A fundamental principle of Holistic Management is that success requires planning—and successful planning requires implementation (of course), monitoring, controlling, and replanning. The textbook makes this point in many ways and contexts, and earlier chapters in this handbook have repeated it. In any situation you manage, you should be monitoring to make happen what you want to happen—to bring about desired changes in line with your holisticgoal. Monitoring developments in the biological sphere, however, deserves its own treatment because much of what we do as land managers may lead to unanticipated effects. Any time you plan to alter ecosystem processes in any way, you must always assume you could be wrong because the land is more complex than humans will ever understand.
The livestock industry traditionally monitors many aspects of animal performance. In the cattle business, the statistics on conception rates, bull performance, daily gain, weight per day of age, calf and weaner weights more or less define the quality of an operation in traditional terms. With the development of Holistic Management, ranchers are beginning to understand what crop farmers have long understood: Yield per acre or hectare is more important to profit than yield per plant or animal. While it is important to monitor animal performance, it is even more important to monitor the land’s performance, its ability to convert sunlight to grass and thus to saleable livestock products, other potential enterprises (wildlife, recreation), and ultimately money.
In assuming that any action we plan to take could go wrong because of the land’s complexity, we want to have the earliest possible warning so we can make changes before damage is done. Old-time coal miners found it wise to monitor air quality in the shaft by using canaries, because the birds died before bad air became toxic to the miners. A drop in livestock conception rates shows a problem—but after the fact and without any clue of how to correct it. Many of the numbers we ardently compile and ponder fail us in the same way.
Obviously, you can steer a ship better looking over the bow than back at the wake, but only if you know what to monitor. Ideally, biological monitoring should pick up changing conditions and deviations from plan so you won’t miss an opportunity to change course and replan. As you apply any of the tools we use to manage ecosystem processes—technology, animal impact, fire, grazing, rest, or living organisms—you will need to determine what criteria you can monitor that will give the earliest warnings of adverse change. Monitoring changes in plant or animal species, a common practice, is a measurement that comes too late, indicating considerable change has already occurred that may not have been in line with your holisticgoal. You want to detect changes well before that.
You must address this challenge on three levels. First, you must cultivate a general and ongoing awareness of the condition of the four ecosystem processes (water cycle, mineral cycle, energy flow, and community dynamics) and how the tools you apply affect them.
Second, each year you must carry out an assessment of the soil surface and the life upon it, based on one of the procedures described in the second section of part 3, “Monitoring Your Land,” which will help you to predict changes and trends.
Third, if you are managing livestock, you must also monitor growth rates, water supplies, the development of unfavorable grazing patterns, and so on when working to a holistic grazing plan.
These three levels of monitoring complement each other. When practiced together, they will quickly reveal the dynamism present in all landscapes. Most people who make a living from the land or love it deeply find this revelation fascinating. The resulting habit of observation becomes addictive but is hard to communicate to people who haven’t tried it. A Colorado rancher once confessed to lying to his guests to avoid the trouble. “At chore time I tell them I’m going to check the cattle,” he said. “They wouldn’t believe that I’m really checking the grass.”
Like the two preceding parts of this book, part 3 presents some basic concepts and examples that illustrate the holistic approach, in this case to biological monitoring, and then a guide to a formal procedure—and this time a less detailed alternative as well.
These two procedures specifically address the concerns of those managing brittle-environment rangelands or grasslands in less brittle environments. They assume that grazing and browsing animals—domestic and wild—are present for at least part of the year. Those who routinely till, replant, and fertilize their pastures should refer to Holistic Early Warning Biological Monitoring—Croplands (available from the Savory Institute).
If you are managing wetlands or forest, these same procedures can be used to monitor conditions in the rainfall catchment areas (or watersheds) leading into a wetland or surrounding a forest. Within a forest, and particularly when livestock are used to help control the buildup of combustible understory, these procedures will provide essential information, but they will need to be augmented by more sophisticated measurements of the overstory. Using these procedures may be helpful on grazed wetlands or wetlands that accumulate excessive standing litter and lose biodiversity when overrested.
The advice contained in these pages is not exhaustive, of course, as the possibilities have no end. It nevertheless provides a starting place. And if you haven’t looked at land this way before, no land will ever appear the same again.
As mentioned earlier, good monitoring depends on a broad awareness of the state of the land, but this means training yourself to look for a broad range of specific things. If you happen to be a hunter, you know that putting your mind on deer tends to program your eyes to see deer. Tomorrow you might walk the same woods hunting rabbits or turkeys and not notice the buck you would have shot yesterday.
So with Holistic Biological Monitoring, you must consciously direct your thoughts in order to see. And don’t just think about the ground. Look in books and records, in the expertise of others, and in your own experience.
Monitoring has no meaning except in relation to your holisticgoal and your plans for reaching it. Progress toward any goal, however, implies a starting point—and your monitoring will be much more perceptive and useful if you know where that starting point lies in relation to the past use and potential use of your land. If you’ve read, for instance, that pioneers a hundred years ago harvested winter hay from what has since given way to desert, that knowledge will allow you to assess the present community relative to its potential and alert you to vestiges of lost plant species that your plans could revive. If you’ve just purchased a tree farm in the Carolinas and don’t know that it once supported a prosperous tobacco plantation, you might suppose that it could never grow anything but loblolly pine and therefore not look for improvement.
When you begin managing a piece of land, photograph the characteristic sites, take notes of their condition, and try to reconstruct what has happened there in the past. Useful information might include the location of springs and streams that have dried up or become intermittent, the dates and extent of past fires and floods, and observations about changes in the types of crops that can be grown, the species of wildlife, and the makeup of plant communities. You’ll want to back up these general observations with hard evidence from fixed-point photographs and data from your routine monitoring—but again, general observations are equally important. Your notes might look something like those for the Sheep Creek Drainage (see box “Historical Data”).
In forming your holisticgoal, you should have described the four ecosystem processes, as they will have to be functioning—far into the future—if the land is to sustain the forms of production you specified. Progress toward the future condition of those four processes is chiefly what you will be measuring in your annual monitoring.
Historical Data: Sheep Creek Drainage, June 2005
According to county historians, Sheep Spring was an important watering point on sheep drives to the railhead at Upstart. Over 10,000 sheep passed in the summer of 1879. Evidence in graffiti on rocks. The creek must have been quite different, as accounts mention frequent fights between herders when bands of sheep mingled across a shallow stream that meandered through a meadow.
Tradition says Indians had an antelope trap in the canyon at south end of the valley. Arrowheads are found there still.
In 1903 there was a range fire hot enough to destroy a prospector’s cabin.
The Vee Bar, a huge open-range cattle operation, included the valley in its summer range until 1929. Intermittent use by squatters continued till 1940, when it was fenced. Continuous grazing continued until 1989, when it was acquired by Vesuvius Life Insurance Co. No stock or formal management until 2000.
Once you have monitored your land for the first time, it’s a good idea to summarize the status of the four ecosystem processes, so you have a baseline, or starting point, that you can compare against in subsequent years. How the manager in the Sheep Creek example might do that summary is described in the box “Current Landscape Description.”
Current Landscape Description: Sheep Creek Drainage
COMMUNITY DYNAMICS
Community definitely at a lower successional stage than in its glory days. Mostly sage and annual grasses. Many young piñons. Anthills abundant. Sage, winterfat, cliff rose, and other brush show signs of severe past overbrowsing followed by regrowth that must have begun in 1989. Some winter use by deer evident. Isolated examples of perennial grasses (including sand dropseed, giant dropseed, Indian rice grass, western wheatgrass) often associated with yucca or less frequently with sage. Also some mats of blue gramma and a fair amount of spiny muhly.
WATER CYCLE
Generally ineffective and evidenced by a large percentage of bare ground. Most perennial plants on pedestals, often with exposed roots. Soil capping pervasive, often mature and black with algae. Many rills and small gullies. Most litter washed into heaps and banks, showing force of runoff. Sheep Creek is an intermittent arroyo with 6- to 10-foot (2- to 3-meter) vertical banks broken occasionally by old stock and game trails.
MINERAL CYCLE
Generally ineffective. Dung pats three years and older evident everywhere. Perennial grasses show accumulations of past growth. Annual grasses largely washed or blown away by midwinter. Deeper-rooted plants, sage, and piñon thriving.
ENERGY FLOW
Obviously not high because of large amount of bare ground. Most of the sunlight energy converted to forage is not harvested by animals.
In your monitoring, you will be looking for signs of progress in creating the landscape features you may have mapped if your land is extensive and the terrain varied: a tree-lined riparian community, wetlands, dense brush areas, or open grassland communities.
Photographs show changes on the land better and more dramatically than any other record. Later we’ll see how to take a measurement of your land’s health, including several photos taken from the same spot each year. Snapshots taken of the same scene in different seasons across a period of years broaden the record and may lead to important insights.
Carry a camera like many ranchers carry a fencing tool or pair of pliers. Get in the habit of shooting interesting anomalies, and get repeats of the same scene for comparison. In this way you can monitor the healing of a gully, the development of a fence line contrast, animal impact around a water point or gate, the effect of the herd in one corner of a paddock during a heavy rainstorm (and the same spot in the following season), the formation of trails, and any number of other concerns.
Digital cameras are an excellent choice because you can check the quality of your photos immediately after taking them and reshoot if necessary. Storing the photos on a computer or spare hard drive is also easy with the help of software programs, many of them free, designed to simplify photo identification and filing. Just make sure that you set up a system at the outset so you can always identify and retrieve the photos you need.
Digital photos can fade quickly if printed on an ink-jet printer, so it pays to have them printed by a photo lab once they are all assembled. If you are storing photos on your computer, make sure you have backup copies on a CD stored in a fireproof safe or off the property with a friend or relative.
The earliest changes on any piece of land are most likely to occur at or near the soil surface, but this is particularly so on land that has been reduced to a high percentage of bare ground. Changes could show up in plant spacing, soil litter cover, soil density, soil aeration or organic content, insect activity, seedling success, quality of water runoff, and a host of other things.
Depending on what your monitoring indicates, you will continue to apply the tools as you have been or you will need to make adjustments. Obviously, if all is going as planned when the particular tool was selected, no adjustment is necessary. Otherwise, you will have to diagnose what went wrong and develop alternatives you can use as you replan.
The main thing to remember is that you are looking for basic information you can measure and understand, information that indicates to you what changes are taking place, rather than a mass of data that is of little practical use.
Completely nonbrittle environments are characterized by the following:
• Reliable precipitation regardless of volume
• Good distribution of humidity throughout the year as a whole
• A high rate of biological decay in dead plant material, which is most rapid close to the soil surface (thus, dead trees rot at their bases and topple over relatively quickly)
• Speedy development of new communities on any bare surface
• Development of complex and stable communities, even where they are not physically disturbed for many years
In such environments it is virtually impossible to produce or maintain millions of acres where the ground between plants is bare, other than on croplands that are continually exposed by machinery.
All terrestrial environments, regardless of total rainfall, fall somewhere along a continuum from nonbrittle to very brittle. For simplicity, we refer to this continuum as a 10-point scale—1 being nonbrittle and 10 being very brittle.
Environments can be classified along this continuum according to how well humidity is distributed throughout the year, and how quickly dead vegetation breaks down (rapidly through biological decay, or slowly through chemical oxidation and weathering). At either end of the scale and along it, environments are likely to respond similarly to the different management tools—fire, for example, will always tend to produce bare soil and rapid oxidation of plant material; a herbicide will always tend to kill plants; high animal impact will always speed the return of plant material to the soil.
However, the tool of rest produces profoundly different effects across the brittleness scale. As explained in the textbook, rest can be applied in two forms: Total rest refers to the withholding of any form of disturbance (fire, grazing, machinery, etc.) for a considerable length of time. Partial rest occurs when grazing animals are present but behave so calmly in the absence of pack-hunting predators that a large proportion of the plant life and soil surface remains undisturbed despite their presence.
