Generalizing ecological site concepts of the Colorado Plateau for landscape-level applications

Abstract

Numerous ecological site descriptions in the southern Utah portion of the Colorado Plateau can be difficult to navigate, so we held a workshop aimed at adding value and functionality to the current ecological site system. We created new groups of ecological sites and drafted state-and-transition models for these new groups. We were able to distill the current large number of ecological sites in the study area (ca. 150) into eight ecological site groups that capture important variability in ecosystem dynamics. Several inventory and monitoring programs and landscape scale planning actions will likely benefit from more generalized ecological site group concepts.