Papers by Frederick Pierson
Journal Of Soil And Water Conservation , 2011
"Grazing lands are the most dominant land cover type in the United States, with approximately 311... more "Grazing lands are the most dominant land cover type in the United States, with approximately 311.7 Mha being defined as rangelands (Mitchell 2000). Approximately 53% (166.2 Mha) of the nation’s rangelands (USDA 2009) are owned and managed by the private sector, while approximately 43% are managed
by the federal government (USDA NRCS 2011a). The remaining rangelands are owned and managed by tribal, state, and local governments. Information on the type, extent, and spatial location of land degradation on rangelands is needed to inform policy and management decisions on rangelands; however, there is no systematic or coordinated national dataset on status or condition of rangelands for the United States to make informed policy decisions (NRC 1994; Herrick et al. 2010). Rangelands in the west are sparsely populated, and assessments of rangeland conditions have historically not been uniformly conducted across all land ownership classes in any systematic monitoring program. Therefore, it is difficult to assess the current health of rangelands and which areas could benefit from targeted conservation as USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) has recently done for cropland within the Upper Mississippi River Basin (USDA NRCS 2010) and the Chesapeake
Bay (USDA NRCS 2011b) through the Conservation Effects Assessment Project (CEAP).
CEAP is a USDA initiative that is focused on quantifying environmental impacts of conservation on agricultural lands. The CEAP component aimed at assessing conservation on grazing lands was initiated in 2006 (Weltz et al. 2008). The challenges associated with assessments and monitoring on grazing lands and specifically rangelands are extreme due to the large spatial extent of the resource, mixed land ownership, high variability of biological attributes due to extremes in annual precipitation in arid and semiarid rangelands, no uniform sampling protocol, and no central agency assigned for conducting the assessment. The assessment of rangelands is further complicated by the difficulty in defining a baseline condition (reference condition) to document what changes have occurred. Additional challenges include developing cost-effective means of integrating quantitative data into an assessment protocol, high cost associated with collecting and processing national datasets, minimal analytical tools to interpret the results, and no dedicated team to develop and write the assessment."
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Rangeland Ecology & Management, 2016
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Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs, 2017
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Rangeland Ecology & Management, 2007
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The U.S. Department of Agriculture–Agricultural Research Service, Northwest and Southwest Watersh... more The U.S. Department of Agriculture–Agricultural Research Service, Northwest and Southwest Watershed Research Centers have operated the Reynolds Creek Experimental Watershed (RCEW) in southwestern Idaho and the Walnut Gulch Experimental Watershed (WGEW) in southern Arizona since the 1950s. Each watershed is densely instrumented with a variety of hydrometeorological instrumentation and has multiple gauged subwatersheds spanning a range of spatial scales. These watersheds have yielded an extensive knowledge base of watershed processes over multiple decades of use as outdoor hydrologic laboratories. Both research centers have published data reports in Water Resources Research describing the RCEW and WGEW and their associated characteristics and observational Goodrich, Anson, Hamerlynck, Heilman, Holifield-Collins, Keefer, Moran, Nearing, Nichols, Scott, Stone, Unkrich, and Wong are with the U.S. Department of Agriculture– Agricultural Research Service (USDA–ARS) Southwest Watershed Rese...
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Fuel and land management activities in the past century have placed wildland values such as soil ... more Fuel and land management activities in the past century have placed wildland values such as soil and water quality at greater risk due to increased soil erosion. Eroded sediment can lead to decreased long-term soil productivity and adversely impact aquatic ecosystems. Higher runoff rates from severely burned landscapes can lead to flooding and increased risk to human life and property. Over the past ten years, we have completed studies on eight sites in the Northwest and Southeast U.S. measuring erosion impacts associated with prescribed burning. We are now carrying out field and laboratory studies addressing knowledge gaps in our understanding of fuel management practices on soil erosion, and developing a user-friendly computer interface to be able to evaluate the risk and consequences of erosion hazards following wildfires, mitigation treatments, and prescribed burns. Specific tasks that we are addressing include: determining hillslope characteristics that govern dry ravel process...
