Plant community and bare ground trends on Fort Riley, Kansas: Implications for monitoring of a highly disturbed landscape

Abstract The Land Condition Trend Analysis (LCTA) program was developed by the US Army and implemented on Fort Riley, Kansas, to monitor trends in plant communities so that managers could maintain quality training lands without the loss of ecological diversity. As a standard protocol, vegetation surveys using the point-intercept method were conducted from 1994–2001. Presence of bare ground, soil erosion, and military vehicle traffic were also recorded. At the community level, species richness usually fluctuated < 10% annually and declined 6% from 1994–2001. Species richness per plot increased from 1994 to 2001 by 6.5% as compared to the 1994 estimate. Annual species richness of noxious plants ranged from 18–26 species; noxious species per plot averaged 1.0–2.4 species annually with higher estimates usually observed in grassland (vs. woodland) habitats. Modest year-to-year changes were noted at the species level for the most frequently observed species based on an index of relative difference. Two noxious ...