Rangeland Ecology & Management

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NATIONAL TERRESTRIAL MONITORING: BLM RANGELAND RESOURCE ASSESSMENT
Author
Karl, Michael (Sherm)
Publisher
Society for Range Management
Publication Year
2015
Body

Rangelands are the largest type of land in the United States, covering 830 million acres in the lower 48 states and 205 million acres in Alaska. The United States Department of the Interior, Bureau of Land Management (BLM) manages nearly 204 million acres of these rangelands. BLM is directed by Congress to manage the public rangelands to achieve multiple use and sustained yield of the renewable resources. To ascertain if sustained yield was being provided, Congress directed BLM to periodically and systematically inventory the public rangelands and report on current public rangeland conditions and trends. The BLM Rangeland Resource Assessment (RRA) is a first-of-its-kind report on the status and condition of renewable resources on federal rangelands managed by the BLM. The BLM RRA, conducted on about 150 million acres of federal rangelands in the 13 western states exclusive of Alaska, augments the National Resources Inventory Rangeland Resource Assessment (NRI-RRA) which the Natural Resources Conservation Service conducts on non-federal rangeland. BLM's RRA reports on the status and condition of soil and vegetation resources on BLM federal rangelands using elements from BLM's Assessment, Inventory, and Monitoring Strategy (BLM AIM Strategy) of a statistically valid sampling design with a standardized set of attributes and indicators. BLM utilized the same sampling design, the same field methods, and the same trained data collectors, as was done for the NRI-RRA, to collect data for the attributes and indicators. Attributes of rangeland health—biotic integrity, hydrologic function, and soil/site stability, and indicators—bare ground, soil aggregate stability, intercanopy gaps, and presence and abundance of exotic invasive plant species, are portrayed to characterize the yield (productivity) of BLM federal rangelands. BLM intends to produce periodic RRA's to report on the trend in status and condition of soil and vegetation resources and productivity on federal BLM rangelands.

Language
English
Resource Type
Text
Document Type
Conference Proceedings
Conference Name
SRM Sacramento, CA