Long-term monitoring of rangeland health in the lower foothills region of Alberta /

Abstract

The Rangeland Reference Area program administered by the Public Lands and Forests Division was established to assess range health and monitor trend on rangelands throughout the province of Alberta. Over 1 83 fenced and unfenced reference areas have been established throughout the province. These reference areas include permanently marked grazed and ungrazed transects. Species composition data has been recorded on these transects since 1953 when many of the sites were established. Recently, the Alberta Rangeland Health Protocol was developed as a means for assessing the health of Alberta's rangelands (Alberta Rangeland Health Task Group 1999). Rangeland health assessments are utilized to make a rapid determination of the ecological status of rangeland. Unfortunately, there was not enough historical data from the reference areas to do a detailed rangeland health assessment for each year within a site. Therefore only the ecological integrity and status score of the rangeland health form was used to rate the health of each year within a reference site. The community type within a reference area was assigned an integrity and ecological health status score of 18, 12, 6 or 0 to each year within the group. The historic integrity and ecological status scores determined were then compared to recent rangeland health assessments where all the rangeland health ecological functions were assessed and these trends were plotted for each reference area. Over 75% of the sites that represent the low-bush cranberry ecological site in the Lower Foothills subregion exhibit stable or improving trends in rangeland health.