Rangeland Ecology & Management

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MONITORING OF NATIONAL CONSERVATION LANDS: GRAND STAIRCASE-ESCALANTE AND AGUA FRIA NATIONAL MONUMENTS
Author
Miller, Kevin H.
Sitzmann, Paul
Publisher
Society for Range Management
Publication Year
2015
Body

The Bureau of Land Management's National Conservation Lands contain 27 million acres of some of the West's most spectacular landscapes. Their mission is to “conserve, protect, and restore these nationally significant landscapes that have outstanding cultural, ecological, and scientific values for the benefit of current and future generations.” One strategic goal is to better incorporate science into management, decision-making and outreach. In support of this mission, the Bureau's Assessment, Inventory and Monitoring (AIM) Strategy has been implemented to determine resource conditions across several National Conservation Lands units. This presentation will focus on two case studies, the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument (GSENM) and the Agua Fria National Monument (AFNM). At GSENM, land managers are interested in vegetation condition to inform grazing management decisions at planning and implementation scales. AIM terrestrial core indicators were collected in 2013 and 2014. AIM data were used with ecological site descriptions and rangeland health monitoring data to determine plant community composition for spatially-explicit forage availability estimates for land use planning, and in allotment-scale grazing management. Future applications include incorporating remote sensing into monitoring, and inventorying and assessing current condition and trends of additional Monument resources. At AFNM, the AIM terrestrial core indicators were collected in 2012 in partnership with The Nature Conservancy, Arizona Game and Fish Department and many other stakeholders. The resulting information was used to collaboratively develop resource objectives related to grazing and wildlife habitat. Future goals are to use the AIM core indicators to monitor resource conditions and inform adaptive land management decisions as well as continuing collaborative partnerships. These case studies highlight 1) how implementing the AIM Strategy supports National Conservation Lands mission and goals; 2) the utility of terrestrial core indicators for multi-scale grazing management decisions; and 3) the value of collaborative monitoring.

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