In very brittle environments, either form of rest will lead to an increase in bare ground. The exception is high-rainfall brittle environments (generally in the tropics), where rest tends to damage or destroy grassland and move the vegetation to woodland with enough leaf fall to provide permanent soil cover.
In nonbrittle environments, either form of rest will lead to ground that becomes well covered by vegetation. Thus, knowing approximately where you are on the brittleness scale is essential when interpreting the results of your monitoring.
The distribution of precipitation, as well as the elevation, temperature, and prevailing winds, clearly affects the day-to-day distribution of humidity; and that links closely to the degree of brittleness. The poorer the distribution of humidity, particularly in the growing season, the more brittle the area tends to be, even though total rainfall may be high. Very brittle environments commonly have a long period of nongrowth that can be very arid.
Very brittle environments are characterized by the following:
• Unreliable precipitation, regardless of volume
• Poor distribution of humidity through the year as a whole
• In the absence of sufficient grazing animals, chemical (oxidizing) and physical (weathering) breakdown of dead plant material, generally slow and from the upper parts of plants downward (thus, dead trees remain standing for many years; a dead perennial grass clump can stand for several decades)
• Very slow development of communities from bare soil surfaces unless periodically disturbed (commonly by bunched, herding animals)
• Soil surfaces possibly covered with algae and lichens for centuries unless adequately disturbed
In such environments it is very easy to produce millions of acres where the ground between plants is bare or algae or lichen capped, merely by resting the land excessively (through partial or total rest), burning it frequently, or overgrazing many grass plants. Such areas tend to maintain biodiversity and stability only when adequately disturbed by herding animals that are not overgrazing or overbrowsing plants.
If you were dealing with land at 7 or 8 on a scale of 1 to 10, it would tend to have most of the features of the very brittle extreme. Land at 2 or 3 would tend to have most of the features of the nonbrittle extreme. The less brittle environments of the middle range (4 to 6) may be more difficult to identify, but precision is not necessary because the land tends to forgive errors in judgment.
The future landscape described in your holisticgoal defines what the landscape must be like in order to sustain future generations. To improve and maintain a healthy landscape in most situations, all four ecosystem processes need to function well. The following sections contain some guidelines to help you gauge the health of any one of them.
Community complexity is the key indicator of the land’s stability, resilience, productivity, and health. Manipulating the level or degree of complexity within a community is the principal way to achieve the landscape you desire, but you first need to identify whether a community is increasing or decreasing in complexity. This is always a subjective exercise, but it becomes easier if you think in terms of succession—the sequence of stages through which a biological community develops. Roughly speaking, bare ground gives way to algae, lichen, and moss, then to grasslands, brushlands, and forest in a gradual, often staggered, buildup of plant and animal species diversity and biomass.
Older textbooks like to talk about “climax” communities as a definite end point of succession, but in reality few environments (especially brittle ones) enjoy stable conditions long enough to determine what that is. In many instances, brittle environment communities in which large grazing animals had been absent for some time were defined as climax communities, based on the plant species present. In the United States, such sites were actually used as a measure of range management success. Such a “climax” community would be very different after the three or four days it took a million bison to pass over it, and yet those animals were as much a part of the community as the soil and plants they consumed or trampled. Increasingly, scientists are coming around to the view that in brittle environments the fluctuations in vegetation following disturbance are normal and natural, and that when disturbed, those environments are considerably more productive and generally more stable.
Thus, you must judge the level of succession and its general direction by a variety of signs, some of which may conflict. Here are some of the main ones:
• Simplicity versus complexity. A wide diversity of species (rather than vast numbers of one species) suggests an advanced community. Even if total biological mass is impressive, monocultures of plants or vast numbers of one animal usually indicate a lower level of community development. Seasonal diversity is also important. In some parts of North America, an absence of either cool-season or warm-season grasses, for example, suggests a simplified community.
• Annual versus perennial. A predominance of annual plants indicates a low level of community development (low succession). Among grass species, annuals generally grow a seed head on every stalk. Perennial grasses have many stalks that produce only leaves and will probably show some sign of the previous year’s growth. Perennial grass roots usually display greater spread and depth and affect soil porosity more than annual grasses do. With rare exceptions, perennial plants contribute far more than annuals to soil cover and stability, through their greater root depth and longevity. They also give a more consistent picture of community health, because huge numbers of annuals may burst forth only in seasons where the right conditions coincide.
• Presence of certain plants and animals. Generally, complexity of species is a more reliable index of community health than mere numbers, but most species thrive only at certain successional levels, as illustrated in figure 3.1. Early occupants of any community tend to reproduce rapidly and depend on a simple environment. High production of seeds adapted to disperse and penetrate capped soil is typical of the grasses occupying simple, or low-successional, communities. Many kinds of rodents and harvester ants are low successional. Moose and fir trees are typically high-successional organisms found in more complex communities. Among domestic animals, dairy cattle have a limited niche high in succession, while sheep and goats span a broader range of communities.
Organisms Thrive at Certain Successional Levels
Figure 3.1. There is no such thing as a hardy plant or animal. All organisms thrive at certain successional levels. Some, like humans and coyotes, range over a wide spectrum of levels. Others, like prairie dogs and flying squirrels, are confined. As succession advances, better mineral and water cycles will support a greater variety of species.
• Status of youngest age class. The direction in which the community is moving often shows first in the presence or absence of young plants or animals. If the young of perennial grasses or high-successional animals do not survive, that foretells decline—as would extraordinary reproductive success of low-successional organisms. Likewise, young animals or plants that increase diversity or fill high-successional niches indicate advance. Among grasses, a drop in successional level will at times show up as an increase in species that spread effectively by rhizomes or stolons rather than seeds.
• Presence of woody plant species. Woody forbs, brush, and trees usually reflect an advance in succession—as in the case of a tropical cornfield returning to jungle in a nonbrittle environment, or a pasture returning to forest in a less brittle environment. In brittle environments this matter is more complex, and woody species often flourish in declining grassland. This is not an advance when it represents a loss of diversity; it may be a passing phase, as damaged water cycles eventually kill off the woody plants too. In many instances, you will want to hold the community at a particular level and not allow too far an advance—for example, not allowing grassland to move to woodland in a medium- to high-rainfall environment.
• Status of ground cover. Since capped, bare ground is by definition the bottom end of succession, reflecting a very impoverished community, the earliest sign of change is often an increase or decrease in the space between perennial plants—particularly grasses. Many organisms won’t propagate without open friable soil. Areas too arid to sustain a cover of living plants require litter. Changes in litter and capping often precede changes in succession as the complexity of a community decreases or increases. In many arid or semiarid grassland and savanna situations, litter, more than any other factor, determines which way the community will move, because litter provides most of the soil cover.
In less brittle environment grasslands, it may be hard to find bare ground, but there is often more than you’d expect if you get down on your hands and knees and look for it. In these areas, bare ground is more commonly found where plants have been overrested, or on poor soils that contain many overgrazed plants.
• Remnants of old communities. Remnants of plant species that once thrived in more complex, higher-successional communities may hang on in sites protected by thorn bushes, cactus, rocks, and the like. They document the land’s decline, indicate its potential, and provide the seeds for a comeback.
• Economic uses. When an area’s livestock industry has to shift from cattle to sheep to goats or from production of meat to primarily hair, the community is generally declining.
Erosion
Erosion from wind and water obviously indicates a noneffective water cycle. Beneficial use of water simply does not include moving soil. Obvious gullies indicate advanced erosion. More pervasive, however, and equally destructive is sheet erosion, which leaves less obvious traces. Look for the following signs:
• Pedestaling of plants and rocks. Sheet erosion, by either wind or water, will cut away bare soil, leaving plants up on little platforms. Occasionally, the plant loses the battle and the soil is snatched from beneath it, leaving the roots exposed as stilts, as shown in figure 3.2. In some cases, plants actually accumulate soil, so the difference between the eroding surface and protected spots becomes extreme. In some parts of the American Southwest, bushes like greasewood and Mormon tea now sit on mounds two or three feet (one meter) tall. Occasionally, plant pedestaling is produced by freezing soils that expand, pushing plant bases upward and exposing roots. However, such pedestaling would be exacerbated by exposed soil, which results in greater temperature extremes at the surface.
Figure 3.2. Plants pedestaling. This bunchgrass plant is standing a good 3 inches (7.5 cm) above the soil, due to erosion. The exposed roots indicate how much soil has washed away.
• Flow patterns on bare ground. Moving water or wind scours the soil, leaving patterns, as shown in figure 3.3. Multiplied by the area of land involved, the tonnage of soil carried off is substantial. Equally important, it is difficult to accumulate organic matter under such conditions.
• Litter banks. Piles of litter jammed between plants and rock, which form small silt traps, as shown in figure 3.4, are a sign of more runoff of water than desirable, but the litter banks do stop some of it—showing once again the importance of litter.
• Siltation in low points. The silt dropped behind check dams, on gentle slopes below hillsides, or in streams, as shown in figure 3.5, means excessive and damaging runoff, even when it does not produce gullies.
Figure 3.3. Flow patterns. The movement of silt across the surface of this range is a result of severe sheet erosion.
Figure 3.4. Litter banks. Litter has caught between two plants, creating a miniature dam. Silt has been deposited above this dam, creating a flat spot, while below the dam, which is over 2 inches (5 cm) high, soil continues to wash away.
• Splash patterns. Raindrops, especially big ones that fall from tall trees, dislodge and break up large particles of soil when they hit bare ground. This action can move a surprising amount of soil and badly degrade the soil surface. Check the height of the mud splatters on plants and fence posts.
• Dunes. Dunes are the product of wind erosion, often forming far from the actual erosion site. Even small dunes cause problems when they move and smother or sandblast vegetation.
Figure 3.5. Siltation. The beginnings of a stream, which lies at the base of a large sheet-eroding hillside, has filled with silt.
Ideally, precipitation should enter the soil where living organisms can use it. This, of course, depends on ground cover, soil type and condition, aeration, organic content, slope, and other factors. If you know how different sites respond to rain, you’ll be able to plan better use of sites and effective use of tools.
Long-term changes in soil permeability can cause dramatic changes in the water table and the disappearance or reappearance of springs. Hard, capped soil and lack of ground cover or litter indicate a problem with infiltration and aeration, as well as excessive loss of water through soil surface evaporation.
You can get a good idea of the situation by simply pouring a quart (liter) or so of water on the ground and timing how long it takes to disappear. If you wait five minutes and probe a bit with a shovel, you can also find out how effectively it penetrates, as shown in figure 3.6. A similar check after a short rain will give you some idea of how much growth response to expect from that rain.
Plant types and associated animals will vary as soils range from dry to moist, from sealed to well aerated, from well drained to waterlogged, and as water tables rise or fall, as illustrated in figure 3.7. Changes in soil cover and community complexity will result in changes in the water cycle’s effectiveness.
The Holistic Management text explains the relationship between plants and the water cycle in some detail. A good look at your own land will probably reveal which species you can expect to increase and which will decrease as the water cycle improves. Remember that poor aeration, which occurs in both waterlogged and capped or compacted soils, affects plant growth as much as a lack of water because it decreases the effectiveness of the water cycle.
Figure 3.6. Ideally, you want water to penetrate and soak into the soil, and that will depend on the nature of the soil surface and the soil type.
The mineral cycle, like community dynamics, has many aspects. Most of them, though, boil down to three questions you can check by observation:
Grass Types from Habitats That Reflect Water Cycle
Wet (hydrophytic) plants grow on soils that stay waterlogged during at least part of the growing season. Narrow leaves, and often a waxy surface, limit the transpiration of water and indicate excessive water in the soil, reduced aeration, and less effective water cycles. A number of grasses, and grass-like species (most sedges, rushes, etc.) are adapted to continually wet soils, as are some broad-leafed plants, such as water lilies, that are able to grow without oxygen available in the soil.
