5 years from the current year. Formerly Journal of Range Management (JRM). More recent content is available by subscription from SRM.