Hart Mountain - Gray Butte and Rock Creek Sites
| Location: | Lake County, near Lakeview (~70 miles), Frenchglen (~45 miles), and Plush, OR (~20 miles) |
| Elevation: | 4910 ft (Gray Butte) 4950 ft (Rock Creek) |
| Land Management Agency: | U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Hart Mountain National Antelope Refuge |
| SageSTEP Site Manager: | Scott Shaff |
| Plots: | Four 200-acre plots at each site (Control, Burn, Mechanical, and Herbicide) |
| Topography: | 0–3 % slope with a general aspect of 200 degrees for entire study area |
| Common Vegetation: | Wyoming big sagebrush, bluebunch wheatgrass, squirreltail, Sandberg bluegrass, Indian rice grass, Therber’s needlegrass, and a varying extent of cheatgrass invasion |
| Representative Land Base: | Vast acreages in the High Desert of Eastern Oregon |
| Soils: | Brace-Raz complex |
| Fire Regime: | The Wyoming big sagebrush type is the driest of the sagebrush steppe communities and historically had a fire return interval of approximately 50-100 years. The introduction of cheatgrass into the sagebrush grassland communities has increased fine fuels and reduced the fire return interval to less than 10 years. |
| Grazing: | Grazing does not occur on these sites. |
| Treatments Implemented: | Rock Creek, Fall 2007; Gray Butte, Fall 2008. For more information about treatments, click here. |
Click here to download the Hart Mountain Sites Fact Sheet (PDF, 307KB).
Click on the links below to view images from select subplots
