The Rio Puerco Watershed (RPW) is a highly dynamic and diverse ecological system that has a long history of anthropogenic alterations. This landscape has been degraded through historic overutilization exacerbated by periods of prolonged drought. At present, the NRCS and BLM use conservation practices, namely prescribed grazing and brush control throughout the region to improve ecological stability and ecosystem health of private and public lands. The conservation practice of herbicide application serves primarily to decrease brush species while allowing for an increase in herbaceous cover and a decrease in erosion risk. The objectives of this project are to develop a comprehensive monitoring program to investigate the effects of this conservation practice on the plant and soil biological communities and the hydrology of the RPW. Changes to plant and soil biological communities are being monitored utilizing multiple transects across two herbicide-treated areas and two untreated reference areas. To examine the impacts to hydrology and soil health, soil sampling points along with six runoff plots and associated local weather stations were established in the research areas to provide key parameters controlling site potential and erosion risk. The runoff plots employ Upwelling Bernoulli Tubes to measure surface flow that can be linked directly to local precipitation quantities. All field measurements will be used to calibrate a Gridded Surface/Subsurface Hydrologic Analysis for the RPW to illustrate the potential impacts at a larger scale. We will demonstrate how integrating and expanding the plot-level measurements to the watershed-scale provides a better understanding of how this system reacts to conservation practices and can serve as a basis for future range management decisions. If conservation practices on rangelands within the RPW can decrease potential runoff and sediment load, the improvement of the ecological health of the system would provide valuable resources and ecosystem services across the region.
Oral presentation and poster titles, abstracts, and authors from the Society for Range Management (SRM) Annual Meetings and Tradeshows, from 2013 forward.