$12 million awarded for Basin restoration
Utah State University is involved in a $12.9 million grant-funded research project that will investigate ways to help improve the Great Basin ecosystem. The grant was recently awarded through the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Joint Fire Science Program.
The project is known as SageSTEP or Sagebrush Steppe Treatment Evaluation Project. It will take five years, involves five universities and four federal agencies said Liz Didier, the outreach program coordinator. This interdisciplinary group includes Utah State, Oregon State University, University of Idaho, University of Reno-Nevada, Brigham Young University, the USDA Forest Service and the Agriculture Research Service, the USDI Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Geological Survey. USU has two professors who will be assisting with the project: Gene Schupp of the forest, range and wildlife sciences department and Mark Brunson of the Natural Resources department of environment and society.
Both the geography and the information to be studied cover a large area. The Great Basin covers 190,000 square miles, while the 15 sites to be studied each measure approximately 1,000-2,000 acres across. Brunson said the sites haven’t been decided on yet, but they will be soon.
The researchers will study the noxious weeds and the juniper trees in the Great Basin, he said. These two plants are invading the sagebrush areas and causing the natural vegetation to die out, especially when forest fires rage with heat greater than the sagebrush is used to. The researchers will also study effects of land management techniques such as wildfires, mechanical thinning and herbicide treatments in an effort to come to a conclusion which one will help restore the ecosystem of the Great Basin. “I think because its such a big project and interdisciplinary, the information will fill big knowledge gaps and it should be really useful to land managers,” Didier said.
Brunson was on the original committee that came together to write a grant to be able to write a larger grant that would cover the cost of the research efforts. One of the first questions the group had was, “How can we design an experiment that will work?” Brunson said. They believe they have answered this question, but he said they still wonder if the solution to helping restore and save the Great Basin ecosystem will be as clear cut. With the help of both undergraduate and graduate students, the project group hopes to come to a conclusion that can be used by land managers in this area. “It’s fascinating to me, it’s exciting to me to be part of a team this big and a project this all-encompassing,” Brunson said.
For more information or to follow the progress of the SageSTEP project log onto the Web site www.sagestep.org.
-albaugh@cc.usu.edu