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"...Because Diablo Trust stakeholders have worked together for years to design sustainable rangeland management, the group provides an ideal “test bed” for the implementation of the first comprehensive monitoring assessment tool for rangeland sustainability, as well as an opportunity to study and evaluate the collaborative management process itself..."
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The Diablo Trust IMfoS Project - Integrated Monitoring for Sustainability
Diablo Trust stakeholders have worked together for years to design sustainable rangeland management. The group provides an ideal "test bed" for the implementation of the first comprehensive monitoring assessment tool for rangeland sustainability, as well as an opportunity to study and evaluate the collaborative management process itself.
The IMfoS Project emerged from three years of collaboration among the Diablo Trust, land management agencies, and researchers from Northern Arizona University and Prescott College. The project received funding from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s P3 program, Community-based Collaborative Research Consortium, and the Ecological Restoration Institute to develop a multi-party monitoring process with the Diablo Trust.
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| The 2005 IMfoS Project field crew. Photo by Tischa Muñoz-Erickson. |
One outcome of this work has been the development of an integrated monitoring framework, the Holistic Ecosystem Health Indicator (HEHI), to assess and monitor the sustainability of the Diablo Trust’s collaboratively managed rangelands.
Objectives for the implementation of the HEHI include:
- development of cost-effective sampling protocols for the ecological and social indicators organized in the HEHI;
- transferring knowledge and making the HEHI tool usable to Diablo Trust stakeholders through hands-on monitoring and training workshops;
- field testing indicators and evaluating effectiveness of the HEHI as a monitoring tool for Community-based Collaboratives (CBCs).
The implementation of the tool will have the added benefit of combining data from existing monitoring efforts, collected by different agencies, resource users, and volunteers, into a single data repository for the Diablo Trust and other potential users. it is also anticipated that these efforts will enhance the group’s adaptive management efforts by making information transparent, facilitating communication among stakeholders, and increasing learning efficiencies.
The Diablo Trust effort has received attention from numerous national entities that are now interested in implementing the HEHI as a monitoring tool for sustainability.
To assess the relevance of the results from the Diablo Trust case study to other community-based collaboratives, the ImfoS Project is also working with other researchers involved in multi-party monitoring of rangeland systems in Colorado with the Northwest Colorado Stewardship collaborative, and in southern Arizona with the Malpai Borderlands Group. This study, entitled “Assessing the adaptive capacity of collaboratively managed rangeland ecosystems," will conduct a comparative analysis of the multi-party monitoring.
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Scientists and ranchers should be friends! Tischa Muñoz-Erickson (IMfoS Project Manager) and Judy Prosser (Bar-T-Bar Ranch) share good food and good times at the 2005 Diablo Trust Campout. Photo by Jean Palumbo. |
August 2005 IMfoS Update
A Tool for Sustainability: Measuring Outcomes With Indicators of Ecosystem Health
It’s the middle of the field season and I want to share with you the progress we’ve made so far with the monitoring!! Our field crew has been busy counting plants and collecting soil in the lower zones of the Diablo Trust (zones 3 to 5). At each site we’ve been collecting frequency and cover data, as well as soil stability, compaction, and samples for soil organic matter analysis. We completed 9 sites for each zone over the last month, and now we are ready to move up to Anderson Mesa to do Zones 1 and 2.
We kicked off the monitoring in Anderson Mesa with a weekend of data collection at Reed Lake, starting with the Diablo Trust monthly meeting on Friday, July 8th. Tim Crew’s Agroecology class from Prescott College joined us that day as well. We also had a Volunteer Work Day on July 11 — look for an update in the next newsletter.
In addition to the ecological monitoring work, we have been making preparations to collect social data. We are getting ready to mail surveys to local communities, including primary and seasonal residents, for many of the social and interactive indicators. In August we contacted all Diablo Trust participants to distribute the survey for the "collaborative outcomes indicators." So yes, it has been a busy field season, but a lot of fun as well!!
We are excited to see the outcomes of this effort and the good information it will yield. If you have any questions about any of the monitoring, please don’t hesitate to contact me at 928/523-2237.
Tischa Muñoz-Erickson, Project Manager
Learning from the land and sharing our knowledge...
So there will always be a West.