Dry (xerophytic) plants like those in the Aristida genus tend to have narrow leaves to cut water loss, and they usually cure to a light or whitish color. Other “dry” plants such as prickly pear and yucca typically have thick waxy leaves that also limit water loss, indicating drier soils and less effective water cycles.
Middle (mesophytic) plants grow on well-drained and well-aerated soil with enough moisture. Their broad leaves and high productivity enhance energy flow and generally indicate more effective water cycles.
Figure 3.7. Plant types and associated animals will vary as soils range from dry to moist, from sealed to well aerated, from well drained to waterlogged.
• Are minerals visibly cycling?
• If not, what happens to them?
• How well are corrective measures working?
The health of the mineral cycle shows in the following:
• Breakdown of litter (especially dung). A poor mineral cycle may allow dry dung pats to linger for years. In the more brittle environments, keep your eye on the amount of dead material that stays on plants and oxidizes, turning gray like an old fence post, instead of returning to the soil. In less brittle environments, look for distinct litter layers. If the soil has been managed well, it will be difficult to see where the litter stops and the soil begins.
• Activity of soil organisms. Most soil organisms are microbial and can’t be seen, but worms, ants, and burrowing rodents all enhance the mineral cycle. When biodiversity is low, some of these may boom to annoying numbers. The remedy often lies not in killing them directly but in increasing the diversity in the community (advancing succession) to such a degree that the offending species, while remaining in the community, no longer dominates but merely adds to the community’s complexity.
• Presence of plants of varying root depth. Water transports many minerals from decomposing organic matter through soils. Deep-rooted plants can recapture and return leached minerals to the surface for growth; they can also access soil minerals that are available only from deeper parts of the soil. In high-rainfall areas, loss of mineral-binding organic matter allows leaching to become extreme. Thus farmers in wet climates must either apply extraordinary doses of fertilizer to “worn-out” pastures and croplands, which further damages soil life, or let them revert to forest so they can recover.
• Livestock consumption of mineral supplements. Livestock’s appetite for supplements often reflects missing elements in the natural mineral cycle. Livestock exposed to free-choice, cafeteria-style minerals will select whatever they don’t get from grazing. In the case of some trace minerals, they may add enough to the natural cycle through their dung to eventually reduce the need for supplements. As plant species concentrate minerals differently, a change in supplement consumption may also show the connection between the mineral cycle and biological diversity. (Free-choice mineral supplements have performed well in many livestock operations, but not in all. Best results have generally been on poorly mineralized soils in high rainfall areas.)
• Deficiency symptoms in plants and animals. Poor mineral cycles may produce rough coats, infertility, or other weaknesses in domestic and wild animals. In crop plants, leaves may yellow, curl, develop brown spots, or exhibit other symptoms. Soil tests tell part of the story; however, minerals may be present but unavailable due to a variety of factors: a noneffective water cycle; a successional level too low to support microorganism populations that convert organic matter into humus and in the process make minerals available to the plant; inadequate concentrations of other minerals or their poor distribution and availability to plants.
Waterlogged soils or capped soils that are poorly aerated appear to “lock up” minerals, which become available to plants once more as soil aeration improves. Finally, the ratio of minerals present for plant use may be so unbalanced that the plants are not able to adequately use certain ones.
• Soil pH, sodium, and salination. Extreme acidity or alkalinity makes many nutrients unavailable to plants. Salination occurs when damaged vegetation gives way to bare soil, through which water evaporates. As the water is drawn up through the soil profile, it carries salts with it that are left at the soil surface because evaporating water is fresh, or “distilled.” Excessive sodium destroys soil structure. More often than many like to admit, these problems are greatly exacerbated by the lack of organic material that is characteristic of impoverished biological communities.
Rather than countering problems by merely testing the soil and adding the missing ingredient or removing the offending one, consider that covering soil and increasing complexity in the community, and thus advancing succession, might offer a better solution. Plants with varying root depths will recycle leached minerals. And a management plan that returns organic material to the soil will impede leaching and offset the effects of extreme acidity, alkalinity, sodium, and salination.
For insight into the mineral cycle, monitor community dynamics with an eye to the following:
• diversity of plants, particularly nitrogen-fixing legumes;
• agents of decomposition, including the breakup of old plant material through animal impact;
• the trend (increasing or decreasing) of soil cover and organic material on and in the soil; and
• varying root depths.
Use your observations of all these factors in management decisions. Holistic decision making may well show that composting, the manure spreader, more paddocks, increased animal impact, or a few sacks of clover seed will serve your purpose better than the application of a synthetic fertilizer or abandonment of a salinated area.
Energy flow is hard to observe in a precise way. It’s a function of the total area of leaves actively converting sunlight into forage, the length of time this conversion goes on, the efficiency of the conversion, and what happens to the forage after it is grown (see figure 3.8). Generally speaking, then, high energy flow is characterized by the following:
• an abundance of broad-leafed plants of the “middle” (or mesophytic) variety that can grow rapidly;
Figure 3.8. A mathematical value for energy flow would be the sum of the calories preserved in organic matter at each level of the food chain from an original amount delivered to a unit of land over a unit of time.
• close plant spacing;
• rapid growth unimpeded by poor aeration, compaction, or other soil problems; and
• plants active through the longest possible growing period (both warm- and cool-season plants in temperate climates).
Low energy flow is characterized by the following:
• waxy or narrow-leafed plants that have slow growth rates generally;
• gray, oxidizing grasses;
• wide plant spacing; and
• slow plant growth due to capping, compaction, waterlogging, or other soil problems.
As the textbook explains in some detail, the capping of bare soil by a hard crust, often cemented by moss and algae, can inhibit the development of the entire community in brittle environments and block the cycling of minerals into the soil. Though capping may reduce erosion at the site, it increases runoff, which causes erosion elsewhere. Capping may form even on sandy soils, but heavier soils that have lost their crumb structure and lack litter and humus may seal the instant water strikes. Animal impact, either through stock density or herd effect, is the most practical means of breaking up capping while incorporating organic material into the soil.
Soils covered by litter and living vegetation will not develop capping and usually indicate effective water and mineral cycles and advancing succession.
In monitoring we note four degrees of capping:
• Mature capping results from long rest. Low-successional lichen, moss, and algal communities often give it a dark tone, as shown in figure 3.9, and it may sound hollow when tapped. Mature capping is seen most often in very brittle environments but is not uncommon in less brittle environments where mosses tend to form the cap rather than algae and lichens. Mature capping in nonbrittle environments is generally a healthy sign—it enhances rather than retards successional movement. In brittle environments, however, it is often the last life left in a deteriorating situation.
• Immature capping has been broken in the past, as shown in figure 3.10, or scoured by erosion but is still strong enough to inhibit water penetration, aeration, and the establishment of seedlings.
• Recent capping, shown in figure 3.11 on the left, is the result of recent precipitation over broken soil surfaces. It is usually quite thin, depending on soil type, and if left undisturbed becomes immature and eventually mature.
• Broken capping, shown in figure 3.11 on the right, is the result of recent animal impact or other disturbance that opens soil to moisture and aeration, and thus seed germination and establishment.
The form of a plant often tells a history of management and therefore suggests improvements. Notice the following conditions: overgrazed plants, over-browsed plants, and overrested plants.
Livestock operators interested in enhancing the productivity of grassland must learn to spot overgrazed plants, rather than overgrazed ranges or pastures. Chronic overgrazing of many plants produces changes that can affect vast areas—the disappearance of certain perennial grasses (often those most productive in a particular season), infestations of unpalatable species, or the presence of species adapted to survive overgrazing. But some of the same symptoms occur when plants (and soils) are overrested and do not show up until long after corrective action should have been taken.
Figure 3.9. Mature capping. This surface has been capped long enough for a hard, algae-covered crust to develop. Animals have walked across it, leaving hardly any trace, but the surface can be broken with a knife, as shown.
Especially in situations where low paddock numbers require you to change grazing periods according to the daily growth rate of plants, it’s important to continually look for individual plants that have suffered overgrazing because of either too long a grazing period or too short a recovery period. Look for these signs (illustrated in figure 3.12):
Figure 3.10. Immature capping. This surface has been recently capped by rainfall but has not had time to develop a hard crust (mature capping). A cow has walked across the surface, breaking it easily.
• Distorted growth. Many plants respond to overgrazing by flattening out below the grazing height of animals. Some species, such as blue gramma (Bouteloua) and a number of runner grasses, may form into a tight mat, resembling a lawn or golf course that is frequently mown very short. Commonly, such grass mats are referred to as sod bound and have tightly matted but short root systems. Other grass species raise their defenses by hiding new leaf behind spiky stalks formed by old stems.
Figure 3.11. Recent capping (left) and broken capping (right). The large expanses of exposed soil in this photo had been broken and were then recapped following a rainstorm. A herd of cattle has moved into the paddock to the right of the barely visible one-strand fence and broken the light capping.
How Overgrazing and Overbrowing Affect Plant Form
Overgrazed blue gramma and many runner grasses form dense mats.
A healthy bunch grass plant with time to regrow will have dense lush foliage and a natural shape.
Prolonged overgrazing creates dead centers and prostrate growth around the edge of some plants.
Overbrowsed (hedged) branch Browse line
Overbrowsing distorts the Christmas tree shape of pine seedlings
Overrested plants commonly have gray shocks of old growth and dying centers
Figure 3.12. Overgrazing and overbrowsing can often be detected by distortions in plant growth forms.
• Dead centers. Bunch grasses subjected to overgrazing, in which they lose energy reserves in stem bases or crowns, will suffer root loss and commonly die back, usually at the center. Overrest, too, can kill plant centers, but in this case the old oxidized leaf usually remains unless removed by fire or termites.
• Disappearance. Some plants that are very sensitive to overgrazing merely disappear, and remnants are found in sites animals cannot reach.
Overbrowsing is closely akin to overgrazing, but it affects perennial nongrass plants: shrubs, trees, vines, forbs, and so on. Look for these signs (illustrated in figure 3.12):
• Distorted growth or hedging. Repeatedly bitten branches often develop knobs at the end where new sprouts make a dense cluster. (Gardeners exploit this trait to create hedges by repeated clipping.) Species with a low growth habit may have knobby stems much thicker than normal for the amount of visible foliage. Straight-growing plants such as young pines may split and take the form of bushes (thereby ruining forever the possibility of harvesting them as timber). Leaves may hide behind spines or old twigs or lie flat against the bark.
• Browse lines. Trees lose all foliage below the reach of animals and look like they were trimmed for the benefit of strollers in a park. Some plants may show the knobs and bristles of overbrowsing on their lower branches but long plumes of growth above the reach of animals.
• Disappearance. Forbs such as the creeping legumes, often found in grasslands, disappear fairly quickly when overbrowsed. Any species that is being overbrowsed is unlikely to successfully establish young plants.
Overrest, followed by overgrazing and overbrowsing, most frequently causes degeneration of brittle-environment range and pastureland. Successional shifts toward woody and herbaceous species (weeds) often result. In brittle environments, stagnation often leads to widening plant spacings and loss of organic matter. You should spot the problem before the following changes occur:
• old growth that remains standing into the next growing season or longer—becoming gray or even black in severe cases;
• plants with dead or weakened centers that have obviously not been grazed recently; and
• weakened root systems on plants that have obviously not been grazed (old growth is present). Often these plants can be pulled up easily by hand.
How much work should you put into learning the names of plants and animals? Like a lot of other issues in Holistic Management, the right answer really fits a different question. Some people memorize names like baseball cards. Don’t waste your time doing that. Just learn as much as you can about plants and animals, and you’ll soon identify them easily.
All organisms fill certain niches within the communities they inhabit. The more you discover about them and how they fit together, the more you’ll understand the dynamics of your land. To distinguish one plant from another in order to monitor them, you will, of course, need names—but they’re just the doorknob to more useful knowledge.
Identifying plants from a field guide or key without long practice is a slow and tedious business and misses the point. Get some experts in birds, insects, mammals, and plants to tour your land with you. Keep notes. Ask questions about what various species need in order to thrive, how they reproduce, what preys on them, and so forth.
