Spatial and Temporal Assessment of Cumulative Disturbance Impacts Due to Military Training, Burning, Haying, and Their Interactions on Land Condition of Fort Riley

• Published in: Environmental management (New York) 2014-07, Vol.54 (1), p.51-66
• Main Authors: Wang, Guangxing, Murphy, Dana, Oller, Adam, Howard, Heidi R, Anderson, Alan B, Rijal, Santosh, Myers, Natalie R, Woodford, Philip
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Agricultural management; Agriculture; analysis of variance; anthropogenic activities; Anthropogenic factors; Aquatic Pollution; Atmospheric Protection/Air Quality Control/Air Pollution; Biodiversity; Burns; Combustion; Conservation of Natural Resources - methods; Disturbance; Disturbances; Earth and Environmental Science; Ecology; Ecosystem; Environment; Environmental impact; Environmental Management; Environmental Monitoring - methods; Environmental Monitoring - statistics & numerical data; Farmlands; Fires; Forestry Management; Forts; Humans; Kansas; Land; Land use; Methods; Military; Military Facilities; military lands; Military Personnel - education; Military training; Nature Conservation; Prairies; prescribed burning; Prescribed fire; Remote Sensing Technology - methods; Soil erosion; Spatial analysis; Spatial distribution; Spatio-Temporal Analysis; Training; Variance analysis; Vegetation; Waste Water Technology; Water Management; Water Pollution Control; Water quality
• ISSN: 0364-152X; 1432-1009
• DOI: 10.1007/s00267-014-0284-0

The effects of military training activities on the land condition of Army installations vary spatially and temporally. Training activities observably degrade land condition while also increasing biodiversity and stabilizing ecosystems. Moreover, other anthropogenic activities regularly occur on military lands such as prescribed burns and agricultural haying—adding to the dynamics of land condition. Thus, spatially and temporally assessing the impacts of military training, prescribed burning, agricultural haying, and their interactions is critical to the management of military lands. In this study, the spatial distributions and patterns of military training-induced disturbance frequency were derived using plot observation and point observation-based method, at Fort Riley, Kansas from 1989 to 2001. Moreover, spatial and variance analysis of cumulative impacts due to military training, burning, haying, and their interactions on the land condition of Fort Riley were conducted. The results showed that: (1) low disturbance intensity dominated the majority of the study area with exception of concentrated training within centralized areas; (2) high and low values of disturbance frequency were spatially clustered and had spatial patterns that differed significantly from a random distribution; and (3) interactions between prescribed burning and agricultural haying were not significant in terms of either soil erosion or disturbance intensity although their means and variances differed significantly between the burned and non-burned areas and between the hayed and non-hayed areas.