West Texas Rangelands
Click here for a self-paced, online, take anywhere, CEU course on Brush Busters Rangeland Herbicide Applications!
This course is all inclusive covering equipment, nozzles, surfactants, sprayers, target species, resources, and much more!
Interested in attending our online webinar on July 27, 2020 at 9:00 AM showcasing the research findings from Texas A&M University Dr. Urs Kreuter’s Joint Fire Science Program project:
“Fighting Wildfire with Prescribed Burning in the Southern Great Plains: Social and Regulatory Barriers and Facilitators” (funded by the Bureau of Land Management Joint Fire Science Program (Contract #L16AC00206))??
Please register HERE!
Check out this week’s Range Concepts video on Ecological Site Descriptions and State and Transition Models!
And, don’t forget the ESD STM Handout!
ERM-1466 “Chemical Weed and Brush Control Reference Guide has been updated to include MezaVue and other new herbicides!
This week’s Range Concepts dives into the Texas Ecosystem Analytical Mapper (TEAM) from Texas Parks and Wildlife. TEAM is an easy-to-use FREE resource that includes soil mapping, plant community descriptions, threatened and endangered species, and much more!
The Seed Mix Map from Caesar Kleberg Wildlife Research Institute displays a FREE custom seed mix for an identified area defined by soil type within each ecoregion.
Both of these tools can be synergistically used together to build reseeding recommendations for disturbed rangelands, or for enhanced understanding of rangeland soils and plant communities!
Handout: Texas Ecosystem Analytical Mapper and Seed Mix Map
YouTube Tutorial Video: https://youtu.be/Nd_K7zbr0kg
Check out our new YouTube Channel featuring videos and handouts dedicated to increasing County Extension Agent knowledge and enhancing landowner’s understanding of tools, resources, techniques, and strategies on rangelands!
Our latest post features application and utility of Web Soil Survey, an online free resource for understanding soil mapping and tools. Nearly all farmers, ranchers, and forest landowners across the country rely on one common resource for production: their soil. If you’re interested in learning more about this medium that grows our nation’s food, fuel, and fiber, here is a advantageous tool to help! Get the Web Soil Survey Handout here and watch the YouTube video here!
Check out our new YouTube Channel featuring videos and handouts dedicated to increasing County Extension Agent knowledge and enhancing landowner’s understanding of tools, resources, techniques, and strategies on rangelands!
Our latest post features application and utility of Rangeland Analysis Platform, an online free resources for understanding trends in vegetative cover on rangelands. Get the Rangeland Analysis Platform Handout here and watch the YouTube video here!
Thinking like a grassland.
What does this mean to you?
Well, to Dr. David Augustine from the USDA-ARS Station in Fort Collins, CO and others, it means large-scale movement of many species. This large-scale movement enables the Great Plains evolved strategies to contend with drought, floods, and even wildfires…in a nutshell….extreme variability in weather resulting in low forage production.
Currently, our pattern of land ownership and use of Great Plains grasslands challenges native species conservation. For example, too much management is focused at the scale of individual pastures or ranches, limiting opportunities to conserve landscape-scale processes such as fire, animal movement, and metapopulation dynamics.
“Figure 1. Potential natural vegetation of US portion of the North American Great Plains, adapted from Kuchler (1964).”
“Estimated extent of 5 major ecoregions of the US Great Plains, subdivided into 14 vegetation communities as mapped by Kuchler (1964; see Fig. 1). For each community, we present the estimated percent of the landscape in each of 10 land cover types based on an integration of cropland data layers (2011e2017) with the 2011 National Land Cover Database.”
Opportunities to increase the scale of grassland management include:
Thinking like a grassland should be pretty easy for us range managers…open spaces, big country, and…thinking big!!
For an in-depth view of “Thinking Like a Grassland: Challenges and Opportunities for
Biodiversity Conservation in the Great Plains of North America”, click on this link: Thinking like a grassland Augustine et al., 2020 REM.