Though it might take a lifetime to learn a whole biological discipline, you can make a good start on your own limited habitat in a very short time. From then on, you can teach yourself what you need to know by your own observations, discussions with people in a management club or other learning support group, and occasional correspondence.
Figure 3.13. Low-density grazing. Heavily grazed plants (foreground) border a patch of ungrazed plants. Typical of land showing a low-density grazing pattern, the plants in the background are old and mature and will begin to oxidize, as they are not being grazed, while plants in the foreground are being severely grazed. In the foreground, so many plants are overgrazed that soil is exposed and capped, making it more difficult for any new plants, other than weeds, to establish.
Extremely severe grazing was covered in part 2 as a sign of possible overstocking. Aside from the more complex matter of ensuring nongrowing-season reserves, you have immediate problems if your animals gnaw grass right down to the quick and pick up litter during the growing season. If this happens in paddocks that also contain untouched, rank forage, the problem is probably low stock density.
If livestock are spread too thin to affect many plants or areas in one grazing, untouched areas may be inedible by the time they return—thus increasing pressure on the remaining space. After several grazing cycles, a large proportion of a paddock may drop entirely out of production. In a nonbrittle area, the ungrazed patches may advance well along the successional path back to forest.
The signs are easy to spot (and are sometimes called “patch” or “all-or-nothing” grazing):
• sharply defined ungrazed patches—large or small—of separate species or the same species, as shown in figure 3.13; and
• extreme grazing of other areas that in nonbrittle environments often acquire the clipped look of putting greens.
In brittle and low-rainfall areas, low-density grazing patterns are often inevitable and even desirable. Since the overgrowth usually cures well and is an important source of off-season forage, the patches disappear before the next year’s growth.
In brittle high-rainfall areas and nonbrittle environments, the overgrowth is typically fibrous and low in nutrients and must be mowed, burned, or trampled to maintain the pasture. The extreme stock density necessary to control this problem in some areas astounds many people new to using animal impact as a tool for creating a desired landscape.
Livestock learn routines rapidly—and have a knack for training stockmen to follow them. Sooner or later cows discover that if they bawl loud enough at the gate to the next paddock, someone will assume they are starving and let them through. In times of drought, especially, this can lead to disaster, because you may have to stress animals a wee bit to keep the recovery periods long enough. Giving in to them and knocking a day or two off each grazing can greatly reduce forage and play havoc with your plans and wallet. Faster moves mean overgrazing, which means less production, which raises pressure for faster moves and yet worse overgrazing in a downward spiral.
More subtle routines can also cause problems. If livestock know they will always move into an adjacent paddock, they soon get the habit of crowding that fence line in anticipation. Stock rotated mechanically around a radial cell frequently produce a pattern of severe grazing along one side of each paddock, as shown in figure 3.14.
Trailing is another result of habit. Sometimes the placement of fences causes trails to develop, but trails also result from routines that you can break by moving stock through different gates, changing the location of supplements, moving a section of fence, or using temporary electric fence as a diversion.
Figure 3.14. Counterclockwise moves have trained the herd to crowd the fence in anticipation of moves.
The point is this: Look for signs of destructive routines and vary them in your grazing planning.
Monitor living things, animal or vegetable, that help or hurt you and try to understand them in the context of community dynamics. This perspective enables you to use living organisms as a tool—which is nothing more than influencing the biological community to your advantage. This is perhaps the most important and least understood concept in Holistic Management. Changing the environment by direct action (planting, exterminating, stocking, and the like) more often than not fails for trying to produce effects without considering causes.
The textbook explains how such headaches as noxious plant invasions, insect outbreaks, and poor soil aeration will not yield unless you correct the distortion in the biological community that produced them. The possibilities are limitless. Informally monitoring small aspects of community dynamics can often lead to big advances in management.
A Deeper Look at Living Organisms
There are many examples of creative innovation in land management—from turning pipe leaks into habitat for grasshopper-eating toads to leaving strips of uncut hay for quail cover. For a good expression of the spirit of the idea, here is a passage from Oregon rancher Dayton Hyde’s marvelous book Don Coyote. After closely observing a series of events on his land, Hyde rejected the common policy of draining marshes and poisoning predators and rodents. Instead, he restored wetland and fed coyotes. In his words,
The ancient marshes were coming back: coarse vegetation sprang up almost overnight, creating a whole new habitat for wildlife—no matter that those grasses did not rate well in the county agent’s handbook. Cows got fat on them, and that was what paid the bills. All day long, the tea-colored marsh waters absorbed the rays of the mountain sun, and all night long they released heat, warming the climate. Where once even sedges and rushes had turned brown with the night frosts, now they grew green and lush, and frogs croaked all night in the warm, moist darkness. For once we had more feed than cattle to eat it.
In those same marshes, a host of birds—yellowthroats; redwinged, yellow-headed, and Brewer’s blackbirds—raise their young. We helped them by restoring the marshes; they helped us by taking care of insect problems. The great grasshopper epidemics which had plagued my uncle and me became history. In the traditional grasshopper nesting areas, clouds of birds worked on nymphs, carting them away to feed their young. Hour after hour, day after day, sandhill cranes stood shredding young grasshoppers with their long bills.
We had once relied on poisons; now as we checked the areas where grasshoppers had once turned the land to dust, we found blue-birds, wrens, flickers, sparrow and red-tailed hawks, coyotes, badgers, foxes, cranes, black-birds, meadowlarks, and even ducks cleaning up the areas. By the time their young were raised, the ‘hoppers they’d missed wouldn’t have filled a tobacco can.
There is more to maintaining wetlands than backing up water and letting it stand. Marshes tend to choke up with coarse vegetation, which, left ungrazed or unharvested, rots. Periodic drying is essential.
The balance of wildlife species too is important. When we lost our coyotes to poison, the raccoons proliferated until there was hardly a nest on the place they hadn’t destroyed. Before the coyotes remultiplied and were again numerous enough to control the raccoons, waterfowl production had been almost nil. Now we had ducks and geese back nesting by the hundreds.
I thought of other species on the ranch. Without flickers, badgers, trout, deer, or chipmunks, the ranch still would have flourished. But if I took away the coyotes, the whole system fell apart. They were as necessary to the well-being of Yamsi Ranch as any tool I owned, including shovel, pick-up truck, mower, hay baler, fencing stretcher, pliers, welding outfit, saddle horse, saddle, rope, medicine, and tractor. In fact, if I were to design a kit for the beginning rancher, a pair of coyotes would have to be included.
There was a difference between my ranch and every other I knew about whose owners complained about coyote damage. Acre for acre, I had three to five coyotes to their one. Yet while they lay awake at night waiting for predators to kill their livestock, I slept like a baby, not hoping, knowing my calves were safe. The secret, of course, was that I kept my coyotes fed all year round.
Ever since the great mouse epidemic, I had relied less and less on poisoned grains to keep ground squirrels in check, and now I used none at all. The epidemic of these little grass eaters I had feared didn’t happen. Populations stayed low and fairly stable, and I came to look on the ground squirrels I had on my land as beneficial, since they fed my varied predators.
The following procedures for periodic monitoring of selected sites were developed over a number of years by Allan Savory, with the input of numerous holistic managers and educators. Although they contain elements from other monitoring techniques, these procedures put special emphasis on soil surface conditions and plant density. If your environment leans toward the brittle end of the scale and much of your land is down to bare ground, that is where you will get the earliest warning that a shift in succession is beginning—which is far more important than knowing that a shift has already occurred. Monitoring should always look as far down the road as possible for any curves that might require action on your part as a manager.
If you haven’t ever done it before, taking the responsibility for monitoring your land yourself should symbolize a significant shift in your whole approach to management. Almost all stock growers weigh their animals at least once a year. When you realize that the stock functions only as a broker in the marketing of solar energy, it makes more sense to “weigh” the primary agent in this transaction—your land. And just as you would never consider calling in a stranger to weigh your stock, you shouldn’t trust the monitoring of your land to anyone but yourself.
Two monitoring procedures are given here:
• Basic monitoring. The first, and simplest, procedure involves taking photos of fixed plots and making notes of what you observe. This is all most managers require as a routine monitoring procedure, and it’s also handy for monitoring test applications, or “minitrials,” of different tools or techniques in test areas. It shouldn’t take more than a day of your time each year—about forty-five minutes per transect (depending on your observation skills), a few hours or less for a minitrial.
• Comprehensive monitoring. The second procedure is more comprehensive and is ideal for monitoring public lands that require more detailed records, or for those who simply want more detail on which to base their decisions. This procedure takes a few days of work once a year.
A combination of the two procedures may work best for some. The basic monitoring does not produce “quantitative” data—that is, you don’t get the satisfaction of learning that your bare ground has decreased by a certain percentage over a period of time, or that your perennial grasses have increased by a certain percentage. The comprehensive procedure does produce that data. A good compromise is to use the comprehensive monitoring procedure in the first year as a baseline, and then again every five years, or in intervening years if you run into trouble that closer monitoring might help rectify. At all other times, use the basic procedure.
The data yielded by systematic use of these two monitoring techniques do not serve as a substitute for the day to day monitoring of growth rates or the general awareness of events that were described in the previous section. In some ways, however, the information is more important because it generates a cumulative photographic and written record that quickly reveals trends.
The data you gather from your monitoring, even when using the comprehensive procedure, are unlikely to satisfy researchers or academics, who will find them too subjective, statistically invalid, lacking replications or comparisons to a “control,” and any number of other things. But their approach to monitoring is from an entirely different perspective. You, remember, are monitoring to bring about the change you intend, not merely to record what happens. Monitoring’s main value to you is that at least once a year, you are compelled to closely observe the source of your livelihood—your land.
The word “transect” means “crosscut”—the theory being that samples taken from selected crosscuts of land, voters, or any other entity too big to test in its entirety will yield a good approximation of the truth. The monitoring procedures described here use different sampling techniques. The basic procedure uses straight-line transects with fixed sampling points—five along each transect. The comprehensive procedure uses a fixed-area transect with random sampling points—up to a hundred—located by throwing a dart backward over your shoulder. The transects, or sampling areas, should be sited in a representative area where you most want to produce change. Three to five transects should be adequate on fairly uniform land. More will be needed if you have many different range types or varied terrain.
Routine monitoring, such as this section describes, should be done at the same biological time each year. The exact day is not critical, since seasons shift from year to year. Bear in mind that monitoring yields the best information during the most active part of the growing season. It’s the best time to identify many plants and observe their characteristics. Biological activity is normally highest as well.
In some areas, such as those in Mediterranean climates, heaviest rainfall occurs long before the peak of the growing season; it may include the period when plant cover is typically at its lowest. Dense vegetation during the most active growing season may seriously mask the peak rainy season’s soil surface conditions. It may be wise to monitor such areas twice each year to spot the earliest signs of change. Soil cover and movement may be best monitored at a very different time than biological complexity.
Try to have the same person collect the data from your transects each year. If you must use someone new, work with him or her ahead of time to standardize the procedure. New people will inevitably change procedures slightly, which could result in misleading data, but you can minimize the problem.
The criteria you emphasize most in your monitoring may well change as the land improves. If you manage to produce a dense perennial grass sward on one section of your property, it becomes pointless to monitor the spacing between plants and soil capping there, because there is unlikely to be any. You might turn your attention to increasing energy flow in that section and choose to monitor for an increase in broader-leafed plants as you strive to achieve that change.
Early warning monitoring is useless if you don’t complete the feedback loop and take action when you note adverse changes or no change at all. Remember that you are monitoring in order to make happen what you want to happen, to bring about desired changes in line with your holisticgoal. The final step in each of the monitoring procedures presented here reminds you of that and asks you to record the action you plan to take. There will, of course, be times when circumstances force a delay. Inaction then is a conscious decision and one that will be rectified.
