Parker Three-Step data that exist on many US Forest Service allotments may be the only remaining, truly long-term vegetation and soil data available. Although Parker Three-Step procedures have been abandoned on many Forest Service districts, the historical insight they provide may be worth revisiting for management purposes.

The Parker photos that accompany the transect data may be of more value than the data.

Long-term vegetation records in Coyote Flat reveal the range to remain generally in fair condition since at least 1931, despite large reductions in livestock numbers, drastically shortened season of use, and 7 years of rest out of the last 13 grazing seasons.

The correlation and interaction between reduced grazing pressure and ecological condition on high-elevation mountain meadow ecosystems, particularly as revealed by Parker Three-Step data, is not always intuitive or linear.

Ecological Site Descriptions (ESDs) and underlying state-and-transition models are part of a move toward a more dynamic platform of range management, but this movement is happening without evaluation of weaknesses or logical pitfalls in the ESD database.

We conducted a national-scale evaluation of the ESD database and in this paper summarize the results with particular attention on the implementation of the state-and-transition model concept within the ESD database.

We discuss the weaknesses and logical holes we identified and provide recommendations that can be used to organize efforts to improve, adapt, or discard certain elements of ESD state-and-transition models.

The major range and forage types on the islands of Hawaii are principally naturalized plant communities with a steady-state disclimax, though there are more seldom-occurring naturalized and even less-often–occurring native historic types present.

In this article, I describe the characteristics of the six major range types using traditional Clements–Dyksterhuis range models for simplicity. My goal is to assist conservationists or professional agriculturists in making decisions on ranches and public lands of Hawaii.

Many guidance documents and references have been prepared by federal and state agencies on proper grazing use. This article summarizes these documents for use by field personnel.

Proper grazing use or acceptable forage utilization can be judged by the use of key forage plants in designated key grazing areas.