Rangeland Monitoring and the Parker 3-Step Method: Overview, Perspectives and Current Applications

Principles of obtaining and interpreting utilization data on rangelands

Rangeland monitoring is essential for making sound management decisions. Monitoring requires repeated measurements of the same attributes over time. Perhaps the earliest and most widespread rangeland management monitoring data collection protocol was the development and establishment of the Parker 3-step Method on U. S. Forest Service rangelands, beginning in 1948. This method collected both objective and subjective data and provided a scoring technique for assessment purposes. This paper describes the development of the Method and suggests ways to summarize the ecological attributes collected on Parker transects, analyze the data and reinterpret them based on trends in plant species abundance, composition and soil cover.

Reviewed 10/2016. Originally published 8/2010