BLM CO Range Improvement Points

Range Improvements are man-made or man-caused features on the landscape designed and implemented for the purpose of improving the available forage, managing the season of use or use patterns and enhancing the overall rangeland health of areas available for domestic livestock use. Range improvements may occur on private, state, and public lands under the jurisdiction of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and/or other federal or state agencies. On public lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), permittees or lessees (henceforth, “operators”) may be required to install range improvements to meet the terms and conditions of their permits or leases. Often the BLM, operators, and other interested parties work together and jointly contribute to construction.Range improvements are authorized physical modifications or treatment which are designed to improve production of forage; change vegetation composition; control patterns of use; provide water; stabilize soil and water conditions; restore, protect, and improve the conditions of the rangeland ecosystems to benefit livestock, wild horses and burros, and fish and wildlife. They include, but are not limited to, structures, treatment projects and use of mechanical devices or modifications achieved through mechanical means. Range Improvements. There are two kinds of range improvements: nonstructural and structural. Seeding or prescribed burns are examples of nonstructural range improvements. Fences or facilities such as wells or water pipelines are examples of structural improvements. Many structural improvements are considered permanent, as they are not easily removed from the land. This data standard will only relate to structural range improvements features as GIS and attribute data related to almost all non-structural range improvements is stored in other national data standard datasets (e.g. NISIMS, VTRT, NFPORS). Range improvement data is also available in the Range Improvement System (RIPS), a BLM database used for tracking the establishment and maintenance of range improvments. RIPS is the database of record and contains the data to be used for budgetary and workload planning. This data set shall be comprised of a spatial display of the data in RIPS. The record unique identifier within the RIPS database (RIPS number) will be added to GIS features in this data standard to link between spatial depictions of range improvements features to their corresponding RIPS records. Wherever possible RIPS data shall be used to populate this data set.
Organization: Department of the Interior
Last updated: 2024-02-09T04:54:29.104624
Tags: biota, blm-colorado, colorado, environment, farming, geospatial, health, inlandwaters, range, range-improvements, rips