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Wildfire is an important ecological process and management issue on western rangelands. Major unk... more Wildfire is an important ecological process and management issue on western rangelands. Major unknowns associated with wildfire are its affects on vegetation and soil conditions that influence hydrologic processes including infiltration, surface runoff, erosion, sediment transport, and flooding. Post wildfire hydrologic response was studied in big sagebrush plant communities on steep slopes with coarse-textured soils. Significant rill erosion was observed following both thunderstorm and rapid snowmelt events. Rainfall simulation and controlled overland flow techniques were used to study postfire effects on infiltration, and interrill and rill erosion processes on burned and adjacent unburned areas. Results indicate that burn severity and the development of water repellent soil conditions play significant roles in determining infiltration and interrill erosion rates, particularly on shrub coppice dunes characterized by high surface litter accumulations. The most dramatic and long-las...
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The Northwest Watershed Research Center initiated a streamflow and suspended sediment research pr... more The Northwest Watershed Research Center initiated a streamflow and suspended sediment research program at Reynolds Creek Experimental Watershed (RCEW) in the early 1960's. Continuous streamflow measurement began at two sites in 1963, at three additional sites in 1964, and at eight additional sites in subsequent years. Measurements were later discontinued at five sites. Data were or are currently acquired for basins ranging in contributing area from 1.03 ha to 23,866 ha, selected to represent the broad range of environmental settings found in northwestern rangelands and in RCEW. Quality-controlled, validated hourly streamflow data sets are available for these 13 sites for the period 1963 through 1996 (or for a subset of that time for some sites). Suspended sediment data were acquired from a restricted set of streamflow stations. Suspended sediment data are available for three streamflow measurement sites (high elevation, mid-elevation, and low elevation). All data are available o...
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Fire can dramatically influence rangeland hydrology and erosion by altering ecohydrologic relatio... more Fire can dramatically influence rangeland hydrology and erosion by altering ecohydrologic relationships. This synthesis presents an ecohydrologic perspective on the effects of fire on rangeland runoff and erosion through a review of scientific literature spanning many decades. The objectives are: (1) to introduce rangeland hydrology and erosion concepts necessary for understanding hydrologic impacts of fire; (2) to describe how climate, vegetation, and soils affect rangeland hydrology and erosion; and (3) to use examples from literature to illustrate how fire interacts with key ecohydrologic relationships. The synthesis is intended to provide a useful reference and conceptual framework for understanding and evaluating impacts of fire on rangeland runoff and erosion.
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CATENA, 2016
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Rangeland Ecology & Management, 2015
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Water
Pinyon (Pinus spp.) and juniper (Juniperus spp.) woodlands are an important vegetation type in th... more Pinyon (Pinus spp.) and juniper (Juniperus spp.) woodlands are an important vegetation type in the Great Basin, Colorado Plateau, and southwestern desert regions of the western US that is undergoing substantial changes associated with land management, altered disturbance regimes, and climate change. We synthesized literature on the ecohydrologic impacts of pinyon and juniper tree reductions across plot to watershed scales, short- and long-term periods, and regional climatic gradients. We found that the initial plot- to hillslope-scale ecohydrologic and erosion impacts of tree reduction on pinyon and juniper woodlands by fire, mechanical tree removal, or drought depend largely on: (1) the degree to which these perturbations alter vegetation and ground cover structure, (2) initial conditions, and (3) inherent site attributes. Fire commonly imparts an initial increased risk for hillslope runoff and erosion that degrades over time with vegetation and ground cover recovery whereas tree r...
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Water
Pinyon (Pinus spp.) and juniper (Juniperus spp.) woodland encroachment into sagebrush (Artemisia ... more Pinyon (Pinus spp.) and juniper (Juniperus spp.) woodland encroachment into sagebrush (Artemisia spp.) steppe communities throughout western North America has substantially altered the vegetation structure and hydrologic function of one of the most ecologically important rangeland ecosystems in the world. Various pinyon and juniper tree removal practices are employed to re-establish sagebrush steppe vegetation and an associated resource-conserving ecohydrologic function. The effectiveness of these practices is highly variable owing to the vast domain in which woodland encroachment occurs, climate fluctuations, differences in treatment applications, and myriads of pre-treatment conditions and post-treatment land uses. This study evaluated the long-term (13 years post-treatment) effectiveness of prescribed fire and mechanical tree removal to re-establish sagebrush steppe vegetation and associated spatial patterns in ground surface conditions and soil hydrologic properties of two woodl...
