Grassland ID & Health Monitoring

Instructors: Amy Scanes-Wolfe & Nick DiDomenico

Location: DAR Partner Farm in Longmont (address provided on registration)

Time: Saturday, September 7th 1:00-5:00pm

Cost: $40

There’s a lot of grass in Boulder County, and everywhere it grows, it tells us a story about ecosystem health. We’ll start this session off a session on grassland species identification, including the common grasses, wildflowers, and shrubs found in Boulder County grasslands. We’ll then walk through some methodologies for tracking grassland health, including looking at percent soil cover, the vigor of vegetation, grass species composition, and diversity of flowering species, in diverse locations across a partner site. We’ll contextualize this research with how past management has affected grassland health today, and what our findings suggest about how we can manage these landscapes in the future for better health. This is a fun, practical, deep dive for grassland managers, herd managers, and citizen naturalists alike. You’ll walk away with tools and methodologies to monitor grassland health on your own. Access to online methodologies included.