Impact Assessment for Interactions Between Military and NON-Military LAND Uses: Optimal LAND Management.

Army lands play host to multiple and concurrent anthropogenic activities.  Land resource pressure to maintain activities such as forestry operations, agricultural out-leasing, and recreational land use can lead to conflicts in land management decisions and potential reduction in training land carrying capacity.  Research from single management use systems such as grazing or forestry is not always relevant to how military lands are utilized; however the single system research forms the basis of how the Army currently make choices for military land management.  Knowledge gaps of interactions and cumulative effects are significant.  ERDC is addressing this knowledge gap by conducting a series of laboratory and field studies to assess potential interactions between prescribed burning, haying and military vehicle training events.  The research focuses on vegetation and soil strength responses to multiple land uses on military lands.  Land management practices are also evaluated relative to developing a re-focused approach to historic land management practices for erosion reduction and improved military carrying capacity.  The current ERDC research will determine how interactions of land management in the presences of vehicle impacts are expressed in relation to above- and below-ground biomass responses.  The research presented here includes preliminary results of a long-term program with a series of field experiments supporting the determination of the effects of trafficking, burning, and haying/cutting on vegetated soil strength.  From these results the research program will develop algorithms that relate vegetated soil strength to biomass and the impacts of co-occurrence land uses influences on above- and below-ground biomass.