Modeling for Military Land Management: Roles of Biomass in Soil Strength and Carrying Capacity.

Land management is a key component to any military installation and its ability to effectively train military personnel. In particular, the health of their rangelands dictates the intensity and frequency of safe and productive training exercises to ensure battle readiness. ERDC-CERL is currently developing a modeling framework to access the role of biomass in soil strength as means for determining land carrying capacity and prescribing land management techniques. The study site is at Fort Riley, Kansas. The Century model, developed for Konza Prairie Research Natural Area, is the primary model being used within the framework. The Century model has a sub model for predicting biomass using relatively accessible climate data. The hypothesis is maximum production rate and optimum growing temperature parameters must change in order to account for Ft. Riley previous land management practices, invasive species, and vehicle training disturbance. New parameter values will be estimated using Markov Chain Monte Carlo simulation with a Bayesian flavor of statistics. These new parameters will be compared to those developed for the Konza and the ability to describe the production of biomass at Fort Riley, Kansas.