Since the late 1880's western juniper has expanded in range and
increased in density in sagebrush-bunchgrass, riparian, and forested plant
communities of the Pacific Northwest. Succession to western juniper
woodland has been shown to reduce the productivity and diversity of the
understory component, result in concentration of soil nutrients beneath...
The objective of this thesis is to assess four winter feeding programs of spring-calving brood cows that may improve profitability to ranching operations of the Harney Basin, Oregon. The four feeding strategies include strip grazed rake-bunched hay, supplemented range grazing, strip grazed meadow pasture, and baled hay feeding. These first...
The expansion of pion-juniper woodlands the past 100 years in the western United States has resulted in large scale efforts to kill trees and recover sagebrush steppe rangelands. It is important to evaluate vegetation recovery following woodland control to develop best management practices. In this study, we compared two fuel...
Wyoming big sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata ssp. wyomingensis [Beetle & A. Young] S.L. Welsh) plant communities with degraded native herbaceous understories occupy vast expanses of the western United States. Restoring the native herbaceous understory in these communities is needed to provide higher-quality wildlife habitat, decrease the risk of exotic plant invasion,...
Western juniper (Juniperus occidentalis ssp.
occidentalis Hook) encroachment into mountain big sagebrush
(Artemisia tridentata spp. vaseyana (Rydb.) Beetle)
steppe has reduced livestock forage production, increased
erosion risk, and degraded sagebrush-associated wildlife
habitat. Western juniper has been successfully controlled
with partial cutting followed by prescribed burning the next
fall, but the...
Fire has largely been excluded from many mountain big sagebrush communities. Managers are reluctant to
reintroduce fire, especially in communities without significant conifer encroachment, because of the decline in sagebrush-associated
wildlife. Given this management direction, a better understanding of fire exclusion and burning effects is
needed. We compared burned to...
In a previous article, Beschta et al. (Environ
Manag 51(2):474–491, 2013) argue that grazing by large
ungulates (both native and domestic) should be eliminated
or greatly reduced on western public lands to reduce
potential climate change impacts. The authors did not
present a balanced synthesis of the scientific literature, and...
Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems (sUASs) equipped with optical sensors are capableof remotely sensing landscapes and wildlife at spatial and temporal resolutions that werepreviously inaccessible due to technical and budgetary limitations. Conventional remotesensing and photogrammetric workflows can be applied to the resulting high resolution imageryto facilitate new types of scientific inquiry....