Diagnostic Tools and Reclamation Technologies for Mitigation Impacts of DoD/DOE Activities in Arid Areas

An essential component of monitoring to determine the spatial extent and degree of military impact is the ability to accurately assess site changes through time as training areas undergo normal use under varying climatic conditions. Historically, monitoring techniques have been primarily limited to expensive, labor-intensive ground collection of data such as plant canopy cover by line-point or line-intersect methods, and plant density by quadrat sampling techniques. Additionally, accessibility to the range by field biologists has been limited at many sites to only one week each month due to intensive military training exercises, making it difficult to obtain sufficient field data during narrow windows of opportunity.