Barry Adams, Head of the Rangeland Resource Management Program for ESRD, is discussing the tools used for site assessment in grassland ecosystems in this presentation.
Alberta has 5.5 million hectares of native grassland, two thirds of which is privately owned. The Rangeland Health Assessment Protocol was developed for grassland, grazed forests, and tame pastures and has five indicators to assess land health, such as site stability, to aid in determining land health in a comprehensive manner.
Adams explains the range resource management, saying they have recently blended the ecological site description database with their other database ESYS, to make ECOSYS, where data is collected from research done monitoring the landscape. They use the information gathered from this database to determine what types of value-added products would be needed for their clients, and produce them.
The ecological site classification is important because it describes land use to help in management decisions, and it helps to collect and organize environmental information in one place, which then can be shared between user groups. They have had a standardized vegetation inventory protocol for many decades, and Agrasid Digital Soils Inventory is still used and is an important tool.
This presentation was a part of the Alberta Institute of Agrologists' 10th Annual Banff Conference, April 2014.
