BLM-MT, Ecological Site Description Development, Western Montana District Office

Accurate Ecological Site Descriptions (ESDs) and assosciated State and Transition Models (STMs) greatly improve Land Managersâ¿¿ ability to manage soil, plant and water resources within the public domain. Unfortunately, ESDs are lacking for most of the lands in the Western Montana District and the National Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) office is backlogged and unable to meet the desired schedule for product development. The BLM and the public rely on the development of these products. Therefore, the BLMâ¿¿s Western Montana District is seeking a partner with the requisite knowledge, skills and abilities to to augment capacity and assist with the successful and expedited development of high quality ESDs and STMs, on or near public lands. The primary purpose of this project is to expedite the successful development of accurate ESDs (including STMs) for plant communities and/or areas considered to be a priority by the Land Managers and ensuring sufficient data quality for inclusion of the ESDs in the NRCS database. Necessary efforts on the part of the recipient will be coordinated with the BLM. Efforts will include, but not be limited to, ensuring reliable and quality collection of data, processing data for use in the development in STMs, ensuring quality controlled data management, writing high quality reports, and providing assistance in the development of ESD documents. ESDs will be developed in accordance with the Interagency Ecological Site Handbook for Rangelands (2013, or future updates) by highly qualified individuals. This project would benefit the public, as well as numerous non-governmentals organizations and private land owners by providing critical management tools that are not currently available in western Montana. Fully developed ESDs would include reference sheets and STMs will help to ensure that public lands are managed to balance the goals of providing valuable use of public lands while managing for the current and future health of the land resources. Additionally, the recipient would benefit from this project by having the opportunity to train students for employment in land management disciplines, conduct research for which federal land managers are the intended end users, and seek to meet the technical assistance needs of federal land managers.