Date of Award:

5-1996

Document Type:

Thesis

Degree Name:

Master of Science (MS)

Department:

Wildland Resources

Department name when degree awarded

Rangeland Resources

Committee Chair(s)

Neil E. West

Committee

Neil E. West

Abstract

The Land Condition-Trend Analysis (LCTA) program was developed by the U.S. Army to assist in the sustainable management of natural resources on U.S. Army lands. The LCTA program applies a standardized procedure in order to select long-term monitoring sites. The LCTA monitoring program was applied to Camp Williams, a National Army Guard training site located in central Utah. Due to the criteria set by the LCTA monitoring program, 61 percent of Camp Williams was explicitly excluded from the LCTA monitoring protocol because it appeared to be more heterogeneous, which would make it difficult to locate monitoring sites in the field.

This study compared the monitored landscape with the unmonitored landscape to determine how the two landscapes differed. The expectation was that the monitored landscape would contain larger, less numerous patches compared with the unmonitored landscape, which was expected to contain smaller, more numerous patches. Accordingly, the landscape structures of the included and excluded lands were compared. The landscape metrics utilized to quantify landscape structure were largest patch index (percent), number of patches, patch density (#/100 ha), mean patch size (ha), double log fractal dimension, Simpson's diversity index, Simpson's evenness index, interspersion (percent), and contagion. Small differences did occur between the two landscapes, though the population variance showed that the two landscapes were more alike than different for all metrics, except interspersion and contagion which did show small differences. Due to the criteria set by the LCTA monitoring program, these results were not expected. Since it was shown for the majority of landscape metrics that the two landscapes were more alike than different, the 61 percent of Camp Williams excluded from monitoring consideration was not greatly different. However, important features such as riparian areas and recent small burns were largely contained within the areas excluded by the LCTA program. Further investigation of landscape metrics is encouraged because previously unmonitored features of wildlands can only be assessed by examination of these coarse-scale characteristics.

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