Information Support for Environmental Management, Legacy Data Capture, and Data Assessment, Volume II
Abstract
Reliable data are difficult to gather in a desert environment due to the extreme spatial and temporal distribution of the resource base. However, the CIERA/TEC team has been able to build on the unique 80-year record of the Jornada Experimental Range (JER). Further, the proximity of the JER to the major military installations of WSMR and Ft. Bliss represents an opportunity for baselining the decision support system in a neighboring system of semi-arid land habitats that has been untouched by military activity, although subjected to a representative set of natural disturbances such as drought, and anthropogenic disturbances such as livestock ranching. Such a baseline provides a foundation for achieving sustainability, because it produces a standard by a which a manager may: (1) monitor change over an ecological time frame; (2) spatially position (georeference) fragmented data sets; (3) connect fragmented data sets in a time series that represents change; and (4) prioritize research necessary to fill in critical gaps in data with either new data or well-founded theory; and develop an effective monitoring system to sense ecosystem change over an appropriate time scale.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Dec 01, 1994
- Accession Number
- ADA353125