Get reliable rangeland science

As the Nation's largest land manager, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) administers almost 260 million acres of public land, nearly â…› of all land in the United States. It is inherently clear that managing these lands for many ecosystem benefits can prove to be very difficult, and sometimes, responsibility is given to only a few natural resource managers to manage several hundred thousand acres of land. In order to more efficiently and effectively meet local, regional, and national needs and to understand the health of the nation's public lands, the Assessment, Inventory, and Monitoring (AIM) Program was created. The AIM strategy gives the BLM an opportunity to collect quantitative information on the status and trend of resources on public lands and addresses different management objectives at multiple scales. Reporting at multiple scales will help inform land managers of the effectiveness of their management actions and provide opportunities for adaptive management. One of the five primary elements of the BLM's AIM Strategy is electronic on-site data capture and centralized data management through BLM's national geospatial infrastructure. As science becomes more data intensive and collaborative, data sharing becomes even more important, especially well-managed, long-term preservation of data. The BLM's AIM Strategy has enabled collaborative use of national monitoring data on rangelands by developing a national database called TerrADat (Terrestrial AIM Database) so that information is readily accessed, aggregated, and shared. Research has found that a large majority of scientists would use other researchers' datasets if they were easily accessible and that the lack of access to data generated by other researchers or institutions is a major impediment to progress in science. TerrADat can provide statistically valid ecosystem monitoring data to a range of land managers and researchers to aid in their adaptive management decisions.