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At Fort Carson, CO, the impact of long-term, intense military training on vegetation and topography is becoming increasingly evident. After more than 20 years of intense training, vegetation is so reduced that it adversely impacts the quality of military training. In addition, large gullies have developed in some locations, making navigation by tracked vehicles difficult, if not impossible. Unless training use and proper land management are brought into balance, similar results can be expected to develop at the Pinon Canyon Maneuver Site (PCMS) as training expands in that area. This report presents a return-on-investment (ROI) study of the benefits that should result from implementing a long-term vegetation management program at Fort Carson and PCMS. Study results show that rehabilitation and maintenance are cost-effective for the Army. Estimates of the Government's savings as Fort Carson and PCMS vary from over $299 million to more than $1.65 billion. Depending on assumptions about the replacement value of site facilities used, the ratio of cost savings to expenses for implementing a rehabilitation program varies from a low of 5, if original facility and land costs are held constant, to a high of more than 27, if current replacement costs are considered.

The U.S. Army installation at Fort Carson, Colorado, has a long history of tactical training activities by tracked and wheeled vehicles. These training maneuvers have caused extensive damage to the soils and vegetation of the semiarid pinyon-juniper woodland and shortgrass prairie ecosystems of the installation. The resulting erosion and loss of training realism are serious problems for the Army. The goal of this Facilities Engineering Applications Program (FEAP) project was to develop and demonstrate ecologically effective and economically feasible soil rehabilitation and revegetation techniques to increase soil stability and provide a more realistic training environment. In areas where training traffic was excluded, vegetative cover increased and the percent bare ground decreased on both treated and untreated shortgrass prairie areas. The prairie areas receiving the revegetation treatment are recovering faster and have higher percentages of desirable native grasses (both volunteer and planted) than the untreated areas, which tend to recover more slowly and have less grass cover and more weedy species. The pinyon-juniper areas are recovering more slowly due to harsher site conditions.

Recent trends in environmental analysis require quantification of impact estimates. This manuscript presents the results of research conducted to establish cause/effect relationships between Army activities and their impacts on ecosystems and describes initial results of the first phase of the basic research effort. The material is contained in two papers. Effects of Tracked Vehicle Activity on Terrestrial Mammals and Birds at Fort Knox, Kentucky appeared in Trans. Ky Acad. Sci., 41(1-2), 1980, 15-26. Effects of Tracked Vehicle Activity on Bird populations appeared in Environmental Management, Vol. 6, No. 2, pp. 163-169. Further significant research is focusing on quantification of impacts on soil, water, and attributes., Paper 1 published in Trans. Ky Acad. Sci., v41 n1-2 p15-26, 1980. Paper 2 published in Environmental Management, v6 n2 p163-169, 1982.

This report provides the proceeding of the conference held on 20-22 April 1982, sponsored by the University of Illinois and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, to discuss the philosophy within basic and applied ecology of classifying organisms into functional units (guilds). The meeting was attended by a cross-section of scientists representing state and Federal government agencies, academic institutions, and private enterprise. The major points raised during the conference were (1) the imprecision of the concept of guild classification within the between academic and applied ecological research communities, (2) the need for functional classification to help define problems and analyze management goals, (3) the potential for the guild concept in applied ecological research, and (4) the premature status of statistical procedures for using the guild concept in applications-oriented studies.

Field studies were conducted at Fort Carson, CO, and compared to results obtained from similar studies conducted during the previous year. The results were used to determine annual variation in bird and small mammal populations and to assess this data's usefulness in indicating habitat disturbance caused by Army training activities. Data were collected on shortgrass prairie and pinyon-juniper woodland study sites. The prairie sites showed little change in bird populations or guilds between years. However, variation between years on the woodland site was significant for two bird species and one guild. The cause of this difference is not obvious, but is probably not related to habitat disturbance from training activities. There was no significant change between years in the numbers of most small nocturnal mammals collected on the prairie and pinyon-juniper sites. However, on both sites, there was a significant decrease in the number of harvest mice and a significant decrease in the number of brush mice collected. There was also a significant increase in the number of pinyon mice in the pinyon-juniper woodland site. It appears that annual population fluctuations of mammal species generally occur across habitats, at least locally. The cause of these differences is unknown, but is probably not related to training activities. (Author)

Field studies were conducted on four prairies during May-June 1983 on the Pinon Canyon Maneuver Site and Fort Carson, CO, to characterize the relationship of soils and vegetation to bird and mammal species composition and abundance. Results strongly suggest that meadowlark numbers increase and horned larks decrease with increasing grass cover, and that kangaroo rats increase and pocket mice decrease with increasing soil sand. Estimating the numbers of each species on various sites on semiarid maneuver lands may be an effective management tool for installation land management. The data can be used to assess the erodibility (relative grass cover) and trafficability (soil texture) of various shortgrass prairie sites.

This report provides guidelines that will enable Army installations to compile and maintain enough information on flora and fauna to produce satisfactory environmental impact assessments and statements. The report outlines a three-stage method for data acquisition and contains appendices listing literature resources and specialists. By completing Stage I, users create a series of maps, overlays, and tables that give an estimate of the amount of habitat, types of vegetation, and types of animals existing on the installation. Stage II involves a field verification of the information from Stage I. Stage III requires the explicit documentation of population densities and other ecological parameters of the various organisms on the installation. (Author)

The available land base on which the Army can effectively train troops remains relatively constant, while the mechanization and mobility of units training in the field are increasing. The resulting intensity of training is placing enormous pressure on the training area environments; this could reduce the effectiveness of training because of a reduction in the realistic training atmosphere of the areas. This increased stress on the land has required the lands manager to seek improved methods of maintaining training areas. This report presents a general overview of several techniques and types of equipment that can be used for land maintenance in the arid and semi-arid regions of the United States. This material is intended to give the land manager a generic view of the various methods and to provide preliminary information useful for developing techniques for maintaining training areas. The advantages and disadvantages of each technique or piece of equipment are discussed. The information in this report will allow users to develop a land maintenance field- testing program at the local level. A checklist is provided to help the manager acquire the information needed to begin a stronger maintenance program.