Point Blue’s Rangeland Watershed Initiative: Measuring the soil, vegetation, and wildlife benefits of prescribed grazing

Background/Question/Methods

Point Blue Conservation Science (PBCS) is collaborating with the USDA-Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), cooperating ranchers, and several partners in an effort to improve soil, vegetation (forage) and wildlife habitat on foothill rangeland watersheds in California’s Great Valley.  By applying prescribed (planned) rangeland grazing and management practices, ranchers with support from NRCS Farm Bill programs, PBCS, UC Davis Rangeland Watershed Laboratory and conservation partners seek to increase soil water retention in foothill watersheds, improve water supply reliability downstream, improve abundance and diversity of plant functional groups, enhance ranch productivity, improve habitat for fish and wildlife and provide proactive adaptation to climate change.  In addition, we are partnering with and mentoring ranchers as Leopoldian land stewards to ensure long-term ecological and production benefits on their land.

There is little empirical data available related to grazing management and long-term soil and vegetation response on California’s Annual Rangelands.  We are measuring an array of soils attributes including, infiltration, organic matter, and bulk density for both benchmark and planned grazing implementation.  We are also taking vegetation measurements primarily by use of line intercept to document plant functional group and invasive and noxious plant data and bird point counts and area searches to characterize changes that occur due to changes in management.

Results/Conclusions

PBCS is collaborating with the California Rangeland Watershed Laboratory at the University of California, Davis to document and evaluate hydrological changes, soil organic matter, infiltration, bulk density and carbon accumulation, and wildlife habitat benefits of the prescriptive grazing and associated rangeland management practices. Soil measurements are taken using The three-year study will provide empirical evidence on the effectiveness of prescribed grazing and rangeland management practices in providing reliable water supplies, improving soil quality, sequestering soil carbon and improving wetland, riparian and upland fish and wildlife habitats.  Since we can only gather accurate data during the plant growing season and when the soils are moist, our first year samples will be taken in March-June 2014.  We will make preliminary results available during the presentation of this paper.