Wednesday, November 15, 2006
228-15

Impacts of Military Training on Military Lands: Available Research.

Jeffrey S. Fehmi1, Fadzayi Mashiri1, and Shamarie Black2. (1) Univ of Arizona, PO Box 210043, Tucson, AZ 85721, (2) Univ of Arizona, PO Box 210043, Tucson, AZ 85721

The Department of Defense (DoD) is the fifth largest Federal land management agency, administering more than 25 million acres in the United States.  DoD has a strong commitment to land conservation and the military land managers have been researching and reporting its impacts and mitigation practices for many years.  As part of a project that looked at what research is available on the impacts of military activities on terrestrial systems, 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. Available literature included publications from both primary and secondary research from both the peer-reviewed and less formal, but public sources. One of the main categories of publication addressing impacts of training are those involving Threatened and Endangered Species (TES).  TES related publications account for 22% (101/461) of the publications reviewed. Most of these studies were species profiles examining the changes in abundance and condition of the TES over time. Birds were the most common topic with 28 publications, reptiles 14, mammals 13, plants 6 and invertebrates 5.  Twenty-two of the publications discussed issues of TES in general ranging from proposition of management strategies, reviews of management strategies of TES on military lands and survey reports. Twelve reported on ecosystem based management and monitoring and the potential to avert impact on TES.  The majority of publications were from Fort Benning (14), Fort Bliss (12), Fort Hood (8) and Fort Stewart (8) giving Georgia (14) and New Mexico (10) the most publications.  An evaluation of published reports versus training activity shows some disparity.  It appears that publication output is more closely tied the presence of TES than to training use.  

Handout (.pdf format, 2060.0 kb)

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