If you think through the tools you’ve used and how you’ve applied them, the action you need to take usually becomes obvious. If it doesn’t, reread chapters 19 through 24 of the textbook to refresh your memory of how the tools described affect water and mineral cycles, community dynamics, and energy flow. If you’re still uncertain but one or more possible actions come to mind, test them out on a small piece of land. Alternatively, take another approach altogether and look for evidence elsewhere on your property where changes are proceeding in the direction you want them to go—in other words, look for positive deviations, as Rush Wayne, of Eugene, Oregon, describes in the box “Looking for Positive Deviations.”
Although simple, this monitoring procedure is effective, in that with minimum work it allows you to observe changes closely and also provides a good record of those changes. If done with a digital camera, it could later provide excellent material for researchers desiring to study the changes using special software to analyze such things as litter, bare soil, and leaf by pixels. A group of researchers in Idaho is currently attempting to do just that.
Looking for Positive Deviations
A few years ago Allan Savory wrote an article about ranchers in low-rainfall brittle environments who had found their land to be stagnating—no change was occurring where change was planned. He said the ranchers hadn’t taken action to overcome the stagnation mainly because they didn’t know what to do.
After diagnosing the cause of the stagnation, Allan went on to stress the importance of monitoring and changing course at the earliest sign of stagnation and offered some pointers to help ensure that this actually happened. But being aware that there is a problem is different from knowing what to do about it.
Allan apparently figured out what to do (or confirmed his hunch) in each case by looking on the land for exceptions to the general trend, or positive deviations. On each of the ranches he visited, he asked if there was any place where things had not stagnated. Some initially said no; others immediately said yes. In fact, when he went out and looked, they all had pockets of improvement somewhere, and in each case those areas were located either in the smallest paddock on the ranch, or where livestock had been periodically crowded.
In each case the land had continued to improve where animal impact was repeatedly highest. So Allan recommended that the farmers each take steps to increase animal impact on the rest of their land.
To choose his management solution, then, Allan relied on the positive deviations he found by looking around the land, rather than on data from year-to-year monitoring. Indeed, the information he needed could easily have been missed if he had relied solely on the transect data, since the transects are only small samples of the land.
A way to remedy the situation highlighted in the article, then, would be to make it standard practice to carry out two different kinds of monitoring:
• Monitoring for overall progress—through fixed-point monitoring repeated year after year in the same places—addresses the question “Which way am I moving?”
• Monitoring for positive deviations—or free-range monitoring—sends you all over the land (even beyond your property boundaries) looking for exceptional improvements wherever you can find them. When fixed-point monitoring shows you’re moving in the wrong direction (or not moving at all), the positive deviations observed in your free-range monitoring may give you the clues you need to answer the question “How can I move in the direction I want to go?”
—Rush Wayne, Eugene, Oregon
You’ll need the following equipment:
• camera (preferably digital)
• 100-foot (30-meter) metal tape
• 1 square yard (or meter) frame of lightweight PVC
• pad of paper (or small dry-erase board) and marker pen
• clipboard and pen or pencil
• monitoring data forms (five per transect)
When you’re establishing the transects, you will also need these items:
• substantial metal posts, or heavy-duty plastic stakes, to be driven well into the ground at either end of a line as permanent markers (two per transect)
Figure 3.15. A homemade camera stand such as this one, made of metal, makes it easy to take waist-level photos with the camera directly over the center of the plot, and helps eliminate shadow.
• five short lengths of rebar rod (about a foot, or 30 cm long), or heavy-duty plastic survey “whiskers” with spikes (if rebar is used, you may want to add a magnetic stud finder to the preceding list)
• heavy hammer adequate to pounding rebar rods fully into the ground if rebar is used
You will be establishing straight-line transects, along which you will have five monitoring plots contained within a square frame. You are going to be standing over the square frame taking photos straight down. This is not always easy while trying to keep your shadow out of the photo, particularly at midday. Orienting your transect line east–west may help, and certainly for the longer-distance photos you will also take, but to avoid the shadow problem altogether, consider using a modified camera stand. If you are handy in the workshop, you can make a stand to hold the camera at the correct height directly over the plot (see figure 3.15). This can be made out of light angle iron or galvanized pipe, threaded at one end so the camera can be attached.
You will need to select your monitoring sites carefully. Pick areas to sample that are either typical of the whole area, or where you particularly want to produce a lot of change. The more uniform the land, the fewer sites you’ll need. On uniform ranches, a minimum of three to five transects give good information.
At each site establish a transect line by hammering the first post well into the ground. Steel posts are best for stony ground. If your soil is sandy, or of a high shrink-swell clay, longer steel fence posts that can be driven deeper into the ground might serve better. The heavy-duty plastic stakes used by surveyors work well in other areas. Make sure posts extend high enough above ground to be clearly visible to anyone traveling on a four-wheeler or motorbike. To discourage animals from rubbing against posts and dislodging them, try piling stones around them.
Once the first post is in place, string out the 100-foot (30-meter) tape, to the east or west, and hammer in the second post. Leave the tape tautly stretched between the posts.
Next, go along the tape and at five equally spaced measures—10, 30, 50, 70, and 90 feet (5, 10, 15, 20, and 25 meters), for example—hammer in a short rebar rod flush with the soil surface. The tape will help you relocate the rod each year, but you may also need a stud finder. Alternatively, you can mark each spot with survey whiskers—bright-colored plastic frills that protrude about 5 inches (12.5 cm) above ground after you have secured them with an 8-inch (20-cm) spike. Their color will fade over time, but they generally provide an effective marker for several years. In the United States, these are available from any company selling surveying equipment.
Fill in the required information (except photo numbers) at the top of the Basic Biological Monitoring Data form (see figure 3.16). You will need five forms per transect, one for each plot. Assign a number to the transect (e.g., 1) and to each plot (e.g., 1-1, 1-2, etc.). Note the date and the name of the person recording the information. Use the back of each sheet to record any other information you feel you need to record.
If forms are shuffled out of order or evaluated by someone else, lack of proper identification will render them meaningless. Complete information will ensure ready retrieval from whatever filing system you use to store photos and forms.
Start by taking two photos, one from each end of the transect line, to show the general view in each direction. Each photo should include one third sky and two thirds foreground. Once you have printed the photos, label them using the transect number and the direction in which the photo was taken. For example, if the line for transect 1 runs east–west, the photo taken from the west end looking east could be identified as 1-E (eastern view) and vice versa. Note the photo information in the blank area at the top right-hand corner of the first monitoring data form you fill in. If there are no fixed features in either of the two photos and you risk being unable to identify them later, write the identifying detail (1-E, etc.) and date on a large piece of paper that can be tent-folded so it stands up. Two dry-erase boards hinged together with straps and set upright like a tent also work well. Place the paper or board within the camera’s field of vision and close enough that the writing is visible.
Next, at each marker along the transect, lay down the PVC frame so that one corner is sitting over the rebar peg or plastic marker and one side is flush with the stretched tape. Write the plot number and the date boldly on a piece of paper or dry-erase board, large enough that the letters will show clearly in the photo. Place this piece of paper or board in one corner of the frame, as shown in figure 3.17. (You will need to position the frame and the piece of paper or board in exactly the same place each time you retake the photos.)
Take a photo of each of the five plots along the transect with the camera directly above the center of the plot and at such a height that the entire PVC frame is within the view of the camera. This is where a take-down stand that holds the camera will be useful. If it has only one upright, as shown in figure 3.15, it will be relatively easy to keep any shadow out of the picture. The advantage of using a digital camera, of course, is that you can check the photo immediately and retake it if necessary.
Figure 3.16. Complete the Basic Biological Monitoring Data form while out on the land.
Figure 3.17. Photo monitoring frame. Frames constructed with PVC pipe can easily be taken apart for storage. The paper or dry-erase board listing the identifying information should be placed in the same spot year after year.
If you’re placing a transect in an area to test an action you’re contemplating, you may choose to take photos only, with or without the PVC frame, and dispense with filling in the forms. It all depends on what you’re trying to learn and how much information you need to convince yourself of the trial’s success or failure.
In the photos shown here, all that was done for the trial was to take fixed-point photos of an area before and after it received ultra-high animal impact for a week to break up some very hard capping. Animal impact was the tool on trial to see if it could have an effect on land that had been bare and hard-capped for decades. If you want to do something similar, the key is to make sure you have fixed features in the camera viewfinder, so there is no doubt that you’re looking at the same piece of ground.
This area on Dimbangombe Ranch in Zimbabwe had been capped hard and bare for several decades and was believed by many to be beyond reclamation. A herd of between 300 and 600 cattle and goats had made no impact in four years. This photo was taken at the end of the dry season.
The same area six months later, at the end of the growing season in a drought year (8 inches/200 millimeters of rain received in a 30-inch/750-millimeter rainfall area) after a herd of 200 cattle and just over 100 goats spent each night for one week bunched in a temporary, predator-proof corral. The resulting spurt of growth, in a drought year, was all the manager needed to see to be convinced that this and other hard-capped areas could be healed with very high animal impact (herd effect). It also ruled out the possibility that some soil factor was inhibiting growth, or that nearby trees were poisoning the soil with toxins released by their roots.
After taking the photo at each plot, note the photo number at the top of the basic monitoring data form. Then record your observations as follows:
• Soil surface. Describe the nature of the bulk of the soil surface between plants. Is it bare, capped, broken, covered with litter, covered with algae and lichen, hard, soft, porous? Are there signs of soil movement (erosion) such as pedestaling, siltation in low points?
• Animal sign. What signs of animal life are present? Large animals will leave hoof or footprints, scratch marks, and dung. Smaller animals might leave droppings, minute trails, or signs of burrowing. Birds and reptiles will leave some of those signs, as well as nests, feathers, and burrows. Insects will, too, and may also be sighted. Earthworms may leave castings behind.
• Litter. If there is litter present, describe its quality and condition. Is it fresh, old, or breaking down so that it is hard to distinguish where it ends and soil begins?
• Perennial grass condition. If perennial grasses are present, describe their condition. Are they healthy, mature, young, seedlings, dead or dying, overrested, overgrazed?
• Grass species. List grass species in the plot if you know their names. List both annuals and perennials. If you don’t know its name but think a grass is an important indicator, take home a sample and get help from an extension agent or other specialist who can identify it. Or you can simply note whether the grass is a cool- or warm-season variety if you live in an area where a mix of the two would be a notable factor.
• Other plants. List or comment on other nongrass plant species present. Are there any forbs, such as legumes that help mineralize the soil, noxious plants that could be poisonous to stock, or other nongrass plants that provide feed at critical times? Are they annuals, biannuals, or perennials?
• Points of interest. Note any other points of interest, including things that might not show well in the photo. You may see something that interests you but isn’t covered in any of the above points. Or perhaps you see a trend developing that you want to keep your eye on.
Remember that the primary purpose of this monitoring is to make happen what you want to happen. Based on what you observed at each of the photo plots, you can begin drawing conclusions on where you stand relative to your holisticgoal and what action you need to take to make sure you keep moving toward it.
Fill in one Basic Biological Monitoring Analysis form (see figure 3.18) for each transect. Start by recording the details at the top of the form. If your files ever become separated, there should be no doubt about which data forms are covered by which analysis form.
Review each of the monitoring data forms you filled in for the transect and summarize your findings relative to each of the questions asked on the monitoring analysis form. In the first year, the photos and your analysis will serve as baseline information. In subsequent years, the information you record on the analysis form will be the basis for a great many decisions. Record your answers to the following questions, using the back of the form as needed:
1. Future landscape description. What are you trying to achieve in the area surrounding this transect? The landscape described in your holisticgoal should have been expressed in terms of the four ecosystem processes. Describe the future condition of those four processes specific to the area surrounding each transect. Your holisticgoal was expressed in fairly general terms, but your transects are likely to be sited on different range types or within different environments—for example, clay flats rather than riparian areas—where a description more specific to the site provides more focus to your observations. In addition, indicate whether you are attempting to create specific landscape features, such as brushy areas. Your answer to this question will likely remain the same year after year.
