Brief Summary of Minutes of Annual Meeting

This past year, WERA-40 committee members developed and submitted a new proposal which after some revisions has been approved. The primary goal of the approved WERA-40 committee is broad dissemination of the most recent rangeland assessment methods to policy makers, land mangers and the scientific community. There was considerable discuss at this years annual meeting of the future activities of WERA-40 to address the goals outlined in the new proposal. Those discussions resulted in the following plans for 2007: o Produce a white paper on "Ecological Transition and Threshold Identification" to the SRM Advisory Council as the first step to influence NRI funding in this area from CSREES. o Develop a resolution asking the SRM Board and President to pursue the above line of funding. o Develop a symposium to address difficulties of identifying ecological transitions and thresholds for the 2008 SRM meetings. Committee members also discussed getting additional participation in WERA-40 from land grant universities and federal agencies. Committee members will work on identifying specific individuals and extend an invitation to join WERA-40. State reports were given at the annual meeting and are attached. The committee elected Derek Bailey to serve as secretary for 2007 and Tamzen Stringham will serve as chairperson for WERA-40. Next years meeting will be in early October and Arizona was the committee's first choice as a place to meet. The field trip in conjunction with the annual meeting was to BLM lands surrounding the Pryor Mountain Wild Horse Management Area. The combined skills of the scientists present were used to conduct numerous rangeland health assessments using the Interpreting Indicators of Rangeland Health, Version 4 guide developed by the Bureau of Land Management, Natural Resource Conservation Service, U.S. Geological Survey and the Agricultural Research Service, Jornada Experimental Range. Three locations were assessed using the methodology and discussion centered on the positives and the negatives of the assessment method. The group decided to ask the authors of the method to add language to the document outlining the training requirements and knowledge level of individuals assigned to teams doing rangeland health assessments and to outline specifically the methodology that is to be followed in the assessments. Tamzen Stringham has contacted Pat Shaver of the NRCS with a verbal request to insert such language. Pat Shaver has agreed to take the request forward to all agencies involved once WERA-40 committee has drafted the language. Derek Bailey of New Mexico State is responsible for drafting the language.

August 2006: Department of Rangeland Ecology and Management at Oregon State University in cooperation with USDA-NRCS hosted a national State and Transition Ecological Theory Workshop in Corvallis, OR. Presentations at the workshop can be found at the following webstite. http://oregonstate.edu/dept/range/events/archivedevents/StateAndTransitionMonitoringPage.php

In progress: Maria E. Fernandez-Gimenez at Colorado State University is currently assessing landowners perspectives of State and Transition Models concepts and their understanding of them.

In progess: Tamzen Stringham at Oregon State University is working with NRCS to develop a State and Transition Model for rangelands in Oregon to be used with range managers in planning rangeland use.

Reports for South Dakota State University, University of Wyoming, Montana State University, University of Nevada Reno, North Dakota State University, Colorado State University, and ARS, Miles City were distributed at the meeting.

Bailey, D.W., H.C. VanWagoner, and R. Weinmeister. 2006. Individual animal selection has the potential to improve uniformity of grazing on foothill rangeland. Rangeland Ecol. Manage. 59:351-358. Marlow, C.B., R. Finck and H. Sherwood. 2006. Grazed Stubble Height as a Criterion for Controlling Sediment Production from Grazing Lands. J. Amer. Water Resources. 42(4):891-900. McDaniel, K.C., L.A. Torell, and C.G. Ochoa. 2005. Wyoming big sagebrush recovery and understory response with tebuthiuron control. Rangeland Ecol. Manage. 58:65-76. Vermeire, L.T., Wester, D.B., Mitchell, R., Fuhlendorf, S.D. 2005. Fire and grazing effects on wind erosion, soil water content, and soil temperature. Journal of Environmental Quality 34:1559-1565. Vermeire, L.T., Heitschmidt, R.K. Haferkamp, M.R. 2006. Grazing and livestock exclusion effects on northern plains diversity and heterogeneity. Society for Range Management Meeting Abstracts #365.