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Journal of Hydrology and Hydromechanics
Wildfires naturally occur worldwide, however the potential disruption to ecosystem services from ... more Wildfires naturally occur worldwide, however the potential disruption to ecosystem services from subsequent post-fire flooding and erosion often necessitates a response from land managers. The impact of high severity wildfire on infiltration and interrill erosion responses was evaluated for five years after the 2003 Hot Creek Fire in Idaho, USA. Relative infiltration from mini-disk tension infiltrometers (MDI) was compared to rainfall simulation measurements on small burned and control plots. Vegetation recovery was slow due to the severity of the fire, with median cover of 6-8% on burned sites after 5 years. Consequently, interrill sediment yields remained significantly higher on the burned sites (329-1200 g m-2) compared to the unburned sites (3-35 g m-2) in year 5. Total infiltration on the burned plots increased during the study period, yet were persistently lower compared to the control plots. Relative infiltration measurements made at the soil surface, and 1- and 3-cm depths w...
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Papers by Frederick Pierson
by the federal government (USDA NRCS 2011a). The remaining rangelands are owned and managed by tribal, state, and local governments. Information on the type, extent, and spatial location of land degradation on rangelands is needed to inform policy and management decisions on rangelands; however, there is no systematic or coordinated national dataset on status or condition of rangelands for the United States to make informed policy decisions (NRC 1994; Herrick et al. 2010). Rangelands in the west are sparsely populated, and assessments of rangeland conditions have historically not been uniformly conducted across all land ownership classes in any systematic monitoring program. Therefore, it is difficult to assess the current health of rangelands and which areas could benefit from targeted conservation as USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) has recently done for cropland within the Upper Mississippi River Basin (USDA NRCS 2010) and the Chesapeake
Bay (USDA NRCS 2011b) through the Conservation Effects Assessment Project (CEAP).
CEAP is a USDA initiative that is focused on quantifying environmental impacts of conservation on agricultural lands. The CEAP component aimed at assessing conservation on grazing lands was initiated in 2006 (Weltz et al. 2008). The challenges associated with assessments and monitoring on grazing lands and specifically rangelands are extreme due to the large spatial extent of the resource, mixed land ownership, high variability of biological attributes due to extremes in annual precipitation in arid and semiarid rangelands, no uniform sampling protocol, and no central agency assigned for conducting the assessment. The assessment of rangelands is further complicated by the difficulty in defining a baseline condition (reference condition) to document what changes have occurred. Additional challenges include developing cost-effective means of integrating quantitative data into an assessment protocol, high cost associated with collecting and processing national datasets, minimal analytical tools to interpret the results, and no dedicated team to develop and write the assessment."
by the federal government (USDA NRCS 2011a). The remaining rangelands are owned and managed by tribal, state, and local governments. Information on the type, extent, and spatial location of land degradation on rangelands is needed to inform policy and management decisions on rangelands; however, there is no systematic or coordinated national dataset on status or condition of rangelands for the United States to make informed policy decisions (NRC 1994; Herrick et al. 2010). Rangelands in the west are sparsely populated, and assessments of rangeland conditions have historically not been uniformly conducted across all land ownership classes in any systematic monitoring program. Therefore, it is difficult to assess the current health of rangelands and which areas could benefit from targeted conservation as USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) has recently done for cropland within the Upper Mississippi River Basin (USDA NRCS 2010) and the Chesapeake
Bay (USDA NRCS 2011b) through the Conservation Effects Assessment Project (CEAP).
CEAP is a USDA initiative that is focused on quantifying environmental impacts of conservation on agricultural lands. The CEAP component aimed at assessing conservation on grazing lands was initiated in 2006 (Weltz et al. 2008). The challenges associated with assessments and monitoring on grazing lands and specifically rangelands are extreme due to the large spatial extent of the resource, mixed land ownership, high variability of biological attributes due to extremes in annual precipitation in arid and semiarid rangelands, no uniform sampling protocol, and no central agency assigned for conducting the assessment. The assessment of rangelands is further complicated by the difficulty in defining a baseline condition (reference condition) to document what changes have occurred. Additional challenges include developing cost-effective means of integrating quantitative data into an assessment protocol, high cost associated with collecting and processing national datasets, minimal analytical tools to interpret the results, and no dedicated team to develop and write the assessment."