Jolley, Leonard - Soil and Water Conservation Society

Conservation Effects
Assessment Project
on Grazing Lands: An NRCS
Vision
Leonard Jolley
Rangeland and Pastureland Ecologist
Resources Inventory and Assessment Division
Beltsville, MD

There are 588 million acres of non-Federal
grazing lands in the United States that need
to be managed for:
• Water for domestic, municipal,
industrial, and commercial
uses
• Food and fiber products
• Flood protection
• Waste assimilation
• Scenery
• Recreation
• Wood products
• Minerals
• Wildlife habitat
• Ecological continuity

Complexity
• Profound differences in climate, soils,
plant communities, human interactions
• Basic division between Rangeland and
Pastureland
• Plus lots of grazable woodland

TOUR OF U.S. RANGELANDS
Shrub bunchgrass -Colorado plateau

TOUR OF U.S. RANGELANDS
Sagebrush

TOUR OF U.S. RANGELANDS
meadows

Deseret ranch -
Utah

TOUR OF U.S. RANGELANDS
Mountain meadows among the aspen

TOUR OF U.S. RANGELANDS
New Mexico

Upper Sonoran grassland

TOUR OF U.S. RANGELANDS
South Dakota

TOUR OF U.S. RANGELANDS
Florida

TOUR OF U.S. RANGELANDS
Texas

Mojave desert

Coastal grasslands

TOUR OF U.S. RANGELANDS
Introduced bunchgrass

TOUR OF U.S. PASTURELANDS
Pine grasslands

Penn state pastures

What about conservation effects?
Effects for which practices?
• Prescribed Grazing (528)
• Prescribed Burning (338)
• Brush Management (314)
• To start with…

Prescribed Grazing
Managing the
controlled
harvest of
vegetation with
grazing animals.

PURPOSES
Prescribed Grazing
This practice may be applied as part of a
conservation management system to accomplish
one or more of the following purposes.
• Improve or maintain the health and vigor of plant
communities.
• Improve or maintain quantity and quality of forage
for livestock health and productivity.

Prescribed Grazing - continued
• Improve or maintain water quality and quantity.
• Reduce accelerated soil erosion, and maintain or
improve soil condition.
• Improve or maintain the quantity and quality of
food and/or cover available for wildlife.
• Promote economic stability through grazing land
sustainability.

Elements of Prescribed Grazing
• Avoid adverse affects to
endangered, threatened, and
candidate species and their
habitats.
• Prepare a prescribed grazing
plan
• Guidelines for developing a
prescribed grazing plan
include:
• 1. Goals and Objectives clearly
stated.
• 2. Resource Inventory
• 3. Forage Inventory
• 4. Forage-Animal Balance
developed
• 5. Grazing Plan developed for
livestock that identifies periods
of grazing, rest…
• Identify target grazing
pressure to achieve a balance
of lower ecological stable
states and higher ecological
stable states for wildlife plants
and animals of concern.
• 6. Contingency plan developed
that details potential problems
(i.e., severe drought, flooding)
• 7. Monitoring plan developed

Applying controlled fire to a
predetermined area.
Prescribed Burning

Prescribed Burning-purpose
• PURPOSES
• To control undesirable vegetation.
• To prepare sites for harvesting, planting
or seeding.
• To control plant disease.
• To reduce wildfire hazards.
• To improve wildlife habitat.

Prescribed Burning-continued
• To improve plant production quantity
and/or quality.
• To remove slash and debris.
• To enhance seed and seedling
production.
• To facilitate distribution of grazing and
browsing animals.
• To restore and maintain ecological sites.

NEEDED PRACTICES
Brush Management - 314
Removal, reduction, or
manipulation of nonherbaceous
plants.

Brush management-purpose
• Restore natural plant community balance.
• Create the desired plant community.
• Restore desired vegetative cover to
protect soils, control erosion, reduce
sediment, improve water quality and
quantity, and enhance stream flow.

Brush management-continued
• Maintain or enhance wildlife habitat
including that associated with threatened
and endangered species.
• Improve forage accessibility, quality and
quantity for livestock.
• Protect life and property from wildfire
hazards.

