Tuesday, November 14, 2006 - 9:45 AM
138-2

A Survey of Available Publications about Military Lands.

Jeffrey S. Fehmi, Fadzayi Mashiri, and Shamarie Black. Univ of Arizona, PO Box 210043, Tucson, AZ 85721

The Department of Defense is responsible for administering more than 25 million acres of Federally owned land in the United States, making it the fifth largest Federal land management agency. The lands are found in different habitats across the country and contain diverse resources, which have been protected from development due to the limited access and limited use of military lands. This study addresses the question: what research is available on the impacts of military activities on terrestrial systems.  To answer that question, we reviewed the publicly available publications on natural resource related military activities, research, and lands.  A total of 779 references were located and of those, 461 publications were reviewed. The publications were categorized by the distribution of studies across states, military bases, biomes, and the areas of specialization.  Available literature included publications from both primary and secondary research from both the peer-reviewed and less formal, but public sources. The most common publication topics covered were: vegetation with 25% of all the publications (114/461), wildlife 20%, soils 13%, methodologies and management strategies development 11%, and sustainability with 10%. Other topics such as chemical residues of military activities and conditions of aquatic ecosystems, among others, were represented by fewer than 10% of the available studies. The vegetation studies included changes in plant physiology; damage to individual plants, species, or growth types; effects on community dynamics; and plant recovery or invasion after disturbance. Data reported were collected using both field measurement and remote sensing methods.  While the primary role of vegetation in mitigating military land use impacts is unlikely to be disputed, the most common related aspect in the surveyed studies was erosion which merited at least a mention in almost 20% of the studies (86/461).

Back to The Role of Vegetation in Mitigating Military Land Use Impacts
Back to A02 Military Land Use & Management

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