Figure 3.18. You can complete the Basic Biological Monitoring Analysis form when you return home.
2. Progress check. What progress have you made this year compared to last? Review each of the monitoring data forms to get a sense of where you are now. Note specific positive or adverse changes, or no change at all, in terms of community dynamics, water and mineral cycles, and energy flow. For example, if the bulk of the soil surface on each plot was bare and covered with mature capping, what does that tell you about the water cycle?
3. Influencing factors. What natural or management factors might have influenced what you are seeing on the ground? Think in terms of natural forces—a fire or flood that swept through the transect area during the year; weather factors, such as a heavy downpour or a hailstorm that occurred a few days before you made your observations, or a complete rainfall failure. If your stock have been in the paddock covered by the transect very recently, or not for months, that would be worth noting. If you created herd effect with an attractant, the land will be different than it would have been otherwise, and you should note that the herd effect occurred.
4. Change or no change. If adverse changes or no changes have occurred where change was planned, what is the underlying cause—what tools have you applied, and how have you applied them? Positive changes that show you are moving toward your holisticgoal are important, but more important, because they require immediate action, are adverse changes, or no change at all where you had planned for change to occur. Carefully consider the tools you have used and note how they could have affected the four ecosystem processes. (See the discussion on analyzing the tools in the “Comprehensive Monitoring” section, which follows.) If the soil surface was bare and capped and you increased your stocking rate and reduced the size of your paddocks, and no change occurred, perhaps the tools you used—grazing and animal impact—were trumped by rest (in the form of partial rest).
5. Proposed actions. What are you going to change in the next year to keep your land moving toward the future landscape described in your holisticgoal? What you propose to do or change over the next year as a result of no change or adverse change is critical to making progress toward your holisticgoal. In most cases, taking action will require the use of a tool other than the one that led to the adverse change or no change, or a modification in how you applied the tool. You have identified the conditions and the causes and therefore should now be able to identify the tool required to bring about a remedy. Determine which management guidelines apply and then decide how you will use that tool. When you have completed this step, you’ll find that you have outlined the actions you should take. Test those actions toward your holisticgoal and change your plans accordingly.
To continue with the example in question 4, you would need to determine how to overcome the tool of rest you inadvertently applied if that’s what you think was the problem. Animal impact is what you would look to, but not as you applied it last time. Now you would plan to increase it significantly. The management guidelines that apply are stock density and herd effect. To increase herd effect, you could amalgamate herds, or use an attractant that would enable you to increase animal impact over small areas, or strip-graze your stock at ultra-high density using temporary fence. To increase stock density, you could lease or purchase additional animals, amalgamate herds to create larger herds, or add a temporary fence to reduce paddock size further. The testing guidelines will help you decide which option to pursue. But in the end you’ll assume you’re wrong, and check to see the next time you monitor.
Once you’ve completed each of your summary forms, make sure you file them together with their data forms and photos in a way that prevents them from being separated.
This procedure takes a few days of hard work once a year. It requires you to look at the land in more detail—which will enhance your observation skills—and it will yield far more data than the basic procedure. We encourage you to use this procedure if you are managing public lands or in any other situation where “quantitative” data is required by a government agency, absentee owner, or others.
You will need to site your transects carefully. Pick areas to sample that are either typical of the whole area or where you particularly want to produce a lot of change. The more uniform the land, the fewer the transects necessary. On uniform properties a minimum of three to five transects give good information. On properties with several or many different range types, or varying terrain—mountains, valleys, riparian areas—you will require more. However, you must balance the time you can invest against the precision of information you need.
You will be gathering data from random points within each transect area. Point sampling has three requirements: (1) an adequate number of points, (2) randomness in choosing points, and (3) points that really are points. (Measuring from a broad mark such as a footprint, you could fudge.)
To ensure that the sample is random, choose the sample points by throwing a dart backward over your shoulder—being careful not to aim it. The dart technique gives you a “dimensionless” point, but it’s difficult to apply where plant spacing is tight, a common situation in less brittle environments. You will sample up to 100 points at each site—fewer than 50 may not give reliable results. Sampling 100 points exactly makes it possible to read many of the findings directly from the data as percentages. You will find it difficult not to bias the selection of points, even when throwing the dart over your shoulder. Resist the temptation! The only person you will fool if you don’t resist will be yourself.
The three-page Comprehensive Biological Monitoring Data form, whose first page is shown in figure 3.19, has three major divisions. In the first, you record what the dart point hit (covered or bare ground). In the second, you note what you found within a six-inch (fifteen-centimeter) circle around the dart point. In fact, you can use any size circle as long as you always use the same size; but bear in mind that the smaller the circle, the more accurate your judgments of soil surface cover will be. In the third section, you record the distance from the sample point to the nearest perennial plant and provide additional information on that plant. Each division has lines numbered from 1 to 100. If you think you can get away with only 50 points, stop there.
Feel free to modify this form to better fit your own situation. You may choose to skip certain columns or create others that will give you more meaningful data. In less brittle environments, for instance, some managers measure the distance to the nearest legume, rather than the nearest perennial grass, because they already have a dense perennial grass sward and seek to increase legumes to enhance biodiversity and the mineral cycle.
The Comprehensive Biological Monitoring Summary form, shown in figure 3.20, includes space for recording the totals and averages of all the information included on the monitoring data sheets.
The Comprehensive Biological Monitoring Analysis form, shown in figure 3.21, provides space to record your analysis of the results.
Blank forms are included in appendix 3.B.
You will need to have the following items on hand when you go out to collect your data:
• camera (preferably digital)
• monitoring data sheets
• clipboard
• pencils
• measuring tape or ruler adequate to measure distance to nearest perennial plant
Figure 3.19. The second and third sheets of the Comprehensive Biological Monitoring Data form record data for points 34 through 66 and 67 through 100, respectively.
Figure 3.20. All three monitoring data sheets (100 points) have been summarized here in the Comprehensive Biological Monitoring Summary.
Figure 3.21. Your monitoring is incomplete if you don’t take the time to analyze the results, as shown here on the Comprehensive Biological Monitoring Analysis form.
Figure 3.22. A dimestore dart makes a classy tester that penetrates tall grass. Yank out the point and use a drill to enlarge the hole slightly so you can screw in a bicycle spoke. The spoke should be cut to 8 inches (20 cm) and sharpened.
• fishing weight on a length of cord (if in brushy country)
• steel posts or suitable permanent markers, three per transect; optional short marker post with distinctive top, one per transect (these are required only the first time when marking the boundaries)
• bright-colored darts (the heavier, the better) with 2- to 3-inch (50–75-mm) tips (see figure 3.22)
• this handbook
Locate permanent starting points for each transect. Each transect will consist of up to 100 random points, but the starting point must remain the same from year to year.
The transect boundaries are defined with the help of a camera. Standing at the permanent starting point, face toward a fixed feature, such as a mountain, hill, or tree, and center that feature in the middle of the camera’s viewfinder. The left and right extremities of the camera’s field of vision will define the remaining boundaries, which form a triangle, as shown in figure 3.23. If you can lay out your transect so that the fixed feature is to the north or south (facing north in the northern hemisphere and south if you live in the southern hemisphere), you reduce your chances of casting a shadow over the photos you will be taking from this same spot each year.
Once you’ve located the starting points and right and left boundaries at each site, mark them with a steel post, rock pile, or other permanent fixture. If you are managing an extensive area of land, record the location of the starting points on a map and write down the directions for getting there if at all complicated. Mark the routes on the map if necessary. A GPS can also be used to record starting points, but back up the information on paper.
Figure 3.23. The transect area, within which you will throw the dart, lies within the triangle formed by the three marker posts. The starting post (bottom) should be located so that the fixed feature (distant object) lies at the center of the camera’s field of vision. If the fixed feature is located north or south of the starting post, it may help you avoid casting shadows in the photos you will take from that spot. The “marker” is used when taking close-up photos of the soil surface.
For each site, do the following:
1. Set up the Comprehensive Biological Monitoring Data form (three pages).
Fill in the identification information at the top of each page (except photo numbers). Labeling each page is important in case pages get shuffled among other sheets.
2. Take photos.
First, write the transect number and date on a large piece of paper that can be tent-folded so it stands up. Two dry-erase boards hinged together with straps and set upright like a tent also work well. Place the paper or board within the camera’s field of vision and close enough that the writing is visible.
Stand at or against the starting point marker and face the fixed feature you used in defining the transect boundaries. Take a photo directly facing the fixed feature. The feature should be centered in the viewfinder, and the photograph should include one third sky and two thirds foreground. Being consistent in this will help you more easily compare photos of the same site year after year. Try to use an identical camera each year, or at least be consistent with the lens setting (if using a zoom lens) from year to year, so as not to distort the picture of what is happening to your land over time. Taking care when preparing for this first photograph will pay off in the long run, as the fixed point will remain constant in the photos from year to year.
Once you have taken the main-view photograph, you need to get a more detailed view of the soil surface in the foreground. Make sure you place the paper or board with the identifying information in the camera’s field of vision. There are two options for getting this view:
• Remain standing where you are and point the camera downward at about a 45-degree angle.
• For a closer, more detailed view of the soil surface, walk a short distance away from the marker toward the fixed feature. (Note: You should settle on a distance for this, which you will use for all of your monitoring sites—somewhere between five and ten yards (or meters)—so that you are away from possible influence of livestock concentrating at the main marker.) At that point, drive in a short marker that has a distinctive top, such as the plastic whiskers surveyors use, or a metal washer or painted piece of metal welded to it.
Take a photo, from waist height, with the camera pointed straight down to record what is happening at ground level. Use the head of the marker for this spot as a reference by locating it in the center of the viewfinder.
As soon as you have the film developed, or digital photo printed, number each photo and record those numbers at the top of the monitoring data sheets.
3. Throw the dart.
Stand at the permanent starting point and toss the dart backward over your shoulder anywhere within the transect area, making a conscious effort not to throw the dart where you hope it will land. Painting the dart fluorescent orange or tying on a piece of orange flagging may help you to find it in dense cover. Short tosses are easiest to find.
When you finish documenting one sample point, as described in the next section, move on to the next, taking care to spread your sample points so they cover the entire monitoring site by the time you’ve thrown the dart either 50 or 100 times. The best reason for stopping at 50 throws is if the community you are sampling is fairly uniform.
Some managers find it useful to walk around the transect area before throwing the dart, recording the names of familiar plant species and other outstanding features. Because of the random nature of the dart-throw technique, some species or soil surface features may not show up in your data.
Use the monitoring data sheets to record your observations at each point, completing a row per throw, from left to right across the page, as shown in figure 3.19.
If the dart didn’t stick, sight straight down over the point to the spot below and record what lies there. Put a check mark in the appropriate column: “Bare Soil” and “Rock” speak for themselves. “Litter 1” refers to a new, undecayed layer of litter (leaves, sticks, dung)—sometimes the “layer” is only bits of twigs or dead leaves on bare ground. “Litter 2” indicates deeper litter that is decaying and being incorporated into the soil. In less brittle environments, the litter often merges into the soil without a distinct boundary. “Plant Base” refers to the area actually covered by the root crowns or stems of plants.
In most bunchgrass-dominated communities, plant base, or basal, hits rarely exceed 5 to 15 percent. In areas with sod-forming grasses, individual basal areas are hard to distinguish; you must devise a standard. One way is to record a basal hit only if the point falls into a living clump. Otherwise, record litter or bare ground and measure the distance to the nearest live shoot of the sod-forming grass.
If the dart lodges in vegetation above ground, use the fishing sinker and cord as a plumb bob (see figure 3.24) to find a point on the soil surface directly below and treat that as a hit.
If the dart point has landed immediately under a canopy of any sort, such as a leaf or branch, that would have slowed a raindrop before it hit the surface, make a check in the “Canopy above Point” column.
