Objective 1 Examine specific drought effects relative to livestock grazing/rest treatments and bare earth exposure. The sagebrush-steppe uplands at the O’Neal Reserve will be used as a field laboratory to investigate drought effects relative to livestock grazing. Healthy rangelands should have minimal bare earth exposure. Soil cover (vegetation, litter, etc.) cover can reduce water loss (Thurow and Hester 1997) by better trapping and holding rainfall and by acting as a mulch to insulate the earth’s surface from direct solar radiation and evaporation. Soil cover can thereby lessen the effect of drought. Holistic planned grazing has been used in other areas of the world to effectively reduce bare earth exposure using livestock as a management tool. This study will utilize cattle within Holistic planned grazing to A) determine if planned grazing can be used to effectively decrease bare earth exposure B) determine if soil moisture changes relative to bare earth exposure and livestock grazing, and C) examine the ecological effects of livestock grazing such as changes in plant community composition and structure.

Objective 2 Model and monitor rangeland condition Rangeland health is a term that has recently received much emphasis (Pyke et al 2002 and Pyke et al 2005). However, there are many definitions of rangeland health, none of which are universally accepted. At the annual “Geo-spatial and Rangeland Sciences” conference (part of the GIS TReC’s public outreach effort) in 2004, attendees participated in an exercise to define rangeland health. While all attendees had valid credentials to not only understand rangeland health but also define rangeland health, there was no clear consensus of the definition. For this reason, we have developed a working definition of healthy rangelands that will be used for this study: “Healthy rangelands exhibit effective water cycles as indicated by minimal bare earth exposure and minimal evidence of soil erosion. In addition, the vegetation present will be a mixture of grasses, forbs, and shrubs that act synergistically to provide quality forage and habitat for wildlife and grazing animals. Litter will be present and biodegrading. Very little if any litter will be decomposing through oxidation”.

Objective 3 Forecast rangeland health/condition using cellular-automata and Markov chain analysis. Using observed/quantified changes in land cover for the O’Neal, USSES, and Big Desert study areas we will be able to forecast future changes and predict rangeland health at these study areas using cellular automata and Markov chain analysis with Idrisi software. Many of the observed/quantified changes required for this model are available at the GIS TReC and are the result of our temporal land cover change research program describing change between the time period of 1987 and the present. The models that are currently available illustrate areas that have experienced change in land cover. A detectable change in land cover is one where >10% of an areas shows a statistically different spectral response between two imagery dates selected using phenological synchronization techniques (2001). These data will allow us to quantify the rate of change. In addition, the rangeland health modeling techniques developed for objective 2 will be retroactively applied to the older imagery (and validated using historic field samples available at the GIS TReC) to produce various “snap-shots” of rangeland health for our study areas. These models will thereby form the basis for cellular automata and Markov chain analysis of land cover changes and predictive models of future rangeland health/condition. In addition, artificial neural network predictive models will be produced which may be more reliable environmental models as compared to other statistical-based models (Ranweera et al., 1995; Haykin, 1999; Lacroix et al., 1997, Panda et al., 2004). We will use the rangeland health factors described above as inputs in a back-propagation neural network and radial basis function neural network prediction model to generate rangeland health forecast models for future years using Neural Ware Professional 2 Plus software.

Objective 4 Planned Public Outreach Activities: The results from this study will be freely distributed to range managers, range scientists, ranchers, and land stewards. Several venues of public outreach will be implemented throughout the course of this study. Each is intended to help educate the end-user and general public regarding the benefits of the geotechnologies and their application for real-world problems/issues. These venues are 1) an annual “Geo-spatial and Range Sciences” conference, 2) Geotechnologies workshops and field days, 3) Geotechnologies on-line learning modules, 4) publication of “Integration: the newsletter of Geo-spatial and Range Sciences, 5) a Rangeland health modeling website, and 6) the GLOBE forum and train the trainer (TTT) program.