2016-11-04_PERMIT FILE - M2016009 (7)

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Plant Ecologically-based Healthy - Rangeland Weed Communities. Management by Roger L.Sheley,Tony J.Svejcar, Bruce D. Maxwell,and James S.Jacobs* STATE UNIXTRSITY EXTENSION SERVICE This MontGuide is designed to help landowners make economically and ecologically sound weed management decisions. It explains how plant communities develop, how weeds invade and how you can work toward MT199909 AG reprinted-3%2004 developing a useful plant community that is relatively weed-resistant. ost rangeland managers 4 and land owners have focused their weed man- 3 agement efforts on controlling 2 weeds and have paid limited atten- 1 tion to the existing or resulting plant &M4 community.However,it is becom- 0 ing increasingly clear that weed 1 management decisions must be based on environmental and ecolog- 2 ical principles as well as economic 3 ones.Weed management educa- 4 j tion should provide land managers with the principles and concepts on 5 which to base their decisions,rather 6 than provide a simple prescription 7 for weed control.This publication presents a conceptual, ecologically- 8 based framework to aid in making q economically and ecologically sound weed management decisions. Figure 1.A healthy, weed-resistant plant community consists of a diverse Land-use objectives must be de- group of species occupying all the niches(sites) and using all the veloped before weed management resources in the system, keeping them from weeds. decisions can be made.An inte- grated weed management plan can land are determined. Simply killing of species diverse enough to occupy be designed once the uses of the weeds is an inadequate objective in all the niches(Figure 1).Desirable most situations, especially for large- plants capture a large proportion of *Sheley is Extension noxious weed scale infestations.The generalized the resources in the system,keeping specialist,Maxwell is assoc.pro- objective should be to develop a the resources away from weeds.The fessor ofweed ecology and Jacobs healthy plant community that is rel- soil resources, particularly moisture, is post-doctoral research associ- atively weed-resistant while meet- are most limiting in the shortgrass ate, all in the Department of Land ing other land-use objectives—for prairies and intermountain regions Resources and Environmental Sci- instance, forage production,wildlife where we must pay more attention ences,Montana State University- habitat development,recreational to developing plant communities Bozeman. Svejcar is supervisory land maintenance or natural area that effectively use the soil resourc- s. range scientist, USDA ARS, East- conservation. es over time and space. ern Oregon Agricultural Center, A healthy,weed-resistant plant A weed-resistant plant commu- Burns, OR 97220. community consists of a collection nity may include an early emerging y R W A-11