Document the following elements in a 6-inch- or 15-centimeter-diameter circle centered on the entry point of the dart:
• Record soil surface conditions. Make a check in the column that best describes the soil surface in the bulk of the circle:
– Mature capping—Algae, lichen, or moss covers the surface.
– Immature capping—Surface has been broken in the past, or scoured by erosion, but is still strong enough to inhibit change.
– Recent capping—Surface has recently been sealed over by rain.
Locating a Point with a Plumb Bob
Figure 3.24. When the dart gets caught in above-ground vegetation, use a plumb bob to locate the point.
– Broken capping—Bare surface has been broken recently by animal impact or some other form of disturbance but has not yet formed a distinct cap.
– Covered—Most of the raindrops falling within the circle would land on living or dead plant material, rather than mature capping or bare ground.
Note: If the surface within a significant number of circles is likely to be sod bound with low-successional grass species such as blue grama, couch, or Bermuda (Cynodon dactylon), record the surfaces as “Covered” but make a note in the “Other Comments” column so you can make a better analysis later.
• Record evidence of large or small animal activity. If you see signs within the small circle of large or small animal activity—tracks, droppings, burrows, mounds, worm castings, or actual sightings—make a note in the “Animal Sign” column: Use I for insect, W for worm, B for bird, L or S for large or small animal. (If you can identify the species, note it in the “Other Comments” column.)
• Note if annuals are present. Make a check mark in the “Annuals Present” column if an annual grass or forb is growing within the circle. If you know the name of the species, record it in the “Other Comments” column. If you’re monitoring what has become largely annual grassland, you could ignore this, since annuals will be everywhere and you are probably more concerned with the nearest perennial plant.
• Record any evidence of erosion. Put a check in the “Soil Movement” column if you see any signs within the circle of erosion by wind or water—plants or rocks on pedestals, water flow patterns, litter banks, siltation in low points, or splash patterns.
Locate the perennial plant nearest to the dart tip. Sometimes several plants of different species might be intertwined. If they have seedheads, you can distinguish them more easily. Note: Where you are specifically trying to create perennial grassland, you might want to locate the nearest perennial grass rather than a woody plant. In cases where perennial plants are scarce, you may find that each time you throw the dart the nearest perennial to the dart tip is the same plant! If so, make a note of it.
• Note the type of plant. Make an entry in the appropriate column for any of the following that you observe:
– Grass. Indicate with a C or a W whether it is a warm- or cool-season grass, or a Y if it is green year-round.
– Rush or sedge. Sedges resemble grasses but often have solid, angular (rather than round) stems; rushes have hollow, pithy stems.
– Forb. Any flowering plant, other than grass, that does not develop woody stems—for example, a legume, such as clover.
– Shrub or tree. A shrub could be scrubby tree growth. Fix your own definition for what is a tree and what is a shrub, according to the expected growth form of the species in your area.
• Measure distance from the dart point. Using a tape measure, note the distance from the dart point to the base of the perennial plant and record that in the “Distance to It” column. If the dart hit the base of the perennial plant you’ve identified, record the distance as zero. Note: In sod-bound communities, or where a pure stand of dense grass covers the ground, some people record the point strike with a check and a letter for the species and then measure the distance to the nearest perennial of another species, which may be quite far.
• Record habitat of nearest perennial. The water cycle influences plant habitat and thus the kind of plants that can grow in an area. Indicate with a check whether the habitat is “Dry,” “Middle,” or “Wet” (xerophytic, mesophytic, or hydrophytic).
• Record age of nearest perennial. Make a check mark in the appropriate column: “Seedling,” “Young” (from seed or stolon), “Mature,” “Decadent (Dying),” “Resprout” (i.e., not a new plant but coppice growth from an existing tree or shrub, or a rhizome from a parent grass plant).
• Record the form of nearest perennial. The form is the plant shape under the influence of grazing or rest. Your options are “Normal,” where the plant appears vigorous and you see evidence of seed production, tillering (new stems at ground level) and branching, and a lack of old, stale growth; “Overrested”; “Overgrazed”; “Overbrowsed”; and “Dead” (due to overresting, overgrazing, or overbrowsing). If the plant form fits none of these descriptions, make a note of it in the “Other Comments” column.
• Note the species of nearest perennial. If you can identify the species, write its name in the column provided (very small seedlings are nearly impossible to identify). If you do not know the name, simply record “unknown.”
When you have completed the sample points, subtotal the number of checks (or letters) in each column of each page. If your data are taken from 100-point hits, the combined subtotals (except “Distance to It”) will automatically reflect percentage figures.
Unanalyzed monitoring is like unsmelted ore: a monument to wasted toil. You must separate the useful knowledge out of all the information you recorded on the monitoring data sheets. The process demands little computation but a good deal of thought. The monitoring summary form (figure 3.20) breaks the process into sections that help synthesize information and bring it to bear on the status of the landscape you are attempting to create.
First, fill in the identification information at the top of the form. If your files ever become separated, there should be no doubt about which monitoring data sheets contributed to the summary.
Then, if the sampling area was fairly uniform and you recorded 50 rather than 100 points, you will need to calculate percentages before you record the numbers on the summary form. Do this by multiplying the subtotaled figures by 2. For example, if 23 of 50 dart points hit bare soil, the percentage of bare soil would be 23 × 2 = 46%. Figure 3.20 shows a completed form.
Finally, transfer the following information from the monitoring data sheets:
• Plant name or species. In the “Plant Name or Species” column on the left, list the species you were able to identify within each plant type (grass, sedge, forb, etc.), and to the right (under “No - %”) how many of each (multiplied by 2 if you sampled only 50 points). Lump any species you weren’t able to identify into one category (“Unknown”) and record their numbers (multiplied by 2 if 50 points sampled).
• Soil surface. In the “Cover & Capping - %” column, record in each row the total of the relevant columns on the monitoring data sheets. In the “Evidence of - %” column, total the number of Is, Ws, Bs, Ss, and Ls that appear in the “Animal Sign” column on the monitoring data sheets and record in the appropriate rows. For the “Annuals” row, record the sum of the subtotals from the monitoring data sheets, and do the same for the “Soil Movement” row.
• Nearest perennial. In the “Characteristics - %” column, enter the relevant numbers for the “Cool Season,” “Warm Season,” and “Year-Round Green Grass” rows. (Note: If you weren’t able to identify every grass as cool- or warm-season or year-round green, the results here will not reflect a true percentage.) Then enter the totals for rushes, forbs, shrubs, and trees.
For the “Average Distance” row, calculate the total of the “Distance to It” column on the monitoring data sheets, divide that figure by 100 (or 50, if 50 points were sampled), and record the number.
In the “Age and Form - %” column, record the sum of the subtotals from the corresponding columns on the monitoring data sheets.
Begin by filling in the identification information at the top of the monitoring analysis form (figure 3.21) to make sure this form is never confused with others. In the first year much of the data becomes baseline information. In subsequent years your recorded analysis becomes the basis of a great many decisions.
The questions asked on this form are the same questions asked in the basic monitoring procedure. If you alternate using the two procedures over the years, your analysis will be comparable year after year. The comprehensive monitoring analysis, however, takes into consideration not only your observations but also the actual data collected (see figure 3.21). Use the back of the form as needed.
What are we trying to achieve in the area surrounding this transect? Record your answer in terms of the four ecosystem processes but also indicate whether there are specific landscape features you are attempting to create—such as brushy areas. Your answer to this question will likely remain the same year after year.
What progress have we made this year, compared to last? Here you rate the status of the four ecosystem processes according to the data included on the summary form. Note specific positive or adverse changes, or no change at all, in terms of community dynamics, water and mineral cycles, and energy flow:
• Cover: This tells much about the successional level of the community. Obviously, an increase in bare ground and rock represents a decline. Litter, especially litter 2, is often a precondition for advancing succession. Basal cover is one indication of plant density.
• Capping: This aspect of soil surface condition also has profound implications for successional movement. Mature capping is usually a sign of stagnation or decline. Covered soil (except in sod-bound conditions) is usually a sign of advance. Immature, recent, and broken capping lie between the two but would be seen as an advance if they have increased while mature capping has decreased.
• Animal sign: This information becomes more meaningful over the years as you watch it change. An “infestation” reflects a lack of balance and stability, but it isn’t necessarily bad. Certain species will predominate at given levels of succession or moments of time. Massive hatches of cicadas occur every seventeen years in eastern North America, for example, but cause little damage when predators are diverse and abundant.
• Annuals present: If you are attempting to return annual grassland to perennial grassland, the number of annuals should start to decrease relative to perennials.
• Soil movement: Erosion and bare ground are key indicators of noneffective water cycles, but low-successional communities and exposed, eroding soil go hand in hand.
• Plant type and species: Depending on the future landscape described in your holisticgoal, changes in the proportions here will show your progress toward achieving it. Consider the general diversity, the proportion of annual plants, and the presence of high-successional plants. Changes in cool- and warm-season grasses are significant in terms of diversity.
• Average distance: This index of plant density (except in sod-bound conditions) is very important. Closely spaced plants hold soil and litter in place and keep soils covered. Baseline plant-spacing information does not in itself tell you much, but comparisons to later monitoring will provide one of the most sensitive indicators of a trend. Expanding bare areas and falling plant density are signs of a declining ecosystem. Decreasing distances indicate the reverse.
• Plant age and form: Obviously, the mix and number of plants in the youngest class determine the community of the future. The proportion of moribund plants shows changes from the past. Plants that have been overgrazed, overbrowsed, or overrested may die prematurely or fail to reproduce, eventually causing a shift in succession.
• Cover: Litter or basal cover enhances the water cycle. Excessive grazing of dry vegetation, or consumption of litter off the ground, may result in inadequate cover despite minimal overgrazing during the growing season.
• Capping: Capping is a primary indicator of a noneffective water cycle.
• Animal sign: Burrowing animals directly affect water cycle. Although more animal activity is usually better than less, evaluation is subjective.
• Soil movement: Soil movement is a direct indicator of a poor water cycle.
• Plant type and species: Plants with varying root depths get their water at different levels, so diversity reflects health. Think this through for your mix of plants. What conclusion can you make about depth of water table, transpiration, surface evaporation, and so on? Certain species associated with good or bad soil aeration (xerophytic = dry type; mesophytic = middle type; hydrophytic = wet type) may indicate changes in the water cycle. Cool- and warm-season grasses are not prime indicators of water cycle status. Are perennials increasing and improving the water cycle?
• Average distance: Changes in plant density may precede changes in litter retention and water cycle.
• Plant age and form: Water cycle changes may explain why certain seedlings do or don’t survive, why classes of plants are dying, and other peculiarities of age distribution. Think it through. Overgrazed and overrested plants provide less litter to help cover soil in brittle environments.
• Cover: Litter, especially litter 2, is a direct measure of improvement. Check how quickly litter seems to be breaking down.
• Capping: Capping generally inhibits mineral cycling.
• Animal sign: The decomposers and all creatures that live in the soil or burrow through it are agents of mineral cycling.
• Soil movement: Any loss of soil is a break in the mineral cycle.
• Plant type and species: Look for plants of varying root depth and note the general diversity of species. Are deep-rooted perennial grasses increasing?
• Average distance: Greater plant density implies more cycling and ability to keep soil covered and stable.
• Plant age and form: This is relevant as an indicator of growth activity. Obviously, a large proportion of dying plants, if decaying slowly, amount to a slowing of the cycle.
• Cover: Bare ground or rock obviously indicates the worst possible energy flow.
• Capping: Capped soil indicates less than possible organic matter and soil activity. Bare, capped soil always indicates a loss of potential energy flow.
• Animal sign: A better energy flow supports more activity.
• Soil movement: As erosion usually means bare ground, it seriously affects energy flow.
• Plant type and species: Broad-leafed, middle-type plants obviously indicate more energy flow. A good mix of both cool- and warm-season plants means a longer period for converting solar energy and thus a better flow. Plants that remain green year-round will be growing year-round and thus converting more energy. On rangelands dominated by annual grasses, an increase in perennial grasses usually means an increase in energy flow.
