INR employs a dedicated team of both permanent and seasonal staff to systematically gather monitoring data in the rangelands of eastern Oregon and its neighboring states. Operating under the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Terrestrial Assessment, Inventory, and Monitoring (AIM) program, INR has collected standardized vegetation and soils data from thousands of plots in Oregon, Washington, California, and Nevada since the year 2016. The Rangeland Monitoring team also works on rapid assessment plots to monitor treatment effectiveness of herbicide and seeding treatments to gather data about short and long-term success of restoration treatments.
Assessment, Inventory, and Monitoring (AIM)
The Assessment, Inventory, and Monitoring (AIM) program is a long-term monitoring program that was established by the BLM to gather standardized data across BLM-administered public lands that can be used to determine ecosystem condition and how those conditions are changing over time. INR began sampling terrestrial AIM plots in 2016 with a focus on determining the conditions of rangelands in areas with important greater sage-grouse habitats where populations were declining and had reached certain thresholds indicating the need for immediate action. These areas continue to be monitored, and present and future sampling efforts also include a wider array of monitoring goals. Many plots on the landscape are now visited on a 5-year cycle to observe long-term changes in landscape condition.
Terrestrial AIM sampling applies several standardized methods to document plot characteristics in a quantitative and standardized way, including line point intercept, plant canopy gap intercept, soil stability, and plot species richness. Data collection also includes a description of a soil pit and identification of the ecological site of the plot. This data helps describe key indicators of ecosystem health including vegetation cover, composition, and structure that relate to the health of the plant community and its suitability as habitat for important species such as the greater sage-grouse. For some projects, AIM methods are also used in conjunction with various supplemental protocols to help document the effectiveness of various management activities including post-fire revegetation or fuels reduction projects. All of the plots together provide robust data for determining ecosystem condition across the landscape and periodic resampling provides the ability to assess changes over time.
The AIM strategy is also used to monitor the effectiveness of treatments such as herbicides and seedings in recently burned areas. In the off season, INR also works with BLM Districts to help synthesize and summarize treatment data for reporting and adaptive management. Data collected from AIM plots can also be used by BLM staff to inform on various other land management actions, including grazing permitting, mining, and to monitor fuels and fuel reduction treatments completed on BLM lands. Since 2022, INR has also begun sampling wadable streams using the Lotic AIM protocol, and wetlands using the wetland and riparian AIM protocol.
AIM data is publicly available online. In addition to providing information on status and trends of public rangelands, AIM data has also been instrumental in the creation of mapping tools such as the threat-based ecostate maps we have used to characterize rangeland vegetation condition in Oregon. Other examples of how AIM has been used throughout the West can be found on the AIM resources page.
Oregon Rangeland Monitoring Program
INR’s Rangeland Monitoring team has also worked on rapid monitoring of large-scale treatments, including herbicide treatments for the control of invasive species and seeding projects for post-fire recovery, as part of the Oregon Rangeland Monitoring Program (ORMP). For this program, rapid methods such as ocular assessments of vegetation cover, threat-based ecostates, and photo points are collected as a useful, quick snapshot for assessing treatment effectiveness. These rapid protocols allow a larger sample size of plots to be assessed across treatment areas and provide consistent data across public and private lands.