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 for Rangeland”
ERM-1466 “Chemical Weed and Brush Control Reference Guide has been updated to include MezaVue and other new herbicides!
Range Concepts – Texas Ecosystem Analytical Mapper and Seed Mix Map
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
Range Concepts – Plant Identification
Range Concepts – Web Soil Survey
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!
Range Concepts – Rangeland Analysis Platform
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…means thinking BIG!
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:
- Spatial prioritization of grassland restoration and reintroduction of grazing and fire.
- Finding creative approaches to increase the spatial scale at which fire and grazing can be applied to address watershed to landscape-scale objectives.
- Developing partnerships among government agencies, landowners, businesses, and conservation organizations that enhance cross-jurisdiction management and address biodiversity conservation in grassland landscapes, rather than pastures.
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.
Published to Pasture…Soil Health!
Soil Health…kind of catchy, right?! I agree. And, so do thousands of other range managers and landowners. It’s the buzz word of the century and it’s here to stay. So what do we know about soil health and how the heck can our ranchers use it?
Today, we will be looking at 2 relatively recent articles on soil health. First, “Usable Science: Soil Health” written by Justin Derner, Chuck Stanley, and Chad Ellis. Secondly, we will look at “Soil Health as a Transformational Change Agent for US Grazing Lands Management” written by Justin Derner, Alexander Smart, Theodore Toombs, Dana Larsen, Rebecca McCulley, Jeff Goodwin, Scott Sims, and Leslie Roche.
Why is soil health on the minds of every range manager these days? Easy. Dust Bowl of the 1930s was a benchmark event that changed every single range, crop, and land-man’s way of thinking. Total game changer. As Derner and others stated, “The 1930s Dust Bowl remains entrenched in the memories of land managers for how drought can lead to widespread wind erosion.” I couldn’t agree more. As range managers, we seek to learn from our mistakes – not repeat them. So now we have the most talented scientists working out the details of a very complex, obscure, and complicated science of the physical, chemical, and biological components of soil and how applicable conservation practices increase production, capacity, and ecosystem services through enhanced soil water holding capacity, appropriate nutrient cycling, and greater resiliency to weather variability and predicted climate changes. For example, utilizing novel experiments with adaptive grazing management wherein short “pulses” of grazing with a large herd followed by rest periods of more than 1 year provides experimental platforms to evaluate the efficacy of soil health monitoring efforts. Can I get an amen from the range gospel choir?! Wahoo!!! It’s about dang time!
To summarize what the Rangelands article is talking about, here we go:
#1. What are the effects of conservation practices (e.g., prescribed grazing, prescribed fire, and brush management) on the chemical, physical, and biological components of soil health?
#2. Can the chemical, physical, and biological components of soil health be used as “early indicators” of phase, transition, and/or threshold shifts in plant communities for state-and-transition models to enhance ecological site descriptions?
#3. How can the chemical, physical, and biological components of soil health be enhanced through adaptive management to increase the resilience of soils to weather variability and changing climate?
#4. How can the soil health tool kit to provide more robust and broad assessments of soil health and/or monitoring of the chemical, physical, and biological components for land managers in a timely and responsive manner to facilitate adaptive management be expanded?
Fast forward to our next article, Soil Health as a Transformational Change Agent for US Grazing Lands Management and now is where we get to the cool nerd stuff. Current soil health is an opportunity not to focus on improvement of soil health on lands where potential is limited but rather to forward science-based management on grazing lands via
#1. Refocusing grazing management on fundamental ecological processes (water and nutrient cycling and energy flow) rather than maximum short-term profit or livestock production
#2. Emphasizing goal-based management with adaptive decision making informed by specific objectives incorporating maintenance of soil health at a minimum and directly relevant monitoring attributes
#3. Advancing holistic and integrated approaches for soil health that highlight social-ecological-economic inter-dependencies of these systems, with particular emphasis on human dimensions
#4. Building cross-institutional partnerships on grazing lands’soil health to enhance technical capacities of students,land managers, and natural resource professionals
#5. Creating across-region, living laboratory network of case studies involving producers using soil health as part of their grazing land management. Explicitly incorporating soil health into grazing management and the matrix of ecosystems services provided by grazing lands provides transformational opportunities by building tangible links between natural resources stewardship and sustainable grazing management, as well as providing paths to reach broader audiences and enhance communications among producers,customers, and the general public.
Now, we can really jump up and say “hallelujah!!!!”
This is what their vision looks like:
My favorite part, is “Re-focus grazing management on fundamental ecological processes.” What a concept!!
Better yet! There is an app for that! Check out LandPKS on your smartphone device and start collecting data on LandInfo, LandCover, and LandManagment!
Please click here for more information regarding this remarkable tool!
Believe it or not, Soil Health is more fun and easy than you think! We just overcomplicated it!
Published to Pasture…Collaborative Adaptive Rangeland Management
In 2018, Wilmer and others published “Collaborative adaptive rangeland management foster management-science partnerships” in Rangeland Ecology and Management (check it out here). I really valued this paper, because fostering management-science relationships is what Extension is all about!
