The Landscape Toolbox

Starting this spring, we will be hosting a series of online training sessions on tools and products associated with the Landscape Toolbox project. These hour-long web seminars are available free of charge thanks to funding from the M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust. The 2010 web seminars will focus on tools and techniques for assessment and monitoring of large shrubland, grassland, and savanah landscapes. A PDF flyer for the seminar series is available here.

• April 27 - The Rangeland Assessment and Monitoring Methods Guide
• May 4 - Using the Database for Inventory, Monitoring and Assessment
• June 8 - Assessment and Monitoring Techniques for Evaluating Road Impacts
• July 20 - Practical Tools for Multi-Scale Sample Design and Selection

All seminars will take place at 2:00pm (MDT), and recordings of the seminars will be available here following each one. Each web seminar is elgible for one continuing education unit (CEU) from the Society for Range Management. Registration for the web seminars is required and can be done online at http://www.landscapetoolbox.org/train/register.

In continuing with the integration of the Landscape Toolbox project with the work going on at the USDA-ARS Jornada Experimental Range, we are pleased to announce the release of the newest version of the Rangeland Database and Field Entry System - Version 1.5.

The Rangeland Database and Field Data Entry System was developed by the USDA-ARS Jornada Experimental Range to increase the speed and precision of data entry in both the field and office and organize and store field data. Developed in Microsoft Access to be easy to use, fast, and flexible, the Rangeland Database supports data entry and storage for 16 different quantitative and qualitative assessment and monitoring methods.

You can find more information on the new version of the Rangeland Database in the Assessment and Monitoring pageof the Landscape Toolbox .

Over the next year, we will be working to more fully integrate the Rangeland Database with other existing Landscape Toolbox tools as well as those in development. We'll have more information on this process soon.

Cheers-

Jason Karl, Ph.D.
Landscape Toolbox Project Lead
USDA-ARS Jornada Experimental Range

It's been a while since we've posted anything to the Landscape Toolbox blog, but don't take our lack of postings as an indication that we've not been doing anything. We've been hard at work developing a suite of tools for the Landscape Toolbox. In this blog posting, I'd like to highlight one of them: the Rangeland Assessment and Monitoring Methods Guide (Methods Guide for short). Check it out at http://www.rangelandmethods.org.

The Methods Guide is a web-based tool and resource designed to give researchers and managers the information necessary to make informed decisions about which field and remote-sensing method or combination of methods could be most useful and cost effective for their specific rangeland management needs. The Methods Guide provides reviews on how well each method performs to answer specific questions as well as descriptions, relative costs, references to rangeland applications, and contact information for the different techniques. The techniques are rated through expert and user reviews. The Methods Guide is intended to be the users’ first step to selecting assessment and monitoring protocols by providing enough information on strengths, limitations, and rangeland applications that users can seek additional, more specific how-to information on the recommended techniques.

There are two interrelated parts to the Methods Guide, a discovery tool that starts with a user's management question or objective and provides recommended field and remote sensing methods based on expert ratings of the methods for different applications. The second part (which can either be accessed directly through the Method Guide homepage or through the discovery tool results) is a wiki devoted to explaining and providing rangeland applications of each of the methods in the Methods Guide. The wiki has a great Frequently Asked Questions page that explains the Methods Guide in detail and how it works.

The Methods Guide is very much a collaborative effort, relying on contributions from experienced professionals of information about and reviews of the many rangeland assessment and monitoring methods. The abstracts in this wiki have been created by rangeland science and management professionals who have generously volunteered their time and expertise. We need your help to make the Methods Guide as complete and useful as possible. There are lots of ways that you can get involved:

If you're interested in helping out with the Methods Guide or just want to give us some feedback, please drop me a line at jkarl@nmsu.edu.

Cheers-

Jason Karl, Ph.D.
Landscape Toolbox Project Lead
USDA-ARS Jornada Experimental Range
575-646-7015