Overview

This episode features an interview with Dr. Jake Courkamp, who is a rangeland and weed ecology research scientist at Colorado State University. Jake shares about his experience as a researcher in the field of range science, and how his work supports practitioners in facing ecosystem challenges like weed removal. He justifies the need for active management of weeds in rangelands, and explains the importance of having good, “specific” management objectives. He then details the pitfalls and paths for the potential improvement of rangeland management tools, like ecological site descriptions. In parting, Jake shares how some of the ecosystems he’s visitedand worked in bring him hope and invites listeners to consider exploring range science professionally.  Check out the definitions and resources included below for more information about episode topics; and be sure to look for new episodes every other Monday!

Check out these definitions and resourcesfor information about topics discussed in this episode:

Definitions

According to the USDA Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) an Ecological Site Description (ESD) is a report “that provide detailed information about a particular kind of land - a distinctive Ecological Site.” In doing so, ESDs “provideland managers [with] the information needed for evaluating the land as to suitability for various land-uses, capability to respond to different management activities or disturbance processes,  and ability to sustain productivity over the long term.”

Per a publication by the Jornada, a state-and-transition model (STM) is a diagram “that organize large amounts of data and local knowledge.” These are often included within an ESD.

According to the New Mexico State University Plant Clinic, Russian Thistle (Salsola tragus) (AKA a tumbleweed) is a non-native summer annual that can be toxic to livestock.

According to USDA Plants, leafy spurge (Euphorbia esula)is an invasive, noxious weed that can negatively affect livestock.

Per Nature author Sarah M. Emery, Clementsian succession refers to the theory posed by ecologist Frederick Clements in the 1900s that change in vegetation was predictable over time. Clements “proposed the concept of a climax state forcommunities, which represented the final, or permanent, end-stage of succession. […] Climax communities [are] the assemblage of characteristic plants thatdefine an ecosystem, such as tall grasses in a prairie, or mature trees in a forest. Clements held that, after a disturbance, any given ecosystem would eventually return to its characteristic assemblage of species.”

According to Sarah M. Emery, Gleasonian plant community assembly refers to the alternative ideology posed by ecologist Henry Gleason, “that communities were individualistic; that is, communities were only the fortuitous assembly of species, and that there was no such thing as a climax state for ecosystems.” This argument is counter to Clement’s theory and recognizes “that the environment, and species’ movements, had an important role in regulating species assemblages, and that community changes were not nearly as predictable as Clements had proposed.”

Desired future conditions“express the ecosystem conditions that are preferred by stakeholders and managers” (Nagel et al., 2025).

Resources

The ASCC Network about page.

Forest and Rangeland StewardshipDepartment at Colorado State University. home page

CSU Rangeland Measurements course syllabus link.