FY2013Cheatgrass die-offs are unexplained instances of stand failure observed in areas of Nevada and Utah, where cheatgrass fails to grow even though it has been a dominant component of plant communities in the past. The goals of this project are to:
1) provide information on the size and extent of historic (1985 - 2012) die-offs in the Winnemucca area using satellite imagery, and 2) determine if die-offs are restoration opportunities by planting and monitoring local and commercially available native grasses in die-off areas.
Support is requested to fund monitoring of the restoration project through a second growing season and to develop predictive spatial models of die-off from analysis of satellite imagery and GIS models, which will result in enhanced predictive capacity for locating die-offs at local management scales, and information on species and seed sources that can be used to restore die-offs.