Projects

Summary of the Workshop

Updated 02/27/2009

Joel Brown, Kris Havstad and Jeff Herrick

Speakers

Each of the eight speakers did an excellent job of addressing the topic on which the organizers asked them to speak. I was also impressed with their ability to relate the relatively narrow subject area that they had been asked to cover to the larger problem of rangeland ecosystem health. They are also to be commended for their eagerness to frankly answer questions. Rather than attempt to summarize what each speaker said, I will refer you to their short summaries. The main thing that emerged from the speakers as a group was the demonstration of the breadth of core disciplines and the capability that we have for a highly disciplinary program.

The first four speakers (Washington-Allen, Jensen, Wu and Bush) presented a variety of remote sensing, data acquisition and analytical techniques for organizing and classifying biophysical information at a variety of scales and to make inferences about ecosystem health. In addition, the speakers addressed the need to more efficiently locate sample and ground-truth points by using remote sensing and GIS applications. Without doubt, our ability to access, organize and display information exceeds our ability to synthesize and most importantly, respond with action.

The profession of range management has always tried to implement programs in a socially consious way. A classic example in the 1970s was building "range improvement" projects and then pressing government agencies into making low-interest loans available for cash-poor ranchers to implement cost-effective technologies. Time, and developments both inside and outside the profession, has allowed us to take a much more sophisticated approach. However, we are still relatively ill-equipped in this area.

The final four speakers (Rasmussen, Weltz, Kothman and George) looked beyond the application of techniques toward models for assessing the biophysical, social, economic and cultural attributes of rangeland health. In particular, Dr. Kothman made a very important point concerning the need to differentiate among values, criteria and indicators. Two of the speakers (Drs. Kothman and Weltz) presented software applications for assisting in the design of rangeland health assessments, whileDrs. Rasmussen and George presented conceptual models of how a wide variety of information can be used to improve the process of ecosystem health assessment and, subsequently, the quality of decisions.

Group discussions

The three groups developed a wide range of responses to questions about methodologies and procedures for assessing and monitoring rangeland health and the type of research that would be needed to take us into the future. It was apparent that we have some well-developed technologies that can be used to accurately assess vegetation and soil properties within a specified range of error. The difficulty lies mainly in knowing what it is we want to measure and the level of error we can tolerate for a range of attributes.

It was also apparent that we are still focused on the biophysical portion of the rangeland health equation. Economic and social concerns were deemed to be less important. Most workshop participants were also much more comfortable with a prescriptive approach rather than a diagnostic approach. However, a diagnostic approach is much more likely to give us insight as to what kind of assistance and programs are required to overcome the limits to improving rangeland ecosystem health.

Conclusions

Based on the speakers, small group discussions and large group discussion, we offer these points for consideration by the group.

Rangeland Health is a multivariate measure. Values, criteria, indicators and measurements must include ecological, economic and social aspects if we are to address both the human and natural resource needs of rangeland ecosystems.

Indicators for rangeland health change with different ecosystems. It will be difficult in the extreme to ever get out a national level inventory (with the same measures being made in each location) what we put into it. The data for rangeland health assessment should be agglomerated and interpreted at the level of ecosystem or region.

We must expand and transend our traditional discipline base. There are several core disciplines that should be involved in the measurement of rangeland health (remote sensing, GIS, ecology, sociology, extension, economics, soils, geomorphology, rangeland management), but the approach should be transdisciplinary. That involves designing projects to measure rangeland health at the beginning by including all of the disciplines and collecting data as a team, not as discipline specialists and then agglomerating at the report stage. We need to make our approach to rangeland health relevant and responsive to people and not just a technology problem.

We are not tool limited. Our technologies are known entities and we understand how they work. However, we do not understand how to apply them in the accurate assessment of rangeland health. I realize that technology specialists will always argue that "more work needs to be done before we are ready for field applications", but, in my opinion, we will never know how we stand until we attempt some applications.

We are limited in our hypotheses and concepts about rangeland health. We do not have adequate models of rangeland degradation, either in terms of causal factors or impacts on processes and people, and associated sampling strategies to detect change. New concepts of rangeland health need to be put into testable hypotheses that can be rejected or supported by the collection of information.

We are commitment limited. A team approach to assessing rangeland health requires that people and institutions involved have a clear commitment to the project and make it a high priority, even if it means changing long-standing operating procedures. Institutional commitment means freedom for the scientists involved to develop new ideas and carry them through to their logical conclusion. Individual commitment means that scientists have to be prepared to admit that their particular discipline may be only one of many that contributes to a successful outcome and that, in some cases, a higher priority must be placed on other disciplines and activities.

In summary, the workshop outcomes strongly support our notion that there is the desire and talent available to develop a more robust, diagnostic approach to rangeland health assessment and to improving the linkage between information and decisions about land management. The research needed is primarily in the area of the effective use of available and emerging technologies and can only be accomplished in on-the-ground applications. It would be in the best interest of the action agencies to lead this activity.

We propose that an interdisciplinary rangeland ecosystem health project should be undertaken and supported by state and federal land management, technical assistance and research agencies. The fundamental principles of this project should be that it:

include multiple measures of rangeland health (ecological, sociological and economic and cultural);

make maximum use of existing data and information; identify shortcomings in currently available information and make recommendations for improving accuracy;

and specifically identify the link between information collected and decisions to improve rangeland health at the individual, program and policy levels.

Questions and discussion

Rick Miller: Do we know how to link disciplines?
Joel: No...
»Opportunities - lack of organization
»Core groups do exist (e.g. Land Grant Institutions, USDA, etc.)
»Could each group initiate their own monitoring programs?

Tony Svejcar: Less optimistic regarding opportunities - science versus social for ARS?
Joel: User (client) groups may be able to support.
Tony Svejcar: User groups dont directly provide support. Goal should be to take projects all the way through.

Mort Kothmann: Are we going to have proliferation or concensus of answers. Proliferation may be good at this point. Funding is a major problem.
Mel George: Sierra Nevada report is now languishing somewhere. This or other project will get money poured into it. Can ideas from report be used to lay out problems to be addressed and obtain funding?
Joel: Find a problem (rather than trying to stick to own discipline).

Mort Kothmann: Must sell need for R& D that blends research and extension.
Robert Washington-Allen: NASA wants applied studies (formerly a basic sciences organization).
Joel: Action agencies need to get involved with money to fund projects.

Tony Svejcar: This meeting may have allowed teams to get together to develop projects.
Joel: May have to make decisions on what to drop to continue commitment to transdisciplinary studies.
Rick Miller: Early research may go along individual (different?) paths, but later must get together to blend.
Neil West: Other groups may be able to help.
Joel, Rick V: trying to come to concensus early wont work. The land management agencies probably have the most to gain and should try to facilitate.

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