Effects on which resources?
• Soil – erosion, soil quality, carbon…
• Water – quality, quantity
• Air - quality
• Plants – community response
• Animals – wildlife interactions
• And Humans – socioeconomic effects

CEAP Components
• National Assessment
• Watershed Assessment

National Assessment
•National, National, regional reporting
•Developing methods and databases
•Will Will make use of National Resource
Inventory (NRI)

Conservation Treatment Unit Determinations
. Conservation practices
. Resource concerns .
Transect 2, 150 ft
PSU point, GPS located
Macroplot measurements
. Rangeland Health assessment
. Noxious and invasive weeds
. Disturbance indicators
.
Transect measurements
. Plant productivity
. Plant canopy and groundcover
. Canopy and basal gap
. Soil aggregate stability test
. Cover pole and height measurements
. Soil and Ecological site identification
. Site characteristics
Transect 1, 150 ft

Rangeland NRI data collection protocol
Sample Plot (0.41 acres)
1=North Quadrant
I = N Quadrant
NE-SW Transect (1) 150 ft
45 o Skew from mag. N
Field protocols
PSU Point
2=West
Quadrant
Rangeland Health
Productivity
Rangeland Trend
Noxious and Invasive Weeds
Plant Canopy and Ground Cover
Cover Pole Measurements
Canopy/Basal Gap Measurements
Identify Disturbances
Identify Conservation Practices
Soil Stability Test
Photographs
III =S Quadrant
3=South Quadrant
4=East Quadrant
NW-SE Transect (2) 150 ft
315 o Skew from mag. N
The transects are oriented 45 degrees
in both directions from magnetic north.

Model
• The Rangeland Hydrology and Erosion
Model (RHEM) will be used to calculate
water and sediment yield.
• Tucson and Boise ARS locations will play
an important role.

CEAP Components
• National Assessment
• Watershed Assessment

Watershed Assessment
• Research at watershed scale
• Improve national/regional models &
approaches
• Determine optimal
placement of practices

ARS Benchmark
Watersheds
• 12 long-term research sites
• Variety of cropland conservation practices
• Little range or pasture
• Water quality modeling

Reynolds
Creek?
Walnut Creek?

Just one example of the potential
complexity of assessing
conservation effects for grazing
lands…

California Natural Diversity
• High natural diversity at several scales
• The variety of geologic substrates,
topography, climatic types, soils,
vegetation, and species of plants is
exceptional (Barbour et al, 1993)
• California has examples of eleven of the
world’s s 12 major soil groups

• Over 30% of all California’s s native plants
are found nowhere else in the world.
• California has the greatest number of
plant species, greatest number of climatic
zones, most complex geology, greatest
number of endangered species, and
finally, the most diverse and complicated
patterning of vegetation of any area of
comparable size in North America (Sawyer
et al 1995[CNPS])
• A half-dozen major North American
biomes squeeze together, causing 1,000
distinctive plant communities (Barbour et
al 1993)

• More than 1000 alien plant species have
been introduced to California in the last 200
years, replacing the 34 native plants gone
extinct and the 857 plants now rare and
endangered.
• In 1769 Father Junipero Serra established
San Diego settlement - brought at least
three exotic weeds with him. By 1824 at
least 16 exotic species had become
established. During the Mexican occupation
of 1825-1848 1848 an additional 63 species were
added. Pioneer American settlements of
1849-1860 1860 brought 55 more.

Complexity of Grazing
• Livestock and wildlife managers,
especially in California, are faced with
an exceedingly complex environment
• Soils are highly variable across the
rangeland landscape by depth, texture,
chemistry, organic matter, bulk density,
and other parameters.

• Topography and terrain are often complex,
confounded by soil and microclimate
differences, yielding very ‘patchy’ plant
communities.
• Growth curves of individual plant species
within these ‘patches’ are different,
causing individual plants to reach maturity
at different times and to have varying
palatability over these periods.
• California climate is notoriously fickle - the
amount and timing of precipitation and
associated temperature is critical to the
production and composition of rangeland

• Trying to cope with all these factors is
much more difficult than conventional
agriculture where soil tillage, fertilization,
irrigation, precision seeding, and
monoculture of plants bred for specific
traits render fewer unknowns and less
variability compared to rangeland.

ECOLOGICAL SITE
• DEFINITION
• A distinctive kind of land with specific
physical characteristics that differs from
other kinds of land in its ability to produce
a distinctive kind and amount of
vegetation.
• They have the potential to be an important
organizing element for conservation effects
on rangeland.

Ecological Site Descriptions

Vegetative Zones
Mountain Savannah
Mixed Prairie

Grazing lands CEAP products
• Model results
• Bibliography (National Ag. Library)
• Literature synthesis
• Interim products

Bibliography
• Practice effects, ecological services
• Diverse input, international sources
• 1,300+ citations, 1980 – present
• October 2006 publication

Literature Synthesis
• NRCS-ARS collaboration
• Contract to
Society for
Range Management
• Involvement by the American Forage &
Grassland Council

Coordination
• Society of Range Management
• American Forage
& Grassland Council
• National Cattlemen’s
Beef Association
• Ecological Society of America

Upcoming CEAP GL Events
• Dec. 5-7, 5
2006 Beltsville, MD
• Organizational meeting for literature
synthesis
• Feb. 14, 2007
Reno, NV
• CEAP Grazing lands convene at the
Society for Range Management Annual
meeting

Thanks!
I welcome your comments,
suggestions, participation!
leonard.jolley@wdc.usda.gov