• Average distance: This is an important indicator. Tighter density usually means that a greater volume of leaf is harvesting sunlight.
• Plant age and form: Remember that green leaf area exposed to sunlight determines energy flow. Overbrowsed, overgrazed, overrested, and dead or dying plants obviously don’t convert maximum energy.
What natural or management factors might have influenced what we are seeing on the ground? Think in terms of natural forces—a fire or flood that swept through the transect area during the year; weather factors, such as a heavy downpour or a hailstorm that occurred in the area a few days before you made your observations, or a complete rainfall failure. If your stock have been in the paddock covered by the transect very recently, or not for months, that would be worth noting. If you created herd effect with an attractant, the land will be different than it would have been otherwise, and you should note that it occurred.
If adverse changes or no changes have occurred where change was planned, what is the underlying cause—what tools have we applied, and how have we applied them? If you identified a poor water cycle in question 2 because of pervasive capping and absence of litter, for example, you might focus on insufficient animal impact (partial rest) as the prime cause. (See the box “Interpreting Your Results—Five Scenarios,” for additional examples.) Think through each of the tools as you applied them during the year and how they tend to affect each of the four processes. One tool in particular—rest (partial or total)—is noteworthy because it tends to produce opposite effects in very brittle and nonbrittle environments.
Interpreting Your Results—Five Scenarios
Each of the following scenarios reflects the changes that have occurred since the previous monitoring one year ago, on brittle-environment properties whose managers seek a future landscape that includes healthy grassland, effective water and mineral cycles, and high energy flow.
INTERPRETATIONS
1 Stock density low (partial rest still too high), but some improvement.
2 Stocking rate is too high—all four ecosystem processes worsening.
3 All is well; the land is regenerating, ecosystem processes improving.
4 Stocking rate too low and stock density too low.
5 Animal impact is good, stocking rate low. Manager is most likely rotating stock or not watching recovery periods carefully enough.
Think through each scenario and interpretation given to see if you can figure out the reasoning behind each interpretation. Then check your answers with those given in appendix 3.A.
Here’s a brief review of what each tool tends to produce in terms of community dynamics, water and mineral cycles, and energy flow (for a more detailed discussion, refer to the textbook chapters 19 through 24 covering each tool):
• Community dynamics: Fire exposes soil and thus tends to inhibit the establishment of new plants that require litter, moisture, and low temperature fluctuations throughout the day and night. Growth of mature woody species is often stimulated by fire. Where one stem existed before, fire can lead to several more after a period in which the plant appeared to have been killed by the fire. Only a few woody species are killed by fire. In the short term, fire tends to increase the diversity of species in grassland and woodland. Repeated fires often reduce diversity. Fire can produce mosaic patterns within a given area, creating an edge effect and thus a zone of greater biological diversity.
• Water cycle: Fire tends to reduce water cycle effectiveness because it exposes soil and destroys litter. The lower the rainfall and the more frequent the fire, the greater this tendency.
• Mineral cycle: Fire tends to speed mineral cycling in the short term but if used repeatedly tends to slow mineral cycling in the long run. The drier the area and the more frequent the fire, the greater this tendency.
• Energy flow: In the short term, fire tends to produce an increase in oxidizing, overrested grasslands, but, because the soil exposure leads to less effective mineral and water cycles and changes in the plant community, fire could reduce energy flow in the long term. The drier the area and the more frequent the fire, the greater this tendency.
Rest (partial or total)—nonbrittle environments.
Rest is the most powerful tool we have to restore or maintain biodiversity and soil cover in nonbrittle environments.
• Community dynamics: Biological communities develop to levels of great diversity and stability.
• Water and mineral cycles build and maintain high levels of effectiveness.
• Energy flow reaches a high level.
Rest (partial or total)—very brittle environments.
In very brittle environments, rest in either form—partial or total—applied continuously tends to damage biodiversity and soil cover. (See the notes under “Animal Impact,” which follows, for a more detailed discussion on the tendencies of low animal impact, the flip side of partial rest.) At about 3 on the 1 to 10 scale, partial or total rest becomes increasingly negative for maintaining soil cover, energy flow, and healthy perennial grasses.
• Community dynamics: Rapid biological decay, especially in grasses, gives way to gradual chemical oxidation and physical weathering. Consequently, biological communities decline and greater simplicity and instability ensue, particularly in grasslands and savannas. The lower the rainfall, the greater the adverse effect. In high-rainfall areas, grasslands tend to be replaced by woody vegetation and deciduous forest.
• Water and mineral cycles become less effective.
• Energy flow declines significantly.
• Community dynamics: Periodic high animal impact promotes the advancement of biological communities on bare, gullied, and eroding ground. In dense grassland, high impact tends to maintain the biological community at the grassland level, preventing a shift to woody communities in both brittle and nonbrittle environments.
• Water and mineral cycles: Periodic high animal impact generally improves water and mineral cycles. Since they tend to sustain grasslands in nonbrittle environments, water and mineral cycling may not be as effective as they would be if the community advanced to forest.
• Energy flow: Because periodic high impact tends to build community complexity and improve water and mineral cycles, energy flow tends to improve as a direct consequence. However, when used to maintain grassland in lieu of forest, energy flow in nonbrittle environments, or in brittle tropical areas that can support a solid woodland canopy, will not reach its full potential.
• Community dynamics: Low animal impact, or partial rest, has little impact on nonbrittle grasslands that cannot advance to forest because of some natural factor, such as shallow soil or elevation; otherwise, the tendency is to move from grassland to forest. In brittle environments, however, low animal impact tends to produce bare ground, as it disturbs algae-lichen communities but does not stimulate the establishment of more complex communities. It allows plant spacings to increase and on a larger scale generally has effects remarkably similar to those of total rest. Under low impact, dense grassland with close plant spacings may proceed toward woody communities and forbs, but those will give way to a landscape of scattered shrubs or trees and much bare, or algae- or lichen-covered ground unless rainfall is sufficient to sustain a full woody cover.
• Water and mineral cycles: In brittle environments, low animal impact reduces mineral and water cycles below the land’s potential. In nonbrittle environments, it has little effect.
• Energy flow: Low animal impact generally reduces energy flow below its potential in brittle environments but can increase it in nonbrittle environments if there is movement from grassland to forest.
• Community dynamics: Grazing tends to maintain grass root vigor, soil life, and structure and retard shifts toward woody or herbaceous species.
• Water and mineral cycles: Grazing enhances both of these cycles by maintaining healthier and more stable root mass, increasing microorganism activity and aeration, and producing plants with more shoots and leaves—providing much needed litter in brittle environments.
• Energy flow: Grazing increases energy flow both above and below ground. It does this in brittle environments by preventing old, oxidizing blockages of material and in both environments by promoting vigorous root and leaf growth. Healthier, more massive root systems also support millions of microorganisms and other life underground.
• Community dynamics: Overgrazing, by reducing litter and soil cover (in brittle environments) even as it damages grass roots, fosters shifts away from grassland toward herbaceous forbs (“weeds”) in brittle environments, and shifts to woody plant communities or a solid mat of grass, even in upright species, in nonbrittle environments. In both environments, soil-enhancing legumes simply disappear.
• Water and mineral cycles: Overgrazing reduces water and mineral cycling by exposing soil and limiting the production of potential litter (important for brittle environments) and leads to grass root reduction, which in turn fosters soil compaction in both brittle and nonbrittle environments.
• Energy flow: Overgrazing cuts energy flow because it reduces plant roots and exposes the soil surface. However, in nonbrittle environments where it produces a shift to woody communities the climate can sustain, it would eventually lead to increased energy flow.
When living organisms are used as positive “tools” in the management of ecosystem processes, you must analyze each specific case. We are not yet aware of any general tendencies that could guide land managers. Because there is a danger of organisms used to eradicate insect or plant populations subsequently finding other hosts, extreme caution is needed, particularly in the case of genetically engineered organisms released for such purposes. In some cases, living organisms have been used to eradicate populations that might have been dealt with more effectively through use of grazing and high animal impact. For example, insects have been released to deal with problem plants, such as moths to help eradicate prickly pear, when the offending plants were a problem only due to partial rest.
The thousands of technologies that fall under this heading cannot easily be broken down into categories on which to base general tendencies. Use your common sense. You know that the use of technologies such as pesticides, for instance, will tend to reduce biodiversity and thus adversely affect all four ecosystem processes. The testing process will ensure that a decision to use them anyway is a conscious one.
In environments tending toward the brittle end of the scale, the most common problem in the early days is partial rest that goes unrecognized. Consider reducing the number of herds or increasing the number of paddocks.
What are we going to change in this next year to keep our land moving toward the future landscape described in our holisticgoal? If your monitoring indicates that you are veering off track in terms of your holisticgoal, you need to take action right away. In most cases, this will require the use of a tool other than the one that led to the adverse change, or a modification in how you applied the tool. You have identified the conditions and the causes and therefore should now be able to identify the tool required to bring about a remedy. Determine which management guidelines apply and then decide how you will use that tool. When you have completed this step, you’ll find that you have outlined the action you should take. Test those actions toward your holisticgoal and change your plans accordingly. The textbook explains the management and testing guidelines in detail.
Using the example of a poor water cycle again, for which insufficient animal impact could be the cause, say you discover that two management guidelines—stock density and herd effect—apply most directly. The textbook will tell you various ways to increase stock density and herd effect, and then you’ll have to run each option through the testing guidelines. To improve density, you could consider increased fencing, amalgamation of herds, or increased stocking rate. The testing guidelines will help you decide which. To improve herd effect, you could train animals to respond to attractants of various kinds, or strip-graze at ultra-high density, using temporary fencing. Record the changes you plan to make.
Once you’ve completed each of your summary and analysis forms, make sure you file them together with their data forms and photos in a way that prevents them from being separated.
Make every effort to monitor as thoroughly as possible, whether you are using the basic or the comprehensive procedure—especially in the first years. If for any reason you can’t complete the whole process in a given year, the following data are important:
• fixed-point photos
• soil surface information
• thorough notes on observations (questions 1–5 on the monitoring summary forms)
If grazing planning is the route to managing your piece of the natural world, monitoring is the best way to learn from it. Monitoring a farm or ranch successfully requires both a constant attitude of openness and curiosity and a self-disciplined labor of measuring, recording, and photographing actual data.
Anyone who has ever contemplated the life of peasants and indigenous people has been amazed by their enormous pool of wisdom and lore and wondered how they got it. What unfortunate individual discovered—and alerted his survivors to—the toxic powers of the fly amanita mushroom? Why does an ancient Greek manuscript declare that blowfish crawl out of the water and mate with goats at certain phases of the moon? And why does that idea persist among old-timers on the U.S. Gulf Coast?
In the mushroom case, monitoring is the answer. In the blowfish case, we suspect monitoring had nothing to do with the tale.
You’ve got to monitor to understand the difference between substance and myth. And you’ve got to try to understand everything in order to do anything. You won’t get anywhere standing on the top of your hill or sitting behind your desk telling your animals and crops what to do, forgetting for the moment about the thousands of other rebellious and independent creeping, burrowing, flying, thrusting, and twining things that surround you. You have to hark to all of them as well as forces like wind, water, and sun that you never expect to pay attention to you.
And you have to record what you learn so you can think about what it means, remember it next year, and pass it on in a comprehensible form to heirs, hands, and others—and most of all so you can use it to keep your planning vital and flexible and get better at what you do.
Don’t whine when the range goes bare in January and nothing grows till June. Monitor the grass. Don’t weep when starving elk bust your fences and plunder your hay. Monitor their winter range. Don’t protest when your topsoil leaves for the ocean. Monitor ground cover. When old Aunt Maude left the world muttering on her deathbed that there never was a family bundkuchen recipe except to add this and that until it smelled right, she was telling you to … monitor.