This paper is a case study, based on qualitative social data collected from meeting notes and interview transcripts recorded from ranchers and agency representatives in a Collaborative Adaptive Rangeland Management (CARM) study. In this synthetic assessment, they explored to what extent participation in the CARM experiment enabled adaptive decision making by a group of rangeland stakeholders (landowners, agencies, non-profit, etc..).
The specific objectives of this study were to 1) document how diverse stakeholder experiences and knowledge (meaning their socially constructed theories and justifications for rangeland management knowledge) contribute to the CARM project, 2) evaluate how co-produced knowledge informed management decision making through three grazing seasons, and 3) explore the implications of participation in the CARM experiment for rangeland stakeholders.
Here are some snapshot comments from ranchers, agency, and NGO reps on uncertainties, learning/collaboration, and motivations:
The authors found that this interactive process can reveal the differences among stakeholder knowledge about complex rangeland systems, but does not reconcile those differences. And that it is HIGHLY UNLIKELY that stakeholder decision-making related to cattle rotation and prescribed fire decisions will be made on data from research or experiments. However, it is likely that Collaborative Adaptive Rangeland Management (CARM) can build awareness and appreciation for the diverse ways of knowing about rangeland management. Stakeholders are more likely to utilize:
- Discussion and consideration of different reasoning for management actions
- Enhanced understanding when stakeholders are involved in the project design and monitoring data collection and presentation.
- Frequent discussion of the rational for decisions
- Presentations of multiple information sources
- Focus groups or tours that encourage sharing participants’ ways of knowing and experiences
Bottom line, rangeland management stakeholders prefer making decisions based on the broadest range of available information, INSTEAD of exclusively using scientifically derived knowledge!!!
Next, data from this paper showed TRUST among stakeholder and researcher groups may improve social learning by increasing the transparency of unique stakeholder experiences and knowledge. Stakeholder trust over time facilitated engagement and commitment from stakeholders and researchers to work toward a common goal.
So…are you a landowner, rancher, producer that agrees with this? I certainly hope so because this is all about what Extension creates, facilitates, and nurtures. Our job is to provide YOU the landowner with all the information and bring YOU to a network of stakeholders that you TRUST!
As Extension, we should:
- Make direct efforts to share and acknowledge managers’ different rangeland management experiences, epistemologies, and knowledge
- Involve long-term research commitment in time and funding to social, as well as experimental, processes that promote trust building among stakeholders and researchers over time
This all is very ironic to me, because it is what ranchers have been telling me for a long time. But, now that we have it in a published journal, maybe the other half can start listening!
I love my job. I love delivering information. I love working with ranchers. I serve at the pleasure of West Texas ranchers, and it is a an honor. Thank you!!
Outside the Fire…Justin Penick Acorn Forestry
Acorn Forestry is a full service forestry company specializing in reforestation, wildland firefighting, forest management and mid-rotation services in Lufkin, Texas. All services are provided to private landowners, consultants and companies with an emphasis on quality and accountability. Basically, they are experts in prescribed burning! I first met owner/operator Justin Penick at the Texas Department of Agriculture Prescribed Burn Board meeting and instantly respected him for his many talents and abilities. Justin is one of the very best in the state and in the nation when it comes to successfully implementing a prescribed burn. It is a pleasure working and learning from Justin and check out his website www.acornforestry.net for more information!
How did you get introduced to fire? I was first introduced to fire during the summer at a Boy Scout camp in Louisiana. I was 16 or so and helped direct about 100 Boy Scouts with flappers and rakes to control what ended up being about a 40 acre wildfire. The most memorable impact it had on me was how we were able to create line with the rakes and effectively use fire to fight fire. That experience helped shape my opinion of prescribed burning and sent me down a path that I’m still on today.
How early do you start planning for a prescribed burn? Typically, we begin the planning of an actual Rx burn about two months prior to ignition. The time frame in all honesty is mostly controlled by our customer’s own schedule. We work to satisfy their desired schedule as best as possible. For management purposes in settings with large blocks of land and rotating timber stands we know up to 15 years out what the proposed burn rotation and schedule would be.
What’s most unique about a post-fire environment? The uniqueness and beauty of a post fire environment in my opinion is the recovery rate of desired grasses and forbes. The fire adaptive species in our ecosystem thrive after even the most catastrophic of wildfires or the mildest of Rx burns. It’s truly amazing.
In your opinion, what makes a successful fire? The most important thing for us to have a successful burn is a safe burn. We have a very low tolerance for escapes that cause damage, or smoke that impacts neighbors or traffic in a serious way. With Rx burning we generally have another opportunity to do better in regards to specific results of the fire but you don’t get do-overs in damage or injury.
Who or what would you never burn without? Under no circumstances would I ever burn without the appropriate fire suppression equipment. The appropriate equipment varies from one ecosystem type to another but the lack of that equipment entirely is inexcusable.