University of Idaho student Will Amonette sets a transect. (Brad Carlson/Capital Press)

KUNA, Idaho — Atop a rangeland butte, student Will Amonette sets up a transect how and where it is needed for precise evaluation of what lies on and just below the ground.

“I’m learning a lot. It’s my second day on the job,” the University of Idaho undergraduate said.

“It’s really good experience,” range technician and UI undergraduate Drake Rasgorshek said. “I’m learning something at the field level beneficial for all of us.”

Amonette and Rasgorshek were among UI students training at Kuna Butte May 20-21 to assess rangeland as part of the National Resources Inventory, led by USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service and initially mandated by the Rural Development Act of 1972.

NRCS and its partners collect and produce scientifically credible information on non-federal lands in support of protection and restoration efforts.

On the first day, the students learned about soils and vegetation. On the second day, they learned how to set transects and carry out vegetation protocols and calibration.

In the rangeland survey part of the resources inventory, a fixed number of locations can be monitored over time. Some are revisited annually and others are visited on a rotational basis over several years, said Mindi Rambo, state public affairs specialist with NRCS in Idaho.

Kuna Butte is a good site for the training partly because it has three soil types and three vegetation types, said Dan Lauritzen, a UI instructor for the project. Desirable perennials and shrubs are on the landscape, as are invasive annual grasses that have a degrading effect.

Working in teams, the students set transects of 150 feet — 75 feet on either side of a center point. They set a thin metal pin every three feet along the transect and record anything that intersects the pin, such as a soil or vegetation component.

Data are fed into national models, said Eric Winford, UI rangeland ecology and management researcher and associate director of the university’s Rangeland Center. The work targets “precise on-the-ground information to tell us what the satellite is seeing. The data help us compare rangeland conditions over time.”

The student-gathered data will be calibrated and used, he said. Because most of the students also trained last year and were familiar with the process and the site’s soils and plants, the training and calibration went quickly.

The survey runs smoothly thanks to the partnership with UI, said Misty Beals, NRCS Idaho state resource conservationist. For example, the agency gathers landowner contact information and the UI group gets access permissions.

The annual training went well, and “everyone was excited to get out and do the survey,” Rambo said. The longstanding partnership with the university “makes it possible to ensure the consistency and quality of the data we collect.”

“It’s such a critical thing that happens in the background to inform good policymaking,” she said.

The students will spend the summer monitoring various sites. “There are 400 potential points they could visit or monitor,” Winford said. “At each point they will stretch out the tapes” crossed at a midpoint.

As for current rangeland conditions, “one thing we talk about is long-term average, but we don’t ever see that average” in a given year, he said. “We see extremes.”