HABITAT/RANGELAND

The Borderlands region contains a wide variety of geologic and soil types, as well as significant climatic variation which yields many different vegetation communities. This vegetation is important to land managers as they work with livestock, wildlife, watersheds, riparian areas, and aesthetics of the land.For many reasons, the present vegetation community may not meet a landowner’s needs for managing livestock, wildlife, and water.

Research on large scale projects on private lands will encourage the development of economically feasible ways to decrease bare ground cover, decrease undesirable species, and increase desirable species. Broadly, we work in three areas: 1) habitat and rangeland restoration, 2) fire ecology, and 3) west Texas native seeds.