Project Supervisor
Dr. Philip Gipson

Funding
Department of Defense, Fort Riley 

Objectives
Estimate the threshold at which military vehicle training affects small mammal species richness and abundance.

Identify changes of small mammal community structure with varying levels of military vehicle training.

Location
Fort Riley Military Intallation
 
 

Progress and Results
A research plan is currently being developed to determine the threshold at which military vehicle training impacts the small mammal communities of Fort Riley.  Small mammal communities will be sampled on study plots randomly dispersed across the installation beginning March 2008.  Small mammal sampling will be conducted using standard live trapping techniques. 

Vehicle disturbance to vegetation will be measured at all small mammal study plots with low level aerial digital photography and ground vegetation sampling.  Disturbance surveys will be conducted immediately before or after small mammal sampling.  Digital photos taken at trap sites will be geo-referenced to their true geographic coordinates in the Geographic Information System program ArcMap (ESRI, Redlands California).  Features visible in photos will be digitized to estimate military vehicle training disturbance.  Calculated indices of disturbance will include percent of plot tracked and percent bare ground on plot.  Ground vegetation sampling will be conducted using a modified point-intercept method to measure the affects of military vehicle training maneuvers on vegetative cover, vertical and horizontal vegetative structure.

Products