What this Lesson Covers

Overview

Many management and monitoring goals require an assessment of the amount of biomass that occurs on the site or landscape. For example, decisions about livestock stocking rate, fire risk and behavior, and wildlife habitat value require good estimates of biomass.

Utilization is the term that describes the amount of biomass that was removed by grazing. The concept of utilization is important because excessive levels of utilization (or biomass removal) can reduce health and persistence of plants. Thus, land managers often track utilization to determine if grazing practices are having the intended effects on plants they want to promote or supress.

This module overviews specific terms used to describe biomass and a variety of ways to measure and account for biomass will be highlighted.

Learning Objectives

After this module you will be able to:

• Explain the difference between common terms used to describe biomass.

• Understand the value of measuring biomass to describe ecosystem function and assist in making land management decisions.

• Describe the basic approaches to for direct and indirect assessment of cover.

• Summarize biomass data collected in small plots to describe biomass across a large landscape expressed in units of dry mass per hectare or acre.