The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Assessment Inventory and Monitoring (AIM) program is a U.S. federal initiative to assess the condition and trend of terrestrial, aquatic, and wetland ecosystems on BLM land. The monitoring program is based on five key principles: 1) structured implementation 2) standardized field methods 3) appropriate sample designs 5) centralized data management and stewardship 6) integration with remote sensing. These principles and standardized methods allow data to be used across organizations and for both local and national scales. Over 28,000 monitoring locations collected since 2011 are publicly available at https://landscape.blm.gov/geoportal/catalog/main/home.page. Example indicators of ecosystem health include percent bare ground, vegetation composition, conductivity, pH, and floodplain connectivity.
Results/Conclusions
AIM data is actively used to answer questions such as:
- Where are invasive species located, and where are priority treatment areas?
- Are reclamation and restoration treatments effective?
- Is the BLM maintaining or improving habitat conditions for wildlife species?
- Are BLM management plans and actions achieving objectives?
This poster will showcase specific uses of AIM data and generate discussion on how researchers or other organizations may be able to use this dataset to answer additional questions. For example, collection of AIM data on streams and rivers in Alaska has enabled the establishment of benchmarks which can be used to determine reclamation effectiveness. Other uses of aquatic data to date have included cross-agency collaborations with programs such as the EPA’s National Aquatic Resource Survey’s and development of interagency networks of reference sites to set expectations of site potential in the absence of anthropogenic effects. Similarly, terrestrial data has been used to refine ecological site descriptions, train remotely sensed imagery for vegetation mapping, and assess the sustainability of permitted uses. Wetland data is the newest resource in the AIM program and extensive wetland mapping is underway to support data collection that could be of broad ecological use.