Disturbance Response Grouping of Ecological Sites Increases Utility of Ecological Sites and State-and-Transition Models for Landscape Scale Planning in the Great Basin

Abstract

On the Ground Ecological sites often occur at scales too small for application in planning large-scale vegetation treatments or post-fire rehabilitation. Disturbance Response Groups (DRGs) are used to scale up ecological sites by grouping ecological sites based on their responses to disturbances. A state-and-transition model (STM) is created for the DRG and refined through field investigations for each ecological site thereby creating STMs that function at both DRG and ecological site scales. The limited availability of ecological site descriptions hinders their use in large-scale management planning and may be a factor associated with the observed lack of application of available STMs Standardization of ecological site mapping tools for GIS platforms would increase the utility of DRGs, STMs, and ecological site descriptions for many land managers in the western United States.