Ecology

The Range Reference Areas of British Columbia

What are Range Reference Areas?

Range Reference Areas are permanent installations designed to monitor the impact of livestock, wildlife and other disturbances on rangelands throughout British Columbia. These areas consist of fenced exclosures combined with permanent vegetation monitoring plots but may also include abandoned grazing areas and sites which have never been grazed.

Why Range Reference Areas are Important

Some components of the Biodiversity, Riparian Management Areas, Managing Identified Wildlife, and Range Management guidebooks that apply to rangelands cannot be meaningfully implemented without knowledge of potential natural (climax) communities (PNCs).

Range Reference Areas on sites which have already reached PNC are most valuable because:

• they provide solid evidence of the climax species composition on grassland and forested range types that exhibit similar site conditions (assuming the comparison is not invalidated by a history of irreversible impacts); and,
• they are subject to the same year-to-year climatic fluctuations as adjacent managed grasslands thus allowing for direct comparisons of changes over time.

In range ecosystems where no examples of PNC remain, Range Reference Areas are established in the most advanced seral stage available. These sites may typically require 5 to 15 years to reach PNC but, in areas where only early-seral grasslands exist, Range Reference Areas may require up to 70 years or longer to reach full PNC.

Range Reference Areas in seral communities can be used to validate estimates of PNC by:

• excluding grazing to allow full expression of the existing plant community in growing seasons following Range Reference Area establishment; and,
• allowing range managers to improve PNC estimates through repeated monitoring as the seral community moves toward climax (PNC).

Range Reference Areas, whether at PNC or seral, can be used to evaluate the efficacy of range management practices and aid in the description of desired plant communities (DPCs) which are required in Range Use Plans (RUPs).

Long-term maintenance and monitoring of the Range Reference Areas established in this program provide a consistent, continuing benchmark for evaluating the accuracy of PNC estimates. As our information on the potential natural community composition for a given range type is improved, the desired plant community targets set out in Range Use Plans can be adjusted.

Where are Range Reference Areas Established?

There are approximately 361 Range Reference Areas found throughout the province. Attempts have been made to establish Range Reference Areas in both open and forested range types where serious gaps exist in our knowledge of potential natural communities.

Range Reference Areas are established in the Nelson and Prince George Forest Regions, but the majority have been established in the Cariboo and Kamloops Forest Regions where permanent rangelands comprise a larger portion of the total land area.

A listing of all current Range Reference Areas in British Columbia is kept in the Range Reference Areas Atlas which can be viewed by contacting the Range Reference Areas Coordinator listed below.

Who to Contact for More Information

For further information - contact one of the following Range Ecology Specialists:

• Francis Njenga (Kamloops): 250-371-3822
• Rick Tucker (Kamloops): 250-371-3828
• Laura Blonski (Prince George): 250-565-6224