Rangeland Vegetation Monitoring

INR employs permanent and seasonal staff to collect monitoring data in the rangelands of eastern Oregon and neighboring states. Through the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Terrestrial Assessment, Inventory and Monitoring (AIM) program, INR has collected standardized vegetation and soils data across thousands of plots in Oregon, Washington and Nevada since 2016. AIM monitoring provides valuable information about rangeland status and trends, and informs Land Health Assessments, post-fire Emergency Stabilization and Rehabilitation treatments, the Sage-Grouse Habitat Assessment Framework, and other information needs for BLM to manage public rangelands across more than three-quarters of southeastern Oregon. AIM data is also critical in building spatial datasets that are increasingly used in landscape-scale, cross-boundary planning.