Interpreting Indications of Rangeland Health, Version 4

Title	Interpreting Indications of Rangeland Health, Version 4
Publication Type	Conference Paper
Year of Publication	2006
Authors	Pellant M., Shaver P.L, Pyke D.A., Herrick JE
Conference Name	Society for Range Management Annual Meeting Abstracts
Date Published	February 12-17,
Conference Location	Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
ARIS Log Number	196647
Keywords	management, rangeland health
Abstract	Land managers are in need of an assessment tool that provides a preliminary evaluation of rangeland health. Interpreting Indicators of Rangeland Health, Version 4 is the second published version of a protocol that uses 17 easily observed indicators summarized as three rangeland health attributes (soil/site/stability/hydrologic function, and biotic integrity). Version 3 was published in 2000 and has been widely used in the United States by land management agencies and technical assistance specialists. The changes in Version 4 build up the Version 3 framework and increase the consistency in the application of the protocol in two ways. The most significant modification is the replacement of the ecological site description and/or reference area(s) with an ecological site-specific reference sheet as the standard for the evaluation process. The reference sheet integrates all available sources of data and knowledge, including the ecological site description and reference areas, to generate a range of reference values for each indicator. The reference sheet will be included in ecological site descriptions as they are updated. A second significant modification is the addition of recommended quantitative measurements to support the qualitative evaluations. Version 4 is currently being translated into Chinese, Mongolian, and Spanish.