Assessment, Inventory, & Monitoring Core Concepts

Introduction:

Natural resource information is crucial to sound management of landscapes. Assessment, inventory, and monitoring are processes by which resource managers gather information about the lands they manage. The goal of this set of lessons is to provide an introduction to core concepts that can help natural resource managers plan work, collect information, and interpret results of assessment, inventory, and monitoring. The modules include exploring the underlying ecological concepts that help explain how landscapes function and change, an overview of the indicators and attributes that we gather natural resource information about, and understanding of how you can understand landscape variability through stratification.  These are pre-work for several in-person trainings, “Interpreting and Measuring Indicators of Rangeland Health” and “AIM Terrestrial Core Methods.” The intended audience is natural resource managers as well as seasonal staff who are conducting assessment, inventory and monitoring activities. 

Please go through the materials in the order they are listed below. At the end of each module, complete the assessment and bring it with you to the in-person training for review. 

Ecological Concepts

·         Watch the Ecological Concepts Video

·         Read Section 2.0, Ecological Site Classification Concepts (8 pages), in the Interagency Ecological Site Handbook for Rangelands (2013)

Indicators and Attributes

·         Watch the Indicators and Attributes Video

·         Watch the Indicators of Rangeland Health Videos

·         Quantitative Methods Videos

Stratification

·         Watch the Stratification Video