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Project Summary
The goal of the research unit based at the Jornada Experimental Range (JER) is to develop ecologically based technologies for monitoring, remediation, and grazing management in desert environments. To achieve this goal, our overall research objective is to determine how biological, soil, and geomorphological processes interact across multiple spatial and temporal scales to affect soil development, soil stability, nutrient and water retention and acquisition, plant establishment and survival, and animal foraging behavior. Within this overall goal are four specific objectives designed to achieve ecologically based technologies with application to rangeland management:
- Develop an integrated assessment and monitoring approach for vegetation structure and composition, soil stability, watershed function, and biotic integrity of spatially and temporally heterogeneous rangelands at landscape, watershed, and regional scales.
- Identify key plant and soil processes, and environmental factors, such as landscape position, land use history, and climate, that influence the potential for remediation success.
- Develop adaptive strategies for livestock management across multiple scales based on animal foraging behavior.
- Predict responses of ecosystem dynamics and livestock distribution across time and space to changes in climate and other management-dependent and -independent drivers, and develop an integrated management, monitoring, and knowledge toolbox that can be easily applied by individuals with a range of management experience, from minimal to extensive.
We will build upon information collected since 1912, complemented with ongoing and new research, to address our objectives. We will integrate short- and long-term data sets with simulation modeling, geographic information systems, and remote sensing tools. Our approach will combine short-term experiments to test specific hypotheses with synthetic experiments
requiring a more complex integration of ecosystem components and drivers. Although this is an ambitious proposal, it reflects the singular efforts of a collaborative, interdisciplinary group of 11 ARS scientists at the JER